Fathardie
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2013
- Posts
- 4
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- 0
Hi everyone!
This is my first post and I am a complete untrained beginner when it comes to high-end sound. I am having a weird issue with my set-up and I was hoping the experienced community here could help me figure out what is happening
I recently purchased a Creative Sound Blaster Z soundcard specifically for the virtual surroundsound capabilities. I also purchased a set of Marshall Monitor headphones(love the sound ). When I hook the headphones up to the soundcard, the sound is awful, When playing a song, the singing is of really low volume while the instruments(guitar, drums and bass) are more audible but still sound very cheap.
If I use the headphones on my phone(Samsung Galaxy S3), laptop or Ipod Touch(1st generation), the sound is much better and sounds as expected.When I plug my speaker set(Logitech X-240) or my older headset (Roccat Kave 5.1) into the sound blaster z the sound is also fine and better than the onboard.
So it seems the card is working fine and the headphones are working perfectly but when you pair up the two the trouble starts. As both the Roccat Kave headset and the speakerset are externally powered, I tried listening to the sound card with my Roccat Kave's usb cord unplugged. The volume was really low but the sound was still much better and in balance than compared to using the Marshalls.
I called the store to ask if they knew what was going on. The employee told me that the sound card probably isn't able to deliver the power needed to drive the headphones even though the information about the soundcard says that it can drive headphones up to 600 ohm impedance. The Marshalls are 42 ohm impedance. He told me a headphone amplifier should fix things but I am doubting if this is the case.
My question for you guys and girls is if anybody can and is willing to give any more information, diagnostical tricks or recommendations to find out what is wrong. Any comments are welcome of course and much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Sebastiaan
This is my first post and I am a complete untrained beginner when it comes to high-end sound. I am having a weird issue with my set-up and I was hoping the experienced community here could help me figure out what is happening
I recently purchased a Creative Sound Blaster Z soundcard specifically for the virtual surroundsound capabilities. I also purchased a set of Marshall Monitor headphones(love the sound ). When I hook the headphones up to the soundcard, the sound is awful, When playing a song, the singing is of really low volume while the instruments(guitar, drums and bass) are more audible but still sound very cheap.
If I use the headphones on my phone(Samsung Galaxy S3), laptop or Ipod Touch(1st generation), the sound is much better and sounds as expected.When I plug my speaker set(Logitech X-240) or my older headset (Roccat Kave 5.1) into the sound blaster z the sound is also fine and better than the onboard.
So it seems the card is working fine and the headphones are working perfectly but when you pair up the two the trouble starts. As both the Roccat Kave headset and the speakerset are externally powered, I tried listening to the sound card with my Roccat Kave's usb cord unplugged. The volume was really low but the sound was still much better and in balance than compared to using the Marshalls.
I called the store to ask if they knew what was going on. The employee told me that the sound card probably isn't able to deliver the power needed to drive the headphones even though the information about the soundcard says that it can drive headphones up to 600 ohm impedance. The Marshalls are 42 ohm impedance. He told me a headphone amplifier should fix things but I am doubting if this is the case.
My question for you guys and girls is if anybody can and is willing to give any more information, diagnostical tricks or recommendations to find out what is wrong. Any comments are welcome of course and much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Sebastiaan