[Nak Man]

Iow, what is the most powerful card that can drive hd580 and has av710-like dac / sound quality ? E-mus ? I don't care much about surround sound, 2ch is good enough for listening with 580.

Thanks,
sm

 

[1UP]

do you mean which soundcard has the loudest onboard headphone amp?

E-Mu only has line level outputs and require an amp to drive phones like the 580s.

 

[Nak Man]

Yes, right, which one has the best onboard amp .... and still belong to quality class card with no resampling 'problem' like audigy ?

 

[Jahn]

are you certain you don't want to rely on a dedicated headphone amp, even a cmoy, and just have the soundcard pump out a nice clean lineout signal? relying on an onboard amp is like, hmm, relying on the ipod's amp from the headphone out, or even the attenuated headphone out of a reciever. to answer your question, to my limited knowledge i couldn't recommend any soundcard with a decent headphone out.

 

[Nak Man]

Thanks Jahn. Looks like that's a better route ... i was hoping to avoid additional clutter to my desk, as storing the amp / cmoy inside casing doesn't seem like a good idea. About to purchase chaintech but wonder if there's a steroid version of av 710. =)

edit - oh btw 'grats' on your coming 4000th post ... you'd need to conduct a poll soon.

 

[Glassman]

Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1LT is the answer..

 

[robzy]

Just put a cMoy infront of whatever you choose. If you want stupidly loud, add a bit more voltage to it.

Rob.

 

[AdamWill]

No-one really does onboard amps any more on soundcards, AFAIK. Really old-school soundboards had fairly crappy amps that put out 1W per channel or so and were intended to drive passive speakers, modern cards just have line-outs or very lightly amplified speaker-outs. I agree with everyone else, just get the best card you can and an amp of some sort...

 

[Glassman]

Audiotrak do..

 

[Nak Man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman Audiotrak do..

Nakman calling Glassman, thank you Glassman. =)

I checked the link and sure it features a good headphone amp. Are you using one ? Hope I can find one locally or from this region, there isn't that many selections with good phones out lately. Thanks much guys for all your replies !

 

[Audio18]

I'm almost positive my M-Audio Revo 5.1 card has a dedicated headphone out...

 

[ReasonablyLucid]

Why not just get a bithead or total bithead?

 

[lini]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman Audiotrak do..

Terratec, too - on all Aureon models from the 5.1 Sky upward...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[Nak Man]

Thanks Lini. Do they (terratec and audiotrak) have better DAC quality or algorithm than audigy 2zs ? Looking for one that's not prohibitively expensive though. I still don't have DAC1 here ...

 

[lini]

Nak Man: All of these (excluding the Aureon 7.1 FireWire) are full-featured Envy24(HT)-based cards with native support for 44.1 kHz sampling rate - and at least all of the Terratecs use Wolfson multichannel dacs (the predecessor models DMX 6fire (LT) used the Envy24 in combo with AKM dacs). I can't tell more about the Prodigy 7.1 LT yet, as I havet yet tried it - I'm especting one though, 'cause I've just ordered the soundcards for our next comparision... Some 20 different models to fill 10 pages... Oh my...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini