karthikrr
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2011
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Hello citizens of Head-Fi,org,
New to the forums, but not so new to the site. While not an audiophile (cannot afford it yet!), I am a tad snobbish when it comes to sound. Picked up a Grado SR-60 five years ago without even trying them, simply based on reviews and comments at head-fi and other places. Best decision I ever made, I am yet to find a single person in my circles who has listened to these and said they prefer whatever they are using (Bose, Bang & Olufsen, Sennheiser, etc).
My grand plan once I picked up the SR60 was to use that for a few years and when I finally had a steady income (student here), to upgrade to the 325 and ..... well, you know how it goes
Five years on, my SR60 is falling apart. The foam pads are easily replaced, but I also had the plug die on me and had to snip it and replace with a cheap one that I soldered in myself. Either I am just not good at soldering or the weight of the cable is too much for the plug I got, but the soldering job has had to be repeated once a year. Now a slightly different problem showed up, with one of the wires getting cut in the cable rather than the solder joint crapping out on me. Should just be a routine snip and solder job, but I am no longer at home (India) and do not want to buy a soldering iron and other tools here (US) to just do this one job ... I finally ended up ordering the SR80i just now, to replace the SR60, since it did not appear like I was going to be investing in the SR325is anytime soon (still a student!).
This brings me to my question for the gurus here ... Alongwith the Grado, I had also picked up a creative audigy 2 ZS notebook card for my laptop. The sound quality from that card was insanely better than the stock sound on my laptop. Unfortunately, that laptop is also now over 5 years old and is crapping out on me, and I have since upgraded to a new system; one which only has an ExpressCard slot! Now, my question is whether I should be buying a new soundcard (DAC) for the laptop, or if merely investing in a CMoy amp will do the trick ...
Products under consideration are as follows:
Stock sound on Lenovo Edge 14 - Realtek ALC269 (http://www.realtek.com/products/productsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=27&Level=5&Conn=4&ProdID=166)
Previous experience - Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook (the good one in the family, with everything!)
Current options - Creative X Fi Go or the other USB X Fi --- From what I can tell, with both, the older models (Non pro) are better than the current models ... The current models either lack 24-bit sound or lack EAX or lack Dolby decoding and hardware processing support. What is not completely clear though is if these cards are also inferior to the Audigy 2 ZS ... My understanding currently suggests that for notebooks, the Audigy 2 ZS was by far the best card Creative ever put out. Is this correct?
Assuming that is correct, the only other DAC option I have seen so far in my price range is the Fiio E7. I will not be gaming at all on this laptop, so EAX is unimportant, but I would like to have equalizer options available because I listen to a range of music from heavy metal to rock to classical and fusion and am now trying some jazz stuff also! Does the E7 offer equalizer controls like the Audigy (which did a great job at that stuff!)?
Also, it just occurred to me, all the good options that I was using on the Audigy 2 ZS (equalizers, CMSS 3d) were in the EAX console, so perhaps the X Fi without EAX is not of much use to me?
Given the above two options, how much better are they than the stock Realtek ALC269? I am also eyeing the BSG CMoy amp on ebay and am wondering if it does not make more sense to simply invest in just that amp, or perhaps the amp + the X Fi Go, which is about the same price as I would pay for the Fiio E7!
The only downside I see with the BSG amp option is that it will require me to have yet another power supply hooked up to my power strip! But thats nit-picking really, and the benefits of being able to use it with other sources such as the iPod/iPhone and so on makes up for this. Also, I am not a fan of heavily processed sound, like it to be as pure and natural as possible: as I mentioned earlier, the only features I used on the Audigy 2 ZS were the equalizers to fine-tune the sound to my preferences, but pretty much none of the rest of the items.
So, to summarize:
Grado SR80i for a wide range of music (and movies and shows as well) will be best mated with which of the following options:
1) Stock RTL ALC269 (VERY much doubt this, the old SR60 on this was just not as satisfying!)
2) RTL ALC269 + BSG Cmoy Amp
3) Creative X Fi Go
4) Creative X Fi Go with BSG Cmoy Amp
5) Fiio E7
6) Screw all of that, go buy a PCMCIA-ExpressCard adapter and use the Audigy 2 ZS on your new laptop, its wayyyyy superior
7) None of the above, have you considered this ... ?
Sorry about the long post, but I tried to be as detailed as I could!
Thanks,
Karthik
PS - I did spend some time looking at various forum posts on the products under consideration here, and the above are the unanswered questions I had after reading up. Apologize if I am actually rehashing an old topic, if so, please do point me in the right direction! And was unsure if this was the right forum or this belonged in the soundcards section (or equivalent), but figured its really more about what the BSG Cmoy can do, so decided to post here.
New to the forums, but not so new to the site. While not an audiophile (cannot afford it yet!), I am a tad snobbish when it comes to sound. Picked up a Grado SR-60 five years ago without even trying them, simply based on reviews and comments at head-fi and other places. Best decision I ever made, I am yet to find a single person in my circles who has listened to these and said they prefer whatever they are using (Bose, Bang & Olufsen, Sennheiser, etc).
My grand plan once I picked up the SR60 was to use that for a few years and when I finally had a steady income (student here), to upgrade to the 325 and ..... well, you know how it goes
Five years on, my SR60 is falling apart. The foam pads are easily replaced, but I also had the plug die on me and had to snip it and replace with a cheap one that I soldered in myself. Either I am just not good at soldering or the weight of the cable is too much for the plug I got, but the soldering job has had to be repeated once a year. Now a slightly different problem showed up, with one of the wires getting cut in the cable rather than the solder joint crapping out on me. Should just be a routine snip and solder job, but I am no longer at home (India) and do not want to buy a soldering iron and other tools here (US) to just do this one job ... I finally ended up ordering the SR80i just now, to replace the SR60, since it did not appear like I was going to be investing in the SR325is anytime soon (still a student!).This brings me to my question for the gurus here ... Alongwith the Grado, I had also picked up a creative audigy 2 ZS notebook card for my laptop. The sound quality from that card was insanely better than the stock sound on my laptop. Unfortunately, that laptop is also now over 5 years old and is crapping out on me, and I have since upgraded to a new system; one which only has an ExpressCard slot! Now, my question is whether I should be buying a new soundcard (DAC) for the laptop, or if merely investing in a CMoy amp will do the trick ...
Products under consideration are as follows:
Stock sound on Lenovo Edge 14 - Realtek ALC269 (http://www.realtek.com/products/productsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=27&Level=5&Conn=4&ProdID=166)
Previous experience - Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook (the good one in the family, with everything!)
Current options - Creative X Fi Go or the other USB X Fi --- From what I can tell, with both, the older models (Non pro) are better than the current models ... The current models either lack 24-bit sound or lack EAX or lack Dolby decoding and hardware processing support. What is not completely clear though is if these cards are also inferior to the Audigy 2 ZS ... My understanding currently suggests that for notebooks, the Audigy 2 ZS was by far the best card Creative ever put out. Is this correct?
Assuming that is correct, the only other DAC option I have seen so far in my price range is the Fiio E7. I will not be gaming at all on this laptop, so EAX is unimportant, but I would like to have equalizer options available because I listen to a range of music from heavy metal to rock to classical and fusion and am now trying some jazz stuff also! Does the E7 offer equalizer controls like the Audigy (which did a great job at that stuff!)?
Also, it just occurred to me, all the good options that I was using on the Audigy 2 ZS (equalizers, CMSS 3d) were in the EAX console, so perhaps the X Fi without EAX is not of much use to me?
Given the above two options, how much better are they than the stock Realtek ALC269? I am also eyeing the BSG CMoy amp on ebay and am wondering if it does not make more sense to simply invest in just that amp, or perhaps the amp + the X Fi Go, which is about the same price as I would pay for the Fiio E7!
The only downside I see with the BSG amp option is that it will require me to have yet another power supply hooked up to my power strip! But thats nit-picking really, and the benefits of being able to use it with other sources such as the iPod/iPhone and so on makes up for this. Also, I am not a fan of heavily processed sound, like it to be as pure and natural as possible: as I mentioned earlier, the only features I used on the Audigy 2 ZS were the equalizers to fine-tune the sound to my preferences, but pretty much none of the rest of the items.
So, to summarize:
Grado SR80i for a wide range of music (and movies and shows as well) will be best mated with which of the following options:
1) Stock RTL ALC269 (VERY much doubt this, the old SR60 on this was just not as satisfying!)
2) RTL ALC269 + BSG Cmoy Amp
3) Creative X Fi Go
4) Creative X Fi Go with BSG Cmoy Amp
5) Fiio E7
6) Screw all of that, go buy a PCMCIA-ExpressCard adapter and use the Audigy 2 ZS on your new laptop, its wayyyyy superior
7) None of the above, have you considered this ... ?
Sorry about the long post, but I tried to be as detailed as I could!
Thanks,
Karthik
PS - I did spend some time looking at various forum posts on the products under consideration here, and the above are the unanswered questions I had after reading up. Apologize if I am actually rehashing an old topic, if so, please do point me in the right direction! And was unsure if this was the right forum or this belonged in the soundcards section (or equivalent), but figured its really more about what the BSG Cmoy can do, so decided to post here.
