I got my ZMF Ori pads for my DT 770 in the mail today. Because the 4-year-old stock velour DT 770 pads had become less "nasty" and more "biohazard" at this point, I took them off, cleaned the "filter pieces" best I could, and replaced them with the ZMF Oval cowhides I've had on my ATH-M40X for the past few years. While the cowhides are comfy for quiet in-bed listening on the ATs, they don't work well with glasses and induce a drastically darker and horribly unbalanced tone on the Beyerdynamics. Yeah yeah, Darthbeyers and whatnot, but I'm not a dark angsty 14 year old. Not to mention they're oval and the DTs are round.
So with the sides of my head smarting and an impression of my glasses clearly pressed into the side of my skull, I bought some round Ori pads for my DTs instead. These are a bit smaller and rounder, but still plenty big for my big ol' ears. Most importantly, they aren't quite as thick, and being made of lambskin squish quite a bit more, bringing the sound much closer to my ears and closer to stock. Sound is stock-ish, being a bit brighter but not so as to sacrifice midrange, definitely worlds better than the Ovals. Those belong much better on the M40X, that's for sure.
Being made of much softer lambskin, they are also insanely comfortable and almost feel like they aren't even there. The sweaty stock velours don't even come close, not even in softness. And they are the first pads I've ever used to work as well with glasses as without. Overall super happy with these.
A lot of people love praising velours for comfort, but they aren't any more breathable than leather; they just soak up all the sweat from your head instead and after a few while become disgusting hazmat that you have to throw out. I heard the DT 990 velours are much better, but I couldn't find a retailer here.
I'm a headphone user and I've been thinking about getting a USB DAC. Is it better than onboard audio? Any idea how it compares to a sound card?
I used to have an Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card, loved the sound quality but it had a weird issue (it freaked out occasionally) and I had to RMA it. Now I'm running onboard audio.
For most users, ALC1220 is pretty good and shows how far integrated audio controllers have come. ALC1150...ehhhh ok. But if you're running anything ancient like the ALC88x/ALC89x codecs, I'd be very surprised if you didn't hear a difference with even an entry level DAC.
Not going to pretend to be a headphone snob here, but I've been using the E10K for about 3 years now and it's a good one without breaking the bank. IIRC E10K and stuff like the Schiit Fulla/Modi are priced similarly. There is an obvious advantage in sound quality to ALC892 and 1150, but if I'm honest it's the little amp in there that makes all the difference. I love maxing out the application volume and Windows volume while being able to control my volume on the fly with the knob on the E10K instead. All the ALC1150/1200/1220 onboard solutions I've had struggle not exactly with sound quality, but with getting sufficient volume on >32ohm headphones to get music to really "open up" because motherboards don't have decent amps. Your needs may be different and limited to just a pure DAC if you have really low impedance headphones, but in that case I feel like it'll be harder to tell a difference to onboard audio.
Obviously, the usual disclaimers apply: the headphones you use, the pads on your cans, the music/sounds you listen to, glasses or no glasses, etc.