elflink
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2007
- Posts
- 2
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- 0
My first post here, hoping I'm doing this right. I'm not what you'd call an audiophile, although I love good sound. I'm not all too familiar with some of the technical expressions that's used here, but a few hours of reading got me somewhat up to speed I think...
So here's the deal, I mainly sit in front of my computer when I listen to music, and right now I only have a horrible onboard sound card. After quite a bit of reading, and asking some friends, I think that ESI Juli@ might be the card for me. In addition to listening to music on my computer, I like to play games, and I'm also about to do some music production, although this is on a pretty small scale. I'd say that once I get this up and going, that my time spent using the computer, will be approx. 50% listening to music, 35% gaming, and 15% music production. I don't need anything else than stero, surround sound isn't my cup of tea, at least not for anything that involves music.
I already have an M-Audio LX4 2.1 System, got a cheap Behringer mixer that I just use as a volume controller. I'm most likely swapping that with a Soundcraft Compact 4 mixer, since it got every function I need at this time. I'm not really well versed in the world of mixers, do I need a separate headphone amp in addition to the mixer, or will I get good sound without? I read the manual for the Compact 4 and found out that it preferably wanted headphones with an impedance of more than 200 ohms, and did not reccomend to use 8 ohm headphones.
The last thing I need is of course the headphones. Currently I got my eyes (or should I say ears) on Sennheiser HD 595 or Beyerdynamic DT770 (80 ohm), although neither are near the 200 ohm mark that my mixer want. I want to be able to use the headphones on other systems as well, and since I don't have a headphone amp, anything over 80 ohms might be a bit hard to drive on normal stereo amplifiers? I got a 2. gen iPod nano, can that drive these headphones with good results?
Although I got myself a list of what I need, I'm far from an expert, so I'm open for suggestions. Soundcard, mixer, maybe a headphone amp and the headphones. I game quite a bit, so it's of some importance that I can use the soundcard for gaming. I guess my budget is pretty clear from the components I listed, I can go a small bit higher, but only if it's really necessary. I welcome any comments, and hope I can get some good feedback on this topic. Hope I didn't post this in the wrong category, didn't find any more suited for it.
So here's the deal, I mainly sit in front of my computer when I listen to music, and right now I only have a horrible onboard sound card. After quite a bit of reading, and asking some friends, I think that ESI Juli@ might be the card for me. In addition to listening to music on my computer, I like to play games, and I'm also about to do some music production, although this is on a pretty small scale. I'd say that once I get this up and going, that my time spent using the computer, will be approx. 50% listening to music, 35% gaming, and 15% music production. I don't need anything else than stero, surround sound isn't my cup of tea, at least not for anything that involves music.
I already have an M-Audio LX4 2.1 System, got a cheap Behringer mixer that I just use as a volume controller. I'm most likely swapping that with a Soundcraft Compact 4 mixer, since it got every function I need at this time. I'm not really well versed in the world of mixers, do I need a separate headphone amp in addition to the mixer, or will I get good sound without? I read the manual for the Compact 4 and found out that it preferably wanted headphones with an impedance of more than 200 ohms, and did not reccomend to use 8 ohm headphones.
The last thing I need is of course the headphones. Currently I got my eyes (or should I say ears) on Sennheiser HD 595 or Beyerdynamic DT770 (80 ohm), although neither are near the 200 ohm mark that my mixer want. I want to be able to use the headphones on other systems as well, and since I don't have a headphone amp, anything over 80 ohms might be a bit hard to drive on normal stereo amplifiers? I got a 2. gen iPod nano, can that drive these headphones with good results?
Although I got myself a list of what I need, I'm far from an expert, so I'm open for suggestions. Soundcard, mixer, maybe a headphone amp and the headphones. I game quite a bit, so it's of some importance that I can use the soundcard for gaming. I guess my budget is pretty clear from the components I listed, I can go a small bit higher, but only if it's really necessary. I welcome any comments, and hope I can get some good feedback on this topic. Hope I didn't post this in the wrong category, didn't find any more suited for it.
