Hey there Tom's!
First of all, let me say I'm an audiophile wanna-be. I have decent ears, but not a clue what I'm listening for, as I doubt I've ever experienced good sound before.
My 4th pair of cheap-o $20 headphones died on me today, and after a little research, I decided it was the perfect excuse to blow a bit of money and buy a pair of Astro A40's. [With the 2013 preamp.] (I'm primary a gamer, and they were apparently the end-all be-all for gaming.)
So here are my questions:
1) I'm using a rather crappy pair of Logitech speakers. They do have a subwoofer, but they're still only 2.1 surround. Am I right in thinking that the 7.1 surround of the A40s is going to blow them away both in sound quality and immersion? (If so, it'd be awful nice to be able to move the speakers off my cramped desk area to give my monitor some breathing room.)
2) As I was doing research as to what headset I was to get, I was seeing a LOT of people saying that good headsets are a waste without a decent sound card. I was then researching sound cards, and found that my onboard audio (Realtek ALC898) is about on-par, at least spec-wise, with a lot of the sound cards out there. How true is that?
Basically what it comes down to is this: Will I see a noticeable improvement in sound quality if I'm using a sound card with these headphones?
If so, then I have a problem - I have a small form factor computer, with no room for a sound card to be added. Is there a (cheap, as I already paid way too much for the headphones) external sound card that would suffice? I have USB 3.0, "optical" on my onboard sound, and HDMI from my graphics card [can you send just audio through hdmi?], but I don't know if that means there's a better external option for me.
Thanks!
First of all, let me say I'm an audiophile wanna-be. I have decent ears, but not a clue what I'm listening for, as I doubt I've ever experienced good sound before.
My 4th pair of cheap-o $20 headphones died on me today, and after a little research, I decided it was the perfect excuse to blow a bit of money and buy a pair of Astro A40's. [With the 2013 preamp.] (I'm primary a gamer, and they were apparently the end-all be-all for gaming.)
So here are my questions:
1) I'm using a rather crappy pair of Logitech speakers. They do have a subwoofer, but they're still only 2.1 surround. Am I right in thinking that the 7.1 surround of the A40s is going to blow them away both in sound quality and immersion? (If so, it'd be awful nice to be able to move the speakers off my cramped desk area to give my monitor some breathing room.)
2) As I was doing research as to what headset I was to get, I was seeing a LOT of people saying that good headsets are a waste without a decent sound card. I was then researching sound cards, and found that my onboard audio (Realtek ALC898) is about on-par, at least spec-wise, with a lot of the sound cards out there. How true is that?
Basically what it comes down to is this: Will I see a noticeable improvement in sound quality if I'm using a sound card with these headphones?
If so, then I have a problem - I have a small form factor computer, with no room for a sound card to be added. Is there a (cheap, as I already paid way too much for the headphones) external sound card that would suffice? I have USB 3.0, "optical" on my onboard sound, and HDMI from my graphics card [can you send just audio through hdmi?], but I don't know if that means there's a better external option for me.
Thanks!