Headphone Quality PC

[EvoKazz]

Hiya guys, I bought some Musical Fidelity EB33's as suggested by this site, and they are awesome, they sound great on my HTC M8. I bought a Asus Xonar DX soundcard on the same order, thinking it would make my PC a better listening experience, truth is, it's not made much difference at all to the headphones, the speakers sound better, but headphones sound the same! a lot worse than my HTC.

So I am wondering, would I be better returning the sound card, and putting the money into a Headphone amp instead? I keep reading about them and they seem popular, I would want one that works both with PC and HTC M8, if that's possible, any suggestions? Budget about £60 - £80

 

[quadpatch]

I would recommend a combined headphone amp and DAC to improve your PC sound. I am not keen on internal components for sensitive equipement like headphones and I use full size ones, for in-ears it will be even more important. The issues are that your budget is quite low for such a unit, but the real problem will be finding one that works with your phone as well. If you like the audio quality from your phone then perhaps you could skip that requirement.

AFAIK the M8 doesn't provide a line-output, so connecting a portable amp to it would mean amping the signal twice and that will make your moderate budget seem pointless compared to the already good output of the M8's headphone out.

For purely PC use I would recommend something like the Fiio E10k. Fiio are one of the few better respected companies that make combined amp & DACs for your budget. If you absolutely must have it working on your phone as well I'm pretty sure the Fiio E18 works with the M8 over OTG (which costs about £120), but I'm still not convinced it would give you a big boost over the M8 and for this price you're getting into the territory of PC only DAC/amps like the Aune T1, Arcam rPAC, Audinst HUD-MX1 etc. and that's where they start to become more interesting.

 

[rcracer20071]

I can't comment on the DACS as I have no experience, but I do know the Asus Xonar DX sound card and it did not work well with my AKG K550's highs were very very sharp, so much I could not turn up the headphones very loud, I also tried the Soundblaster xi-fi with similar resuults. If you want a sound card I got the Asus Essence ST. Please check whether you would want the STX or ST (Pretty much the same card just different port compatibility). It is purpose built for use with high end headphones. But unfortunately I think they woul be completely overkill with your headphones and you may have issues with the impendance. Also please note no output other than optical and a 2 channel output to work with your speakers

 

[JoelSim]

EB-33s work well with a headphone amp as they are quite full-sounding. The same headphone amp on a pair of very nice Shure's I own made them sound awful.