[Klaatu]

Greetings,
I'm a 43 year old network engineer in Oakland. I mostly use my PC for the majority of my audio playback (the majority of my listening is digital e.g. high bit rate MP3s and flac).
I'm running an X-Fi Extreme Audio soundcard (I bought it before I knew it was a "true" X-Fi) out to a set of Klipsch iFi speakers purchased off eBay before they became nearly impossible to find. I use them primarily as PC speakers, but I do have an iPod Touch. I have a set of Jamo i300s in the bedroom for listening to the iPod there.
As far as cans, I have a set of Grado SR80s and various portable headphones. My current favorites for portable listening are Koss PortaPros. I lost my set of Koss KSC55s (the street style phones) by leaving them in the server room of one of my clients. I've mourned their loss ever since. The PortaPros and a set of KSC75s are more or less ok as far as listening, but the KSC55s were the proper balance of sound quality and comfort for me.
That should cover it for brief intro. Nice meeting you fellas.

 

[Alpha 1 Omega]

welcome

and as we say around here

"sorry about your wallet"

 

[krmathis]

Welcome to Head-Fi!

 

[Raul Montana]

Welcome,

I just joined as well and I keep hearing that are wallets are going to get thinner here ahahahhaha.... Fight the peer-pressure lol

 

[Klaatu]

I seem to do a fair amount of wallet thinning myself without help

Now they have me scoping out the ASUS Xonar Essence, though.

 

[Klaatu]

After a bit of scoping things out around the forum and reading various reviews online, it looks like waiting for the Asus Xonar Essence ST would be a wiser choice than just pulling the trigger on the Xonar Essense STX. PCI-e ports are at a higher premium on my existing motherboard as it sits anyway.

 

[Klaatu]

Still waiting on a Xonar Essense ST, but I did replace the X-Fi Extreme Audio with an X-Fi XtremeMusic. It's an OEM version gleaned out of an older Dell. It's not an ideal situation, but a step forward.
Being as I'm running Windows 7 64 and the card is an OEM variant, I ran through about a dozen driver installations before getting it running by installing the Beta Creative driver.
I'm thinking that this will be my last Creative product, their driver support seems to be deteriorating.

 

[etiolate]

ya, plus they don't put out mac drivers.

. (i think)