[mechanix]

Hello. I am a newbie about headphones, amps, sound equipment and other hi-fi things and have a few questions. Probably these questions were asked hundreds of times but despite all my efforts i couldn't find the answers I like, so i decided to sign up and ask myself directly.
 
My main question lies in the topic name. I've been reading the forums for several days, and it seems like headphones need amps to sound better (mostly). But considering I have an HD 201, which is a price/performance product, it wouldnt make sense to invest in another amp. Then I came up with an idea. I have a Sharp 2+2 sound system in my home, which I bought like ten years ago. I connected it to my pc and plugged my headphones to sound system, instead of plugging directly onboard sound card. Will it do the work of an amp? Maybe the question is too newbie-ish, but I don't know much about these stuff, I'm just started to get into.
 
My other question is about equalizer. Headphones sound a bit muffled to me, but I just can't get the right settings in winamp equalizer. Which settings should I increase / decrease to stop it from sounding muffled? Also I should set my sound system's EQ preset to Flat, right?
 
Last question. I use onboard sound card on my PC and want to buy an Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Value 7.1 24 Bit sound card. However some people said it wont make much different if you are using headphones. Then I decided to think twice. Considering I am using headphones through the sound system, should I get it?
 
I think thats all for now. Thanks in advance for sparing time to read.
 
edit: With sound system I mean an audio system. Sorry about bad english : )

 

[StevieDvd]

The HD201 won't benefit much from a headphone amp, but they are easy to use on most equipment 'as is' anyway.  You can get improved sound without needing an amp just by spending on better headphones.
 
I suppose you were using a headphone output on the PC which probably was powerful enough for the HD201, which would be the amped output of the soundcard. If you are now feeding that into a sound system to amplify yet again you will get poor results. It's likely you have the sound level on the PC low and the sound system needs to compensate for the poor level and creates the muffled output. If you have the PC level higher and less amping at the sound system it may improve.
 
Some reasonably priced soundcards can output a good line-out signal to feed external amps so improving the source is a good idea, adding better amps and headphones on to a poor source is a bad idea. With an ever increasing number of usb fed headphone amps on the market, as an alternative option, you could get a PC and portable based setup going.
 
I'll let others add suggestions as to what amps, soundcards & headphones may be available to your budget as I'm not sure where you are located, probaly not UK like me

 

[mechanix]

First of all thanks for your reply.
 
Actually I wasn't satisfied with the sound level when I directly plugged headphones to PC, even on the highest volume level. That made me think if I should get a sound card. Then I used audio system between my PC and headphones and sound level improved (I mean volume). But now it is a bit muffled and this made me think again about the sound card. I know, simplest solution would be getting better headphones in the first place but I have limited budget nowadays and trying to see what can I do in my current situation.
 
I recently bought HD 201, so I am not thinking about getting new headphones for a while. Is there any other way to get some improvement on these headphones(like getting a sound card), or I should simply wait for an upgrade?

 

[mechanix]

I need to bump this thread to see if there is a possible solution. I am not satisfied with the sound level if I directly plug headphones (HD201) to PC. If I use my audio system between PC and headphones I'm not satisfied with sound quality. What should I do?
 
Just at the moment there's a sale at mymemory.co.uk for HD437 headphones. It started to tempt me to be honest.