[chiuming07]

does Creative's new sound card X-Fi has a headphone amp inside? if i purchase the X-Fi Platinum, do i need to buy a headphone amp like HeadRoom Micro DAC? since X-Fi external box has a plug for headphone.

thanks

 

[Chri5peed]

Headphone-outs are always amped.

Same story, its not as good as a seperate amp.

 

[chiuming07]

even a $39 headphone amp would sound much better than headphone output of X-Fi ($199) ?

$30 ART HeadTap Headphone Amp
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...Fencoding=UTF8

what kind of setup I would need to take full use of HD650 Sennheiser

thanks again

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chiuming07 what kind of setup I would need to take full use of HD650 Sennheiser

Something in the lower 1000s of $s... (Oh, and sorry, never heard about that amp. Umm, looks like it isn't an amp at all, so forget 'bout the thing.) The headphone out on the X-Fi breakout box is supposed to be of only so-so quality, the normal front out at the back of the card should be better. If music playback were the primary concern, I'd rather use a Revolution 5.1 or Prodigy 7.1LT, or for something including an amp, a 0404 with a decent used amp (maybe a PPA or somesuch, though an unbuffered opamp based design with discrete channels /should/ do and might in fact perform better with higher-impedance cans).