altrunox
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2014
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While the Asus cards do offer a good sound quality and value - one can easily opt for some of the Asus cards above $150 on up to $499. However, do keep in mind, most motherboards with the on-board sound card options usually have an optical output. I've found that having a DAC which accepts an optical input can be the best value. If you're not a gamer and don't need the best sound card, the optical will send a very clean and pure signal so your DAC and amp can do the rest of the work. The savings from not purchasing a sound card can be applied towards the cost of your DAC. Your sound quality will be better, too.
With that said, I still have my trusty $29 Asus sound card in my computer as I use it for routing the standard computer output to my desktop speakers. This keeps the optical dedicated for my music. I realize that one can configure the outputs where Foobar would use the defined output - e.g. optical and the standard output could be sent to the speakers. In my case, it just seemed easier to keep each process handled by the respective sound devices. I've found that using the optical output can be a bit of less interrupted sound session too. The USB outputs for sound to the DAC and amp can bog down a bit depending on system processes. This of course can be remedied by adjusting the buffer in Foobar for Wasapi accordingly. I've just found that the optical output took a bit less tweaking on the buffer though.
Uhn, interesting.
Unfortunatly my motherboard doesn`t have an optical output ( MSI H77MA-G43 ) i`m a gamer, but i don`t play a lot of FPS, mostly RPG games so i don`t really need an sound card, and i not very interested in Creative or Dolby stuff.
This is my first good headphone ( i`ve use just cheap chinese headphones and some really cheap sony sold in Brazil ) and i`m really impressed with it, and for sure i`ll buying others headphones in the future.
Would you recomend some cheap usb DAC on ebay? Maybe it`s better to buy an DAC now and an AMP after a while instead of the DGX.