[kymira]

Hi all. After lurking these forums for a while, I ultimately decided on getting a pair of M50's for my first pair of decent headphones. These will be an all around use, meaning movies, music, gaming (mostly in that in that order) and paired w/ my 7th gen Nano when Im on the go.
 
One small peeve I have is the back onboard audio port is already occupied by my cheap logitch 2.0 speakers and my front case audio port has too much interference for me to have a good listening experience. I could always just use a splitter in the back or just get up and plug one or the other but I like the convenience of having both plugged in. Plus this gives me an excuse to improve my setup and buy something new
 
Would getting a dac or amp sitting on the desk for easy access be a better purchase than a dedicated sound card with a dedicated headphone jack?
 
I was leaning towards the SB z series cards since it just fits my budget of $150.

 

[1audioz]

I used to own a prominent sound card, the ASUS Essence STX. The card was high quality but my listening gear always brought up some interference produced by my Radeon HD 6990 (EMI).
 
Currently I am using an Audio-gd 12.1 DAC/AMP via Optical SPDIF (Motherboard Digital Output) and I find that my listening experience is exceptionally better. 
 
The only disadvantage I perceive with a dedicated desktop DAC is that they're not going to be "designed" for gaming and can sometimes struggle. In games where there are lots of sounds playing concurrently, I find that my DAC sometimes stutters/freezes - this never occurred when I used the STX - it had a dedicated audio processor. 
 
A budget of $150 should be plenty to get one of the ASUS Xonar DX cards (unless you need SoundBlaster / X-Fi / etc.) or a dedicated desktop DAC/AMP.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

Hi all. After lurking these forums for a while, I ultimately decided on getting a pair of M50's for my first pair of decent headphones. These will be an all around use, meaning movies, music, gaming (mostly in that in that order) and paired w/ my 7th gen Nano when Im on the go.
One small peeve I have is the back onboard audio port is already occupied by my cheap logitch 2.0 speakers and my front case audio port has too much interference for me to have a good listening experience. I could always just use a splitter in the back or just get up and plug one or the other but I like the convenience of having both plugged in. Plus this gives me an excuse to improve my setup and buy something new
Would getting a dac or amp sitting on the desk for easy access be a better purchase than a dedicated sound card with a dedicated headphone jack?
I was leaning towards the SB z series cards since it just fits my budget of $150.

I'm an Xonar fan, but the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z seems to be a good value and has the features your looking for.
Check out the Sound blaster Zx, sometimes it drops down to $120.

 

[kymira]

@1audioz, I currently have an HD6850 installed and maybe that may be the cause some of the interference.
 
@PurlpeAngel, yea I really like the features and the price point doesn't seem to bad. I'll wait a bit and see if I can catch it on sale.
 
 
Thanks for the responses guys