The Headphones Thread - Page 7

You also mentioned something about helping you with J&R? I will see what I can do...

Basically I wanna send something back to them. Can I mail you the stuff AND the bill and pay you for the trouble? If you can get me a refund I will be VERY grateful

email me and we will discuss this in more detail...thanks!

If the foam on the SR60 you have is after-market, then what kind of foam do they come with?

gsferrari, any further recommendations

Gsferrari,
From looking back through this thread, I saw some of your recommendations back in January for the Grado HR-60 and the Sennheiser HD-497. It looks like on www.headphone.com they run about $59 and $69. Any different recommendations that you've run accross since January, for under $100 or are these still what you would recommend?

A couple other questions. I'm not a real picky audiophile so to speak, and this will be for an Dell XPS.
1) What is your experience with the sound cards built into Laptops, are they usually sufficient or will I need an external soundcard? My current desktop is a 16 bit card and that is sufficient for my taste.
2) Do either of the 2 headphones listed above or any other of you're recommendations require an amp (from reading the thread it didn't look like it was need for these)?
3) and lastly, do you know if the internal cards on laptops support speakers fairly well, like I said I'm not a big audiophile, but I have a pair of BA Digital Media Theater speakers with a subwoofer that sound fine and that will be what I will use. I will probably never get into the 5.1 and such. I ask this because I planned on waiting till my laptop arrived, but the Audigy 2 NX cards are under a $100 right now.

Thanks

Hi,

My recommendation still stands but there is a new headphone on the block for the around $100.00 range...maybe two new headphones in this price range...

1] Sennheiser HD-515 ($90.00)
2] Sennheiser HD-555 (maybe a bit out of range ($150)

And it will be interesting to see how the HD-515 performs...should be a good headphone from what people who have heard it are saying.

Answering your questions :-

1] laptop sound cards are crap. Noisy and distorted although they might seem powerful. You will do better with an external sound card like :-

- Audigy 2N
- Echo Indigo
- Headroom Bithead/Total Bithead (www.headphone.com)

2] None of the headphones I listed require an amp but they sound better with one if you are using a portable with a line out. Try to avoid the headphone out if you are using an amplifier because otherwise you will be defeating the purpose...

3] if you are not plannning to get into 5.1 etc. then skip the external sound cards because speakers are not really portable are they Headphones are the way to go with laptops...

I recommend the Headroom Bithead because :-

1] It is an external sound card of the highest quality. No drivers - drivers are on a CHIP inside which communicates with Windows/MacOS and loads automatically.

2] it is also a high quality headphone amplifier that is portable (batteries) and can be used with portables like any other headphone amplifier

3] It will improve the sound you are getting from your headphones AND your speakers performance because it completely bypasses the crappy internal soundcard.

Hope that helps

Thanks for the quick feedback
Much appreciated

I probably missed it, but I couldn't find anything on the bithead on headroom.com. I even searched the their site for bithead, but nothing came up. Do you have a direct link to it? Thanks!

There is something on the Announcements board on headphone.com that says that the BitHead will be delayed a few weeks.

Ah, thanks!

Actually, since my last post, I've been doing some searching/reading. Looks like the Echo Indigo is something I want to try out.

Yeah the Indigo looks great. USB cards are not ideal for gaming due to the massive clock cycle consumption.

ha ha - thats a common mistake...

its not www.headroom.com

its www.headphone.com

headroom is having some legal issues with the guys who stole their domain name

www.headphone.com and look under here :-

Product Stuff -> Headphone Amplifiers -> Headroom Bithead / Total Bithead (overkill for the useless members on this forums )

LOL

What happened was (according to my pals at headroom) someone in the design department screwed up and crosswired the left and right channels. This may not sound like a big deal but try this :-

Listen to a classical CD or some CD you are REALLY used to - now switch the headphones around and wear them backwards (left to right and right to left) and listen to the same song - you will puke

Another problem they found was that there was a rather high noise floor - they are fixing it and have probably started a new production batch already. My example came in yesterday and its a beauty - no problems...

i would wait for them to make it commercially available again before ordering...


And deltawalker - YES they do occupy some CPU cycles but the Bithead is a reference sound card - no gizmos inside - just clean through sound - you disable your internal soundcard and use this one - its an even exchange...

You are right. The BitHead is really good. The drawback to the Indigo is that you can only use it without a notebook. It's not a problem for me, as I don't have $200 laying around to spend. *wimpers quietly*

My bad, I meant headphone.com of course; I followed your link. I went to where you lead me, (which is the page I was looking at before), but again, I see no mention of the bithead. I see the AIRhead and totalAIRhead, but no BIThead!

Is this the same product? I think I'm going crazy!

So from reading that the USB Soundcard does not fair well with game. What would you guys recommend for the following circumstance.

Games and MP3 on headphones
Soundcard used really only for MP3's on speakers.

Would you recommend the Echo Indigo or the Audigy 2 NX?
I can get the audigy for between $79 with MIR or $99 without
looks like the Indigo runs about $129 but I'm not real sure where I can get one
The Bithead looks great, but I think that it cost a little too much for my needs.

Is there any downside to the Indigo with the card slot?

Can the Indigo line-out to a stereo or accept stereo components?

If playing games with headphones should I use the internal or external card for gaming?

Sorry about all the questions.

edit 1 - One other thing to toss in here. I will be using a PCMCIA wireless card, so the indigo may be a little inconvenient if I need to use the soundcard to listen to mp3's, I don't really do much online gaming so that's not an issue. How bad is the USB on Games, and what is the main problem, is there like lag on sound timing?

The Audigy 2 NX is a rather mainstream product rather than something for audiophiles. From what I read in these few weeks, it seems like using a headphone out port is not the best sounding solution. Instead one should use a line-level port connected to a dedicated amp. This is the solution the Indigo provides. Also I do not like USB as a connectivity method at all. FireWire is all the superior.

I'm not much of an audiophile, well let me better phrase that, I have 40GB of MP3's, 400 cds and about 1100 LP's on vinyl, but quality on the PC is not one of my main concerns, so I'm not a big audiophile on PC's.

I know very little of the quality on Cards and have stuck with Soundblaster mainly because of driver availability, and because it is mainstream. I'm not real heart set on SB. Do you have any recommendations on a better USB card, or even FireWire. To be real honest, I never gave Firewire a thought, I didn't even know they made a FireWire Soundcard. Is Firewire an option and if so do you have any recommendations.

I haven't used any USB or FireWire sound cards. I can only generalize based on the nature of USB and FireWire. FireWire soundcards are mostly for musicians and for recording, but they do exist. The Audigy 2 NX shares its headphone out with center channel line-out, which tells you that its not a card for quality listening. I've never used the Indigo either, so I can only tell its quality by its nature. And since its a audio card plus an dedicated headphone amp, its quality is quite obvious.

Thank You

gsferrari,
Thanks for the info on the Headphones. I picked up a pair of the HD-497's today. They're incredible. I've always been the Home Theatre type, my stereo components are not as impressive after using these headphones. Technology has come a ways since I last looked. I really didn't think Headphones could give you that quality, especially at a reasonable price. I may have to take a gander at a few notches up for my home system. It's been a while since I shopped for equipment

Thanks again