Razer Intros Battlefield 3 BlackShark Gaming Headset

[cadaveca]

Yeah, but ... come on. We're talking about equipment for gamers. This Razer-thing comes with an impedancy-spec around 30. My Sennheiser PC350 goes at 150 Ω - which is a huge value on this sector. And even for that an onboard-solution is enough (I guess). (Should be doing some researching for the specs of a Realtek-chip now ...)

Your cans would benefit from a real headphone amp, for sure. I mean really, amp is a big part of that electrical circuit.

 

[Tannhäuser]

Hmmmm. Okay. I've installed the Sound Blaster Recon 3D for testing purposes lately. It reads: "Dedicated high quality headphone amplifier: Supports studio quality headphones and headsets of up to 600 ohm impedance." It has a separate 3,5" socket for headsets.

I'm using an external dedicated Stereo-Amp for my Gaming-Setup, too. It's an Onkyo A-9155: http://www.eu.onkyo.com/downloads/1/1/7/0/6/A-9155_EU_FINAL_FEB05.pdf It has a bigger sized socket for headphones.

Normally I'd plug the Sennheiser or other headsets directly into the soundcard (or onboard-socket). The question now is: What setup does deliver the best sound quality in this case? Headphone in soundcard or headphone in Onkyo-Amplifier? I'm completely confused.

 

[cadaveca]

Ideally, the Soundcard with Headphone amp would be best, but that's a decent Onkyo unit you got, but unfortuantely it's not a decoder. I found using my Xonar D2X to send DTS(less lossy than Dolby) to my amp and having the AMP decode is best for gaming and such. It also depends on what audio is on your board, and the circuit design. Two Realtek chips, say ACL892, on different boards, say the ASUS Crosshair V Formula, and the ASUS P8P67 Pro...same audio chip, far different audio quality.

It's the same audio chip....and even using the same driver, the ASUS P8P67 Pro has far ebtter audio than the Crosshair V Formula.


So agian, the specs don't tell the full story.