Audio AMP or Sound card with Sennhieser HD 429 ?

D

dineshnadar

Disciple
I got a new Sennhieser HD 429 headphones to use with my pc to specially watch movies late night without any disturbance to my parents next room. But the problem is that the headphones is not sounding as loud as I wanted. It's giving me good & loud sound when I connect it to my iPhone ... But when I connect it to the PC it's like some china headphones .... My motherboard is a "Asus P5QPL-AM" and I am using the onboard Realtek sound card ....
Now I need to get the best of my Sennhieser headphones with my pc & what should be done ? A Headphone Amp or a Sound card ? Which one should I get and also the model no and also the pricing if possible .... Budget is strictly limited to 5K not more than that .... But after the amp or Sound card i should feel the difference.
 
The sound from my pc is very low I feel like increasing the sound more and if I am using VLC player than sound limit above 100 starts scribbling .... Need help people !!
 
The HD429 is really a fantastic headphone.

Your motherboard too is OK
The onboard 6-channel HD audio (High Definition Audio, previously codenamed Azalia) CODEC enables high-quality 192KHz/24-bit audio output, jack-sensing feature, retasking functions and multi-streaming technology that simultaneously sends different audio streams to different destinations. You can now talk to your partners on the headphone while playing a multi- channel network games. All of these are done on one computer.
Click to expand...
ASUS - Motherboards- ASUS P5QPL-AM |
Have you tried updating all your drivers - motherboard/OS ?

Tagging @6pack

Cheers
Terry
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Does this issue happen only with Vlc or with any other program like foobar, mediaplayer classic, etc?
Also help me understand scribbling wrt sound. does sound play randomly or plays faster or starts skipping?

tagging @cranky, @Gannu
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Onboard solutions are crap for everything more than voice chat. Low output, poor sound quality and extraneous noise is par for the course. Don't pay heed to specifications, what matters is implementation and no mobo manufacturer has got their sound sorted out.

You need a soundcard or external DAC/amp combo, this will bypass all the internal circuitry. There are plenty of possible candidates. The Asus Xonar DX/Fiio E10 are right around your budget, and you may be able to find cheaper solutions on eBay or on the TE market.

When VLC boosts sound above 100%, you will get distortion. It's only useful for understanding dialog recorded at very low levels or to surmount the problems of cheap little laptop speakers, not for any kind of long-term listening.
 
Back
Top