[WhatAmIDoing]

Hi guys, like my title and username suggests I'm a noob who doesn't know what they're doing. Both in the audiophile sense and in general in all aspects of life. I own a pair of ATH-M50s and  a pair of eGrado's and listen to most of my music with my PC, mostly using youtube. I own a cheap $20 xonar sound card but lately I've been wondering if it's worth it for me to upgrade to a better one. I don't need to connect any amps or extra speakers or anything, I basically just need to make the most out of my headphones and the ****ty quality mp3's that tend to get uploaded to youtube. I also listen to music with my laptop so any advice there is appreciated as well.
 
Thanks

 

[fredralphfred]

When you aren't listening to anything, do you hear any hiss in the headphones if you turn the volume up a little?  Do you hear quiet, but funny, noises through the headphones when you run certain programs or you do something that uses a lot of hard drive access?  When you listen to music at normal volumes, are you unhappy with the quality of the music?
 
If you can't answer "yes" to any of those questions, I'd leave it alone.  Keep in mind for the last one you don't want to upgrade anything if it's just a few YouTube videos with the problem -- they're not optimized for sound quality, after all.

 

[PurpleAngel]

  Hi guys, like my title and username suggests I'm a noob who doesn't know what they're doing. Both in the audiophile sense and in general in all aspects of life. I own a pair of ATH-M50s and  a pair of eGrado's and listen to most of my music with my PC, mostly using youtube. I own a cheap $20 Xonar sound card but lately I've been wondering if it's worth it for me to upgrade to a better one. I don't need to connect any amps or extra speakers or anything, I basically just need to make the most out of my headphones and the ****ty quality mp3's that tend to get uploaded to youtube. I also listen to music with my laptop so any advice there is appreciated as well.

 
Hopefully you disabled the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS, when you installed the Xonar DG (or DGX) sound card.
 
You might consider using the Unified Xonar Drivers.
http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/
 
You might consider selling off the ATH-M50 and put all your audio budget for better headphones.
The ATH-M50 have their pluses, but there is better.

 

[DangerClose]

Xonar DG is already above average, compared to most onboard audio that people usually have.  If you had harder to drive headphones, a better amp might be worth it.  It can be a quite obvious difference between my DG and my better/more powerful amps.  But the last time I tried my Takstar Pro 80 on them, I don't think I noticed much if any difference.  There's a noticeable difference on other headphones such as Sennheiser HD449, even though they are only 50 ohms or so.  And a very obvious difference on 250 ohm headphones.  Though, even then, it's not like the DG makes me cringe.  
 
The DG is much better than my onboard ALC892 audio, both in DAC and in power. I don't hate the ALC892, it's ok, but I wouldn't want to listen to it every day.
 
Some people will hate on Youtube music as if it all sounds so bad there's no point in listening to it with any headphones that costs more than $5.  I listen to plenty of music on there, and better headphones and better amps still make a big difference not only in quality but in what kind of sound you're looking for.  That's the main thing, actually.  You can have the best bitrate music and the best closed, bassy headphones in the world, but if you don't like closed and bassy, then the main thing to do is get different headphones.  Or see if EQ helps.
 
If you had harder to drive headphones, I'd worry about it more.  The DG is probably the best bang for the buck there is for under $60 or so.  It's already a pretty big jump over most onboard audio, some people like it more than Sound Blaster Z and Xonar DSX, and affordable upgrades would likely be a smaller improvement than the improvement from ALC892 to the DG.
 
If you want better sound, spend the money and you'll have it.  But there are diminishing returns.

 

[WhatAmIDoing]

Thanks for the replies guys. So it sounds like you're telling me there won't be much noticeable improvement in audio quality going from a Xonar DG to a more expensive sound card. Do you instead recommend any kind of equalizer app or program to download and use? I know that the VLC player has a built in equalizer/compressor/spatializer, but this of course affects only media played through VLC. Youtube songs are excepted and Youtube does not offer any such program. I've also considered browser extensions through Firefox but searched and found nothing.

 

[Youth]

  Thanks for the replies guys. So it sounds like you're telling me there won't be much noticeable improvement in audio quality going from a Xonar DG to a more expensive sound card. Do you instead recommend any kind of equalizer app or program to download and use? I know that the VLC player has a built in equalizer/compressor/spatializer, but this of course affects only media played through VLC. Youtube songs are excepted and Youtube does not offer any such program. I've also considered browser extensions through Firefox but searched and found nothing.

 
VLC is bad anyways, don't use it 

 

[DangerClose]

  Thanks for the replies guys. So it sounds like you're telling me there won't be much noticeable improvement in audio quality going from a Xonar DG to a more expensive sound card. Do you instead recommend any kind of equalizer app or program to download and use?

 
The difference would be a subjective thing and a value thing.  If you swapped the DG for a Sound Blaster Z or DSX, maybe you'd think it sounds better, (not everyone does), but even if you did, is it worth it?  If you swapped the DG for a $75-$100 amp, yes, it would sound better, but even if it does, is it worth it?  It's hard to say since that depends on you.  I could live with using the DG every day.  I can't say the same for the ALC892 onboard, (and even that isn't terrible, it's just worse).  Diminishing returns starts kicking in pretty quick after the DG.  Especially on headphones that aren't hard to drive.
 
The more expensive stuff will sound better.  It will.  But the DG is already pretty good.  If you have the extra cash, go for it.  But I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it if you don't.  If you have newb ears, you might not notice much if any difference anyway.  It can take a while to notice non-obvious differences, and then even longer to be sure you even prefer the difference.  "The bass is a little tighter and technically better with this amp... hmm, but the bloatier bass with the cheap amp actually sounds more fun to me."  

 
A bigger difference would be if you got a big soundstage, open-back headphone.  I don't know if you'd prefer something like that to the M50, but I'm saying such a thing would be a bigger sound difference than swapping out the DG.
 
I have $200 headphones that make me happy 95% of the time.  I have $30 headphones that make me happy 85% of the time.  Diminishing returns.
 
For EQ, use the free Equalizer APO.  Add Peter's GUI or similar to it if you want a good GUI.  
 

 
VLC is bad anyways, don't use it 

 
What's wrong with VLC?  What's better?

 

[Youth]

  What's wrong with VLC?  What's better?

 
VLC was designed to be able to take every format out there and that's it. Something like MPC-HC is better.