[Kensi]

Just wondering. At uni, the PC's generally have crap sound cards. Not neccessarly bad, but not in leage with Santa Cruz's or Audigy's etc.
Will high end headphones improve the sound over cheap headphones through such soundcards, or does a bad soundcard act as a 'bottleneck' ie limiting the performance of a high end headphone to something of a cheap headphone? Are there perhaps any headphones known to specifically enhance the sound when it is coming from a not-so-high quality source?

Thanks for any help

 

[jodokast]

To be honest, it depends on your definition of a high-end can. Are you talking about say a SR 60 or Sennheiser 580/600? If you're talking about the latter, good luck trying to even get a high enough volume going to determine how good the sound quality is....


Personally I think if you spend <$50 on a pair of decent headphones though, you should some sound improvement, even if you're using integrated sound. [although these days it's getting better....see nForce 2 solutions as well as Envy 24]. In the end, your source might matter more, i.e. what kind of file encoding are you using?

 

[johnny sack]

I have just about the poorest sounding sound card imaginable on my computer, and it wouldn't matter what headphones i use, it would still sound like crap. So, if your sound card is THAT bad, then don't bother to spend the money on good phones.

HOWEVER, if you are looking for an easy alternative to get something louder, just look for low impedence headphones, something less than, say, 60 ohms. This should make the music seem louder

 

[Melchior]

As I recently had to drive my AKG 240's from my onboard sound while I was fooling around with my soundcard, I can say that while volume itself wasnt a problem , distortion, and noise was. I'd have to say driving super low end phones that smear the sound a bit with high sensitivity would sound best. High end phone+onboard audio = bad with a few possible exceptions.

 

[SteeleBlayde]

Which exceptions?

 

[Melchior]

If I knew what they were I'd have listed em

The Aopen with the onboard tube would be a possiblity, I've heard of some prollems with the onboard nforce sound and some headphones doing wierd stuff, any Envy based onboard solution should be okay. Still, a standalone soundcard will almost always be better cuz of electrical noise.

 

[Patrickhat2001]

Kensi--
Another important point to remember is that when everone talks about running so-and-so headphones out of a soundcard they are talking about soundcards that are in a PCI slot in the back of your computer. They are not talking about integrated soundcards which do not have enough power to run headphones, any headphones, on their own. But a regular PCI slot soundcard (like my M-Audio Revolution) can power many of the lower impedance phones out there--my Revolution Rocks with the Koss KCS 35s, Shure E2s and the Alessandro MS1s. So the lesson is that as long as you stick to low impedance phones you should have no problem running them off of PCI based soundcards.

And to answer your original post any low quality source will act as a bottle neck for your system and there is nothing that can be done about that except for replacing your source. However that doesn't meen that upgrading your phones wouldn't improve the sound, far from it--any upgrade in phones will improve the sound unless the phones are not powered correctly and/or do not have synergy with the rest of the system (ex. using bright phones with a bright source makes everything sound overly bright).

P.S. I just replaced the comfy pads that came with my Alessandro MS1s with the modified Senn pads and they sound great now. It appears that it was the stock pads which was making them sound flat and not lack of power from my soundcard. I now heartly recommend these phones to anyone who will be using them out of a soundcard or PCDP. My above statment about them sounding flat has been corrected.

 

[D-EJ915]

You guys must have real ***** computers, because my 400MHz can output 2 or 3 Watts from the headphone jack, if you've ever noticed it's called that, but my computer has a built-in C-Media chip, which sounds much better, but I use my Z-560's all the time, so I just connect to them

 

[SteeleBlayde]

Personally, I am extremely against all the motherboards nowadays having onboard sound.

It's not something that is essential since sound isnt really necessary for productive computer usage (except for your little mobo beeper), people shouldnt have to pay for it. Plus, the hardware hogs up up space and resources on the mobo. (I'm betting the average user doesnt know how to disable mobo sound to save resources.)

Anyway, I'm going off topic. If you want reasonable sound from your computer, get an M-Audio Revolution if you are going to just listen to music, multimedia, movies, and recording. If you do a fair amount of gaming, go for the Sound Blaster Audigy2.

 

[D-EJ915]

the onboard sound devices have been using less and less CPU cycles for a while, anyway, anybody that is even looking into motherboards should know how to turn off features, come on...bioses are much easier than the ones in the early 90's and so forth (manually assigning everything if anybody knows what I'm talking about)

 

[SteeleBlayde]

I'm guessing most people on these boards are quite competent with computers, afterall, we are all geeks.

But I'm talking about the average Joe, and Joe doesnt know what the hell BIOS is.

 

[johnny sack]

Joe can read...and Joe is able to figure out "HOLD F8 TO VIEW BIOS SETTINGS"

It wouldn't take much for Joe to be curious and look at the BIOS and, alas, find a toggle for onboard sound; if that is in fact what Joe wanted to do.

 

[SteeleBlayde]

Joe has bought a Gateway and when he loads, all he sees is their logo. Joe doesnt see anything on the screen telling him what to press to do whatever. Joe also doesnt realise that Gateway's require you to press a combination of keys to get into BIOS. Joe looks for the "Any Key" on the keyboard....

 

[Hajime]

Quote:

Originally posted by SteeleBlayde Joe has bought a Gateway and when he loads, all he sees is their logo. Joe doesnt see anything on the screen telling him what to press to do whatever.

Hello there. I apologize to the author of the original post for deviating from his question.

Steele, Gateway expects you to call them and recieve help if you wish to make changes to the BIOS. This is so the average person does not accidently change their system in a harmful way. This is targeted more towards the "average Joe" than anything else. Gateway is targeted towards the average user. This deviates among manufacturers. Dell and Sony computers, among others, include a message that says something to the effect of "Press f8 for BIOS" on the startup screen.

I once again apologize for deviating. Kensi - if you're truly concerned about the sound quality from a cheap souncard there are a few external sound cards you may use through a USB port on the computers. These sound cards might not be up to the quality of the M-Audio Revolution or a Terratec card, but they're undoubtedly better than most integrated sound and cheap soundcards. This may be more trouble than it's worth. Good luck.

 

[SteeleBlayde]

Quote:

Originally posted by Hajime Steele, Gateway expects you to call them and recieve help if you wish to make changes to the BIOS. This is so the average person does not accidently change their system in a harmful way. This is targeted more towards the "average Joe" than anything else. Gateway is targeted towards the average user. This deviates among manufacturers. Dell and Sony computers, among others, include a message that says something to the effect of "Press f8 for BIOS" on the startup screen.

Thats exactly what I was talking about if you read my other comments above. You've just confirmed what I was saying. The average Joe doesnt know what BIOS is or does.

Sorry about deviating as well.

Kensi, if you arent able upgrade your computer source, your best bet is to place a DAC after it. In fact, its always a good idea to use a DAC in a computer setup is you are looking for good sound. Good headphones and a good amp will only show the flaws in your source and you may actually find that music now sounds worse than before.

Good soundcards to check out:
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 (Caters more to gamers but still has reasonable sound)
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (Caters more to audiophiles than gamers. Bad for gaming due to driver issues)

External sound devices:
M-Audio AudiophileUSB
M-Audio Sonica

DAC:
ART DI/O
Sonsenuto-1 (Mall-Fi)

Obviously, these arent the only options you have. Theres a wide variety of products available to chose from but these are the ones that most people around here seem to agree on are quite good.

I would like to point out the Sonsenuto-1 PDAC. This is a portable DAC/amplifier and is great for good sound quality on the go. Its a high quality component and sound is very comparable to the META42. It is even better if you get it with stacked EL2002 buffers. If you're looking for good sound with a good DAC, this is it. Its available from a Head-Fi member here who makes them. Check out the Mall-Fi section for details.

As for the ART DI/O it is just a DAC and very good for its price. It isnt as portable however and for it to really shine, you should really get it modded. Theres a bunch of people who mod the DI/O if you look on the Net.

Hope this helps.