[Ebonyks]

Yes, my crappy job of serving ice-cream to idiots has finally paid off, and i've got 700 bucks to spend on some headphones.

Right now, i'm using a set of koss sporta pro's on the headphone port of my fortmisso 2, which sounds pretty good, but i'm looking for something better.

With 700 bucks, i'd want to create the best possible sound. This includes possibly a new soundcard, a amp, and of course, the headphones themselves.

Thanks in advance

 

[Braver]

there are a lot of combinations possible. we'll need more info on musical tastes. and would you need a CDP or do you have something that's ok already?

700 bucks is a lot of money. be sure to audition as much as possible. headphone amps might be tough tho.

 

[pedxing]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ebonyks Yes, my crappy job of serving ice-cream to idiots has finally paid off

Are you saying people who eat ice cream are idiots? Or just the people you server ice crream to? Just kidding.

If you want a hi-fi sound card, the cost of those things can climb beyond $700.00. The Santa Cruz is suppose to be a good an cheap video card.

What type of sound are you looking for and what type of music do you listen to?

 

[acs236]

You should be able to get a pretty nice system for $700. Tell us more what you're looking for.

 

[grinch]

first off, i'd say order the assembled corda ha-1 and hd600's from jan meier. this can be found here:

http://www.meier-audio.com

that's like $525 and with $175 leftover you have plenty of money to buy a new soundcard such as the audiophile 24/96 or something from m-audio.. lookup www.digitalaudioworks.com for a good place to buy from and try searching out audio&me's pc sound thread. that is one gorgeous setup that is rather versatile and should get your juices pumping for headphone awesomeness.

 

[Ebonyks]

Sorry for not speficing my musical tastes. I listen to a combination of classical and techno (yes, i realize i have bizzare tastes), and plan to game on these quite a bit.

I'm a Overclocker, and thus have a pretty good understanding of the mainstream soundcards, the fortmisso 2 is pretty simliar to the Turtle beach reccomended earlier.

Unfortionatly, i don't have a place where i can test out these headphones. BTW, i have no preferance sealed verses open. I'll be alone with this, but have a pretty loud watercooling system that i want to drown out.

(BTW, i use an 7 foot homemade evaportave watercooling tower (also known as a bong))

 

[Gluegun]

Lol...

say, are you going to be using these headphones for gaming?

 

[grancasa]

Since you're an overclocker, I'd say you need to get closed phones, the more closed the better. I'd reccomend going with the Etymotic ER4S, since they would provide about 20db of isolation. You will need to try to keep your watercooling and GPU/case cooling as quiet as possible, though, to really allow you to get the most out of a $700 system.

You will need an amplifier for the ER4S, and there are a fair number of options. You could go for tubes (X-Cans, HG Head) or solid state (Headroom Little, Cosmic, Corda HA-1, OBH-11), or have one of the members here make you a META42, which I found to be a very good sounding amp, able to hold its own against the Headroom Cosmic. The META is a portable amp, with many different setup options, depending on your budget.

Since you plan on use these phones for gaming, you might consider it important to be able to use the crossfeed feature that some of these amps offer. That is, they "mix" the left and right signal to give a better stereo image. The Little, Cosmic, Corda and META42 amps can all do this.

For a source, I would say get a dedicated CD/SACD player. Use the soundcard you have now for gaming and MP3 playback (which will start to sound much worse with your new setup), and get something like the Sony DVP-NS500v as a standalone player.

Do search for info on all these products, especially if you are not going to be able to listen before you buy. I would also reccomend buying from www.heaphone.com, as they are a great company and offer a 30 day return period.

So, if I was you, I'd get:

Etymotic ER4S $269 (www.headphone.com)
META42 $250 (ask in the DIY or Marketplace forum)
Sony DVP-NS500V $150 (find at a local CC or BB)
Outlaw Cables $ 40 (www.outlawaudio.com)
Shipping $ 20

Total $739

 

[r3cc0s]

the 600's are nice and tough too
get the 600s, melos, and the clou cables

that would work wickely

as well make sure your source is good

um well from the puter it won't be all that good
but stil will sound wicked

 

[Ebonyks]

I really don't need sealed headphones, or any sort of a stand-alone player, simply because i will never use it. I'm really conserned about sound quality. More than anything else, i will use these for music listening.

The Watercooling system is maybe 40 DB's total, i can silence it by pointing the showerhead against the side of it, or just turn it off, and add some ice to the water.

Keep in mind 700 bucks is a max, i really don't want to spend any more than that.

Sorry for my n00bish'ness, but what are the mellos?

 

[Gluegun]

If you are going to be gaming, you will probably need a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for the headphone gaming algorithms.... It has Sensaura combined with Virtual Ear, which is a *very* nice combo.... dont need to use a crossfeed, either, just the Cruz's algorithms will work fine...

Hmmm, what are some expansive-sounding headphones that will work great with this and have some nice, impacting bass? Any ideas? HD600's? DT931's?

...

OHH!! MDR-CD3000!!!!

 

[Ebonyks]

Virtual ear? how does that work? BTW, the fortimisso 2 has sensura

 

[Gluegun]

Alright!

As you may or may not know, the "Sensaura" algorithms are the best ones for headphone positioning.... natively, they should be about equal to A3D's old stuff, but when combined with a program called "virtual ear", they pull ahead. How does "virtual ear" work? It is a program that you install with your cruz (integrated into the control center) that lets you, at your leasure, run through a wizard of tests. These tests let you customize the positioning algorithms of Sensaura to *your exact head in your exact headphones* by choosing various options based on the positional surround sound that you hear... so you customize your setup *precisely* to YOU! And, what's more, you automatically use this setup in games, as long as you have the profile and headphone mode selected!

This works *VERY* well, imo (especially good with open, circumaural headphones with detailed and accurate positioning and soundstage and lots of detail in the midrange and highs), and is EXTREMELY useful to anyone interested in getting lots of frags.... as this lets you listen to where any one is around you in a game; you just KNOW where they are, by hearing, naturally, and don't have to think about it at all--you just act! Which, in a fragfest, is ultimately what is needed....

 

[Ebonyks]

That IS nice...
Anyway, when getting the headphones, i'll use them for 95% of the time just listening to music and DVD's, and the other 5% gaming.


In your opinion, how important are cables? How much aproxomently should i spend on them?

I was looking at a fair number of headphones, and the Hd-600's seem to serve my purposes best, but i'm hardly an expert in that field.

The thing where i have no place to start is an amp. I ideally want something that's portable for the occasional LAN, so a open tube amp doesn't seem like a great choice, because of the possibility of breaking (or is it made out of some strong type of glass? Again, a place where i'm a n00b)


Edit: is there any reason i can't use natural ear on my fortimisso 2? The way you described it, you made it seem like it was a seperate 3rd party program, made by some fans, not voyetera. Does it require the santa cruz chipset (the number escapes me for the time) or is it just a plug-in for sensura?

 

[Gluegun]

Its not really a seperate program... it's pretty strongly integrated into the featureset of the cruz.... i dont know EXACTLY how it all works, but I wouldn't hesitate to guess that you could read the 3dsoundsurge review of the cruz and get a better idea. BTW, I view it as more useful than 3dss says it is...