Which one to buy Soundcard or DAC+Amp for my headphone?

[Grim]

[font=comic sans ms,cursive]Hi all, i'm buying Audio Technica ATH-M50s/LE Limited Edition.

so, i'm pretty confused about which one to buy is it Sound card or DAC+Amp for my headphone. My friend suggested me E10 USB DAC Headphone Amplifier...

I use headphone for Gaming, movies (mainly) and music. I would like your inputs on this.. Thanks

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[fLUX]

DAC+Amp helps in the music part more than gaming and movies , thats what i felt. Whereas a soundcard will give you substanial improvement in all the 3 things.

I would recommend you to go for a Asus Xonar DX which is mainly for gaming and movies but gives very good output for audio as well.

 

[Grim]

Thanks will look into it...

 

[jalva]

DAC+Amp helps in the music part more than gaming and movies , thats what i felt. Whereas a soundcard will give you substanial improvement in all the 3 things.

I would recommend you to go for a Asus Xonar DX which is mainly for gaming and movies but gives very good output for audio as well.

+1 to soundcard if you are using this with desktop.

 

[Gryph0n]

Soundcard:

• + Will have ADC in addition to DAC. Basically, it means you can also record audio in addition to hearing
  
• + Possibilty of having multichannel decoding (Asus DX, ST with daughtercard, most creative chipset based SC)
  
• - Non portable (Unless you call opening the case and plugging the card in/out portable. And it still won't work with laptops)
  

External DAC:

• + Portable (Will work with desktops and laptops equally well)
  
• - Multichannel is very rare
  
• - No recording
  

fLUX has suggested the Asus DX soundcard. This is a very good multichannel soundcard, but it lacks an internal amp.

If you're looking for only 2 channel, then the DG would be much cheaper, and it has an internal amp. If your budget would allow it, the STX would be pretty good for 2 channel audio.

BTW, here's a review of the Fiio E10 by NwAvGuy. The only thing that stands out to me is that the E10 has some channel imbalance at low volumes. This problem seems endemic to many external DACs as they use cheap volume potentiometers.

http://nwavguy.blogs...io-e10-dac.html

 

[Grim]

Hi all got my Audio Technica ATH-M50s/LE Limited Edition, now checking between [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Asus DX and DG soundcard[/font]

[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]hey Gryph0n its not possible to get STX (tat will burn a whole in my pocket) [/font]

[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]anyway thanks for all your suggestions, helped me alot.[/font]