[beeman458]

Well now that the thread is sufficiently derailed, how about this.
 
The thread's not derailed.  But if that's what you think, I'll stop sharing with you.
 
I'm open to changing my opinion though.
 
No you're not.  If you were, you'd have already downloaded and tried out my suggestions.  If you care about sound quality, you'll explore the links I provided.  If you're not, you won't.  My suggestion to you is to download the programs I thoughtfully took the time to link to, give it a whirl and find out for yourself.  It really is that simple and costs you nada.
 
I'll now step out of your thread and leave you to your devices.
 

 

[Bones2010]

Troll!
Why do people think that they have to shove their beliefs down someone's throat? The guy is asking about hardware and you start to blah blah blah about weather DBTs are useful or not. There are plenty of threads you can debate the value of DBTs.
For someone to have an open mind they have to do exactly what you say? Pathetic!

 

[shaddix]

the only point of a sound card for headphone listeners is to get the eax and dolbyhp and whatnot. For 2 channel music listening, there's really no point to a sound card since almost all mobos nowdays have spdif and usb outputs and external dac/amp 99% of the time is going to be better than any sound card you can get for the same $.

 

[ninjikiran]

You can connect external items to a dac/amp combo like game consoles, at the same time the 360 sounds pretty bad when compared with an external dac imo. 
 
If you have have a PC a good sound card like the STX have good DAC's onboard.  You can get something like the ST which already has headphone amplification and if you really wanted to down the line you could use it as a transport.  Best part is you can always use it for PC media and games using its advanced features.

 

[Fakeyfakerson]

Quote:

the only point of a sound card for headphone listeners is to get the eax and dolbyhp and whatnot. For 2 channel music listening, there's really no point to a sound card since almost all mobos nowdays have spdif and usb outputs and external dac/amp 99% of the time is going to be better than any sound card you can get for the same $.

This was more or less what I was wondering. So $200 can buy a better external amp/DAC than the xonar essence's and creative titanium HD's? I guess I should do a bit more research into them then.

 

[Fakeyfakerson]

I'm mainly asking because I have an essence STX right now, but all I use it for are headphones and even though I game a lot, personally music quality is more important than sound effects. I'm wondering if I could have spent my money better by going the external DAC/amp route instead, and if so, I might look into selling my card and purchasing external components.

 

[anomalouscode]

lets see,... back in the day, internal components were said to be noisy, interference, etc,... not sure if its the same today.
 
but other than that, there's nothing that says that externals are inherently better than internals just by virtue of being external.
 
there's some really high end internal stuff and there's some seriously high end external stuff as well as some really crap internal and external stuff.
 
its up to you if you want to go out of the box or not.
 
i will say this though,... with something outside, you could always take it with you when you upgrade your pc. usb will probably last quite a bit longer than the current pci or pcie or whatever connections on today's motherboards, there's already quite a few older bits and pieces that you can no longer put into a new motherboard, and you certainly wouldnt want a legacy component dictating which motherboard you decide to upgrade to.
 
i hope that helps some.

 

[Fakeyfakerson]

Oh yea, not saying that external is inherently better or anything, I'm just seeing if for the price of a good internal card ($200) you could buy an external setup that is better sounding than the sound card. Basically it comes down to me being ignorant of the quality of external DAC's and amps compared to their price. Too broad a question I guess.