[Disiskurt]

Ok, so I built my dorm computer with my headphone setup in mind, but so far the results have brought nothing but stress, anxiety, and frusteration.

It took me 2 weeks of no music until I could get some sound out of there, and things are hardly better now. Let me go down my list of grievences:

1. I can't play any music out of speakers, unless those speakers have RCA inputs for some reason. Either way, computer speakers are a no go, because the one output I can use is taken up by my headphone amplfier. My only other option is using the digital out, which seems to necessitate a speaker amp or receiver of some sort (I'm not looking to spend every dime I have toward this cause.) Living in a dorm, I've found that having speakers is almost as important as having headphones, and not even having an option is really ticking me off.

2. Now that I finally have the 1212m working, I'm getting intermittant chirping/buzzing through the headphones, usually when I'm online and some music plays (but happens other times too, so I can't pinpoint it to that.) Needless to say, I paid a good amount of cash for the 1212m, and this is what I get in return?

3. I'm beginning to regret ripping my collection to .flac. I've searched around and I can't find anything to encode it to LAME mp3. I also want to encode to ATRAC, so I can actually use my Sony NW-HD3, but I doubt I can do anything unless I can encode to wav., then to ATRAC. Ripping my collection once took 2 weeks of spare time to finish, and I'd be very irritated to hear that I have to do it again. I'm very inept when it comes to this stuff, so there's probably something I'm missing.

4. All of the above makes listening to music a exercize in concentration. I think everytime I'm listening: "Well, this thing is such a pain in ass to set up, there better be a big difference in sound quality." To which then I'm only listening to the details and not to the music.


So anywho, I'm beginning to consider seriously downgrading my setup (see profile for what I'm using.) By that, I mean sell off the 1212m, Headsave Classic, and DT770-80. Then buy a Revo 5.1, and either keep my A100s or get a pair of A900s (since the Revo's headphone jack is supposedly as good as a Cmoy, and the AT's don't need amplification to sound good.) If not that, then just sell the 1212m for a Revo 5.1 and keep the rest.

To get an idea of how much this situation is ticking me off, I enjoyed using my crappy Aiwa headphones from a laptop soundcard more than this BS. I'd appreciate any input that could to steer me towards or away from this action, since I'm currently mired in indecision. Thank you very much, and sorry for the rant. I'm just very sick of the whole thing.


- Kurt

 

[CSMR]

A lot of stuff is really stupid in audio. Having to spend so long reading up about all the different components and all the opinions about them was a real pain. One forgets the pain and then forgets to tell newcomers about it!
Quote:

Originally Posted by Disiskurt 1. I can't play any music out of speakers, unless those speakers have RCA inputs for some reason. Either way, computer speakers are a no go, because the one output I can use is taken up by my headphone amplfier. My only other option is using the digital out, which seems to necessitate a speaker amp or receiver of some sort (I'm not looking to spend every dime I have toward this cause.) Living in a dorm, I've found that having speakers is almost as important as having headphones, and not even having an option is really ticking me off.

This is really not very complicated; you need two speakers and an amplifier. Amplifiers are cheap. If you don't have any money and don't need much power you can get the sonic impact for <$50. Or you can get the right adapters - RCA splitters and an RCA-female minijack would probably cost as much as the sonic impact.
Quote:

2. Now that I finally have the 1212m working, I'm getting intermittant chirping/buzzing through the headphones, usually when I'm online and some music plays (but happens other times too, so I can't pinpoint it to that.) Needless to say, I paid a good amount of cash for the 1212m, and this is what I get in return?

Don't know what the problem could be.
Quote:

3. I'm beginning to regret ripping my collection to .flac. I've searched around and I can't find anything to encode it to LAME mp3. I also want to encode to ATRAC, so I can actually use my Sony NW-HD3, but I doubt I can do anything unless I can encode to wav., then to ATRAC. Ripping my collection once took 2 weeks of spare time to finish, and I'd be very irritated to hear that I have to do it again. I'm very inept when it comes to this stuff, so there's probably something I'm missing.

Download DBPoweramp and the necessary add-ons for flac and whatever else you need. Good easy-to-use software.