Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
do you still think R70x would be a good offer at $200 USD? that's what it cost me in USD about ~$201.
At the time of purchasing the souncard I didn't even know I'll need a better headphones LOL. And on top I never even knew about the DAC & amps, otherwise definitely would have gone external amp/dac instead.
I had just thought an expensive sound card will change my world, but its freaking more expenses after another. So in your opinion too 7XX is a better purchase than the R70x at the same price? 7XX would be approx $30 CAD higher with the taxes, but its am insignificant amount when already making an expensive purchase.
As to which is a better deal, with a dedicated amp and dac, like the Schiit/magni combo, the R70x will sound better. Once you get into higher end than that combo of amp/dac, then the akg's will sound the best.
So it's up to you. If you keep your sound card the AKG's are a better deal. If you're willing to get the dac/amp then the R70x will be better. (just remember if you get a dac/ amp, plug the dac into the optical out port, so you avoid the built in dac of the sound card and don't mess with the sound the dac creates, and then plug the amp into the dac.) And if you're willing to spend a lot of money on dac/amp (as in 500+) the akg's are better yet again. It's all about what you use.
Sum it up - AKG is better when you either don't spend money at all on amp/dac, (ie, sound card) or you spend a lot of money. R70x is better deal if you are willing to spend between 100 and 400 on an amp. (Fiio makes a good amp/dac on the low end, the schiit magni combo is a great combo for high impedance headphones like the r70x's)
Hope you enjoy them! If you can, watch interstellar with the akg's on. The soundstage makes the movie sound so good (and it's also a great movie in my opinion)
Edit: In case you were wondering, mixers use headphones to reference because high end headphones will show more subtle details that need to be edited out or fixed than speakers will be able to show. Most of it is done on the speakers, then they check with various headphones, and if needed go back and fix what is needed and reference again until they hear no flaws.
I bought it on the first red drop and havent loooked bacK.
I'm just here to inform! Not trying to sell anything as much as helping people make informed decisions.
Avoid extra high, listen to the whole song (whichever you choose, just avoid YouTube because they compress audio quality) on normal first, and then the whole song again on high. If you hear things one way you don't hear another, or if you prefer the way one sounds over the other, go with that one.
Find a spreadsheet Amp headphone calc sheet and go through the numbers. Extra high gain is for 300+. The electrical part of the equation goes through based on the properties of the headphones. These need juice to sound good. I can run these at high at 75% or extra high at 25%. and the 25% has more sound clarity. These phones will take what you can throw at them.
This One is accurate. If you plug in the specs of the headphones it tells you the vrms you need for certain decibals. I found that 120db required 3.52 vrms. And the card your useing Has that much at extra high. I think the vrms of the stx2 is 7. thats right that card can power any headphone you get.
The more juice you you can pump through the better they sound simply because of the fidelity at higher settings
Now can't wait to get my hands on my very first hifi cans. Probably will keep this pair for next 2-3 yrs and than upgrade to perhaps a mid range hifi stuff as this thing is probably entry level hifi set as Ishriver said.
If you guys dont mind sharing ur opinion, what do you think of HD6xx and these, both at the same price? I could have waited for HD6xx to once again get a deal here, but speaking cosmetically they didn't look nice at all, i.e. the blue color and all, plus all these hifi headsets for some reason are HUGE. This is one of the big reasons I was really leaning towards R70x, they looked half decent. But than again first priority is sound quality above all.
Oh and by the way I am not saying nor have I been saying that your sound card cannot drive high impedance cans Volume wise. Yours do have the power, it's just not gonna be the same sound quality as an external meant for it is. Sound cards are meant to do anything, vs high end amps are meant for specific cans or specific impedances. Look at the hdvd 600 and hdvd 800. Very different in price, and in quality, even though they look almost the same, and are meant for headphones with identical nominal impedance. You have a great sound card. There's just better options out there but at the cost of money, and convenience because it takes up extra space since external stuff isn't stored inside of your computer.
If they had a drop on the HD 600's instead of the 650's, I would recommend the 600's. But between these two I would recommend the 7XX.
Than decided to build a very first gaming PC, and than decided to make it audiophile grade as well. Hmm let's see. Will only learn with experiences and of course guys like you being kind enough to share your knowledge and help make better decisions!!
I just had some confusion and thought I'd see if I can get some more info and opinion from you. Unfortunately I had cancelled this drop for K7XX because there were K712 available for ~153 GBP at amazon.uk so I instead went for those. I just happened to receive them today because they were out of stock for like 10 days and the shipment was several weeks late as well. Anyhoo, I just wanted to say that I am greatly disappointed in these. I don't know how else to put it. As I mentioned before I have STX II and not an external dac/amp may be that's why I cant feel the satisfactory sound. I know these still need the break-in time but I doubt that will change a lot.
I previously had something like a $20 JVC headphones and I was also using the DFX sound enhancer. These sound like they at most should be +$30=$50 headphones considering how tiny/insignificant sound change I experienced + have a much sturdy design. The only big (and I mean big) difference is how loud these are on 64-300 ohm settings, but the >sound quality< is just not doing the thing for me. I know I still got a good deal on these but I really regret buying these as the sound quality is just not satisfactory for me at all.
Please suggest if you or anybody else have any advice for me? I needed to know what Schiit amp/dac combo would you recommend me? I mean they start from a few hundred bucks and go over a thousand I believe. I was kind of hoping between $250-350 USD, or any other price range which would be ideal (for many different high-end cans) without spending thousands? I will probably end up selling my sound card (if I'm lucky) for around $200 CAD and it's only 3-4 months since I got it.
In case I was confusing, the Schiit Modi 2, And the Schiit Mangi 2 are the products I am recommending as they are very good with pretty much any headphone.
edit: they can be used for headphones and speakers, but it's pointless because you would have a full sized amp anyways. The ones meant for microphones are larger, but usually preamps meant for speakers are pretty small, like some used in mid range turntables so they can fit inside without taking up too much space
These headphones need the juice.
I would also suggest dolby headphone A for gaming and Dolby C for music.
I just wanted to get your opinions (and anybody else who wishes to share their knowledge too). Ever since stepping into the audiophile world, I just wanna taste what's more out their and have been reading into it. From what I gathered, the really high end stuff, people prefer multbit dacs (schiit was mentioned) and tube amps, which can be quite costly reaching $2k and over.
I was inquiring about the same stuff on some youtube video and a person replied " i will say if you do get a tube amp, you should have a nice solid state amp as well. If you only get a solid state, then a tube is optional".
Is this true? Pretty much everywhere else on the different forums I read that people preferred tube amps, and for the first time I heard that one could also need double amps, ie. both sold state and tube? The dude said didnt have much technical knowledge so was not able to answer this: I wanted to know if headphone dac/amp combo could also be used to power studio monitors, multiplying the audio/sound quality several folds?
I somewhere read that studio monitors already have amps built in them but they could use the dacs, so I needed to know if one could use either or both with the monitors? are their any monitors that dont come with the built in amps and could use headphone dac/amp combo?
Thank you so much for your time you guys always put in greatly explaining this audio stuff!!
To the high end speakers (studio monitors) most good ones will be "powered" which essentially means there is an amp in each speaker so you have to plug them into a wall. Plugging an amp into them will probably change the sound, but a good DAC would be more useful for that. The thing about speakers is to reach the same audio perfection, you'll have to spend a lot more than a pair of equally good headphones, but you also get to share the music as well as "Feel" it when the subs kick in, which is pretty cool.
Yes, there are monitors that don't have amps built in. It's quite common however they're usually the cheap ones. If you don't know if it has an amp built in look at the specs, if its powered it will most likely have a spec saying voltages like "110-240v 3 amp" which even though it doesn't say how good or what the amp is, you'll know it has it otherwise it wont be plugged in. Usually the amps in monitors are made to work with the monitor to make the most accurate sound.