I'm interested in increasing my sound quality with one of these units,I'll be honest,I only know what I've been reading about them the last couple of days. I'm interested only in listening on my computer with my Cerwin Vega XD-3 and Shure SRH 440 headphones. Listening is primarily mp3, flac, internet radio and 2 channel gaming. Would I be wasting my time with this equipment or would I gain a noticeable improvement? I'm currently using a SB X-FI Titanium SD. Budget would be $250. Thanks
I would grab a magni/modi and use your shure headphones.....then save up a few more dollars and grab another headphone. If not a magni/modi then maybe a headphone amp with a built in dac. You will be pretty impressed I think. $150 can buy you a nice set of headphones
Is that a Titanium-HD or Titanium (non-HD) sound card, as I've never heard of a Titanium SD. If you have the Titanium (non-HD) sell it off and get the Sound Blaster Z ($60-$80). Maybe sell of the Cerwin Vega XD-3s and replace them with the Monoprice 5" studio monitors ($150)
That's a very nice sound card. I would spend the budget on better headphones and speakers tbh. I'm also pretty sure you can change out the op-amps on that bad boy to give it a kick as well
Titanium HD comes with the PCM1794 DAC chip A Bravo Ocean tube amplifier, $120 (new) DT880 Pro 250-Ohm headphones, $184 (new) For $304 (plus a little tax) would give you some nice audio. You might save around $60 if you bought used, so $245? You would plug the Bravo Ocean into the Ti-HD's RCA outputs and the speakers into the Ocean's line-out and the DT880s into the Ocean's headphone jack. Or sell off the Ti-HD ($100) and buy the Sound Blaster Z ($60-$80) and the AKG K612 Pro headphones ($160-$200) The SB-Z comes with separate headphone and speaker (line-outputs) and you can leave the headphone and speakers plugged in at the same time. With the Titanium-HD, you have to unplug the headphones from the headphone jack to use the RCA (speaker) output.
