Story: I'm changing from some Philips X2's (Tried to keep them for 3 months, like them, but too heavy and I get a sore neck after a couple of hours) to a set of AKG 712 Pro's (Ordered and have had the 612's in the past) and
from what I understand the AKG's will need more amping than the X2's.
I have a quick question.
Which option will work best, I own both the SB Titanium HD and the Sennheiser GSX 1000 and I have an JDS Labs 02 amp. I like both in terms of surround sounds abilities.
Use:
1) A Creative SB Titanium HD soundcard outputing to a JDS Labs Objective 02 to drive the 712's - or
2) The Sennheiser GSX 1000 outputing to the JDS Labs Objective 02 to drive the 712's
From a gaming standpoint, it depends on which surround implementation you like better and what games you're playing. I've spent enough time with both that,
for me, the GSX 1000 sounds better with software 7.1 mixed games in terms of sheer positional accuracy (something I've
never said for any other virtual surround tech I've tried to date), but the X-Fi Titanium HD still rules the roost if you're playing anything old enough to use DS3D or OpenAL (which, at this point, is almost certainly over a decade old since most of those games were released in 2007 or earlier).
From an audio quality standpoint,
the Titanium HD has a much lower noise floor and generally superior audio quality. I don't claim to have audiophile ears, but the difference is pretty obvious between the two there. Because of that, it makes a far cleaner source to amplify with something like an Objective2 right off the bat, so I'd have my music listening done that way.
This isn't to say that the GSX 1000 sounds bad for general listening by any means, but there's still room for improvement in any future models Sennheiser wishes to produce down the line. I wouldn't mind seeing them produce a cleaner-output version that would provide a good source for even the high-end HD 800 or Orpheus systems, just for kicks. (Gaming on an Orpheus, you say?
Only on Head-Fi!)
