[EternalEmpire]

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Bummer.  That would help you alot as you can be the final judge.
I guess you are stuck reading reviews and asking opinions.
Just make sure you get opinions based on actual use.

That's a big part of my problem when trying to decide what to buy. I often see a lot of contradictory replies when I'm looking through old threads to see what headphones are generally best for a certain budget, so I never know who to listen to. There might be one guy saying a certain pair of headphones is the best pair he's ever listened to but then there might be someone else who says they're terrible and I have no way of finding out who to listen to because in the end it's very subjective. It makes spending a lot of money on headphones pretty difficult since I never really know what they're going to sound like before I buy them or if I'm even going to like them so in the past I've really kept my budget down to ensure I don't wind up wasting a lot of money if I don't like the headphones.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Just make sure where ever you buy has a good return policies.

 

[HesterDW]

When I read reviews and comments I try to find someone that I can relate too, with the same "ears" as me. I know how it is to not be able to try out headphones too. All my best buy has on display is a pair of Beats by Dre. I just ordered the Denon d2000 though, so Im hoping I read enough reviews. Also for me a sound card was night and day. To me my FLACs sounded higher quality, and of course the cpu does less work processing the files. My games have more bass and clarity(gunshots) as well.

 

[Dalamar]

Quote:

That's a big part of my problem when trying to decide what to buy. I often see a lot of contradictory replies when I'm looking through old threads to see what headphones are generally best for a certain budget, so I never know who to listen to. There might be one guy saying a certain pair of headphones is the best pair he's ever listened to but then there might be someone else who says they're terrible and I have no way of finding out who to listen to because in the end it's very subjective. It makes spending a lot of money on headphones pretty difficult since I never really know what they're going to sound like before I buy them or if I'm even going to like them so in the past I've really kept my budget down to ensure I don't wind up wasting a lot of money if I don't like the headphones.

Opinions are irrelevant, go by headphone.com's charts.
 
Measurements don't lie and can't be fooled.

 

[EternalEmpire]

Quote:

Opinions are irrelevant, go by headphone.com's charts.
 
Measurements don't lie and can't be fooled.

I have no idea how to interpret charts.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

I have no idea how to interpret charts.

Do you have a local hi-fi shop or anything like that where you can go and listen to different sets within your budget?

 

[thuantran]

I saw the lowest price of the Xonar D1 on Amazon UK is £39.78 + £5.99delivery. From spec alone, it's the same as the DX but with PCI connector (might be a good thing as the DX uses the same HW with a converter chip for PCI-Ex connector). I have the DX and quite honestly, it sounds way better than my realtek onboard.

I don't like ASUS driver though, it's buggy and doesn't like some AV app causes DPC latency issue.

 

[EternalEmpire]

Quote:

Do you have a local hi-fi shop or anything like that where you can go and listen to different sets within your budget?

 



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Do you have a local hi-fi shop or anything like that where you can go and listen to different sets within your budget?

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I live in England and there's really nowhere here where you can try electronics before you buy them unfortunately. Everything in electronics stores is usually considerably more expensive than it is online too.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Well good luck then....