[orbv12]

 Greetings,
 
I have recently decided to purchase a starting setup for my gaming PC. I listen to music and play FPS and MMO games. I am going with a budget setup as this is my first experience with anything other than a plug and play USB headset.
 
I chose the HD650s because of many great reviews and I have had a chance to listen to them. I really like the feel and weight of them. I found a DAC and amp and wanted to get some final thoughts from a few members about my overall setup. 
 
Headphones: Sennheiser HD650
DAC: Maverick Audio TubeMagic D1 w/ GE 5670 Tube
Amp: Schiit Valhalla
 
The prices on all of these components are very well. I have read several reviews on each of these components and there were a high percentage of great reviews. The synergy seems to be good for the price. Overall I believe that it will be a great value build. My goal is to get a reference from a beginning setup and slowly upgrade from there to increase my audio knowledge based off of experience. 
 
So, any additional thoughts on the setup? I will be ordering very soon.

 

[tomb]

I think you could do better with the DAC.  Tubes-source plus tubes-amp can be a little bit too much.  The amp is fine; great reviews and it will do well with high impedance phones such as the HD650's.  However, I'd go with a solid-state DAC - tubes are nothing but "flavor" on a DAC anyway.  It's too much to get into here, but suffice to say that tubes are contraindicated when it comes to DACs.  If someone actually uses one in a DAC circuit, 9 times out of 10 it's actually performing as a pre-amp or line stage buffer, not as the actual I/V converter or voltage output.  IOW, just "flavoring" for the DAC.

 

[orbv12]

Thanks for the quick reply. I am still wondering if it would be better to get a sound card or a DAC? I could get something like the Creative X-Fi Titanium HD with replaceable op amps. This card seems to get very good reviews and has a decent price. I will look at some solid state DACs.

 

[tomb]

Quote:

Thanks for the quick reply. I am still wondering if it would be better to get a sound card or a DAC? I could get something like the Creative X-Fi Titanium HD with replaceable op amps. This card seems to get very good reviews and has a decent price. I will look at some solid state DACs.

Again, JMHO, but I think you'd be better off with a DAC - maybe if you like the Creative stuff, the EMU404 USB?  They actually call it a sound card, but being a separate box, it's what we'd call a DAC for sure.  Qualifier: I haven't heard it myself, but trusted people I know seem to think it's good quality.  There are other choices out there, to be sure, and I'm not trying to talk you into a particular brand of DAC.  It's just that on principle, I think they do a better job than a sound card.  They're not limited to a PC's power supply and have advantages in clean power, signal-to-noise, and interference rejection. 

 

 

[Sophonax]

Have you considered going with the Schiit Asgard rather than the Valhalla?  The designers at Schiit Audio say that they specifically used the Sennheiser HD600 and HD650 when voicing the Asgard, so that combination is said to have excellent synergy.  I sent some e-mails back and forth a while ago with Jason Stoddard, one of the Schiit Audio designers, and he said that he preferred the Asgard over the Valhalla for the Sennheiser HD6xx series.
 
Not that the Valhalla is a bad choice (I love it for my DT880 and K701), but the Asgard might be a better choice, and you'd save yourself $100 in the process, money that you could use toward the DAC instead if you wanted.
 
And like tomb said, I'd definitely go with an external DAC rather than a sound card.  A PC is an electromagnetically noisy environment, so even if an internal sound card has a really good DAC chip, you can almost be certain that you'll pick up some noise in the analog signal domain from the other components in the PC (mobo, hard drives, optical drives, graphics cards, cooling fans, etc).  With an external DAC, the conversion to analog is done outside the PC, away from all those sources of noise, resulting in a much cleaner signal.

 

[orbv12]

Fantastic replies. I started to think about how bad the sound card idea would be. I am currently running 2 ATI 5870s in crossfire so the sound card doesn't really have any room. It may get very very hot if I cram it in between my GPUs. I did read a few reviews regarding the Asgard and the HD 650s. Since the Asgard is not a tube amp would the TubeMagic D1 be a good choice or should I stick with a solid state. I really like the $200 price on the DAC I originally looked at. I am definitely open to suggestions of other brands.

 

[Sophonax]

My personal preference for a DAC would be to stick with solid state.  I don't really have any experiences to back that up, but I personally would prefer my source to be as neutral and accurate as possible.  Think of it this way: your audio goes from DAC to Amp to Headphones.  If you have a DAC that has some kind of coloration, such as a tube lushness, then everything downstream in your chain is condemned to have that coloration, too.  If I want to have part of my setup exhibit coloration, I like to keep the source of coloration as close to the end of the chain as possible -- in the amplifier, or even better, in the headphones themselves.  I think keeping the source neutral helps with the overall versatility / expandability / upgrade-ability of your system.
 
So if you really want to have tubes, I'd probably recommend going with your original choice of the Valhalla, and then getting a solid-state DAC, rather than a tube DAC and a solid-state amp.  Or you could just go solid-state for both.
 
One pretty inexpensive solid-state DAC you might consider is the NuForce udac-2.  I think it goes for about $130 or so.  I haven't personally heard it, so I can't comment, but I have read some good things about it, even from people who have a lot of listening experience with some VERY nice setups.

 

[matthewh133]

The HD650 has known to have great synergy with the Nuforce Icon HDP. It is an amp/dac combo and fits your price range. Read up on it over at the amplifier forums.

 

[orbv12]

The Nuforce Icon HDP seems like a great starting component. I could use it in place of an amp to start out with, then upgrade the amp from there. Thanks for all of the replies. I am going to continue to research before I make my final purchase decision.