Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

@NV: Thanks for clearing that up. Those headphones are definitely a no for me then.

Well, at least one review mentioned owning several headphones, including in the $120+ price range, and being still very satisfied with the 780. So yes, it's subjective, but that at least suggests that it might be better than your average onboard sound or low-end card. Well, whatever, I still wanna use my card so as I said, I'm not getting them. (Speaking of which, ionboard audio sounds interesting... )

My budget would be around the 50-buck mark... That said, I don't really need new headphones right now. I was just looking at possibly upgrading. And one of my main criteria is comfort, as I often wear them for hours at a time, nearly every day; as long as they sound good - i.e. I can hear the bass, no crackling or obvious distortion, etc. - I don't really care about sound quality that much.
I'm probably gonna keep my current ones for a while until they start to fall apart (the mic's already broken XD), since they suit my needs perfectly.

(03-15-2014, 09:26 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]...stuff

Now you're calling me Hitler? :p

Yeah splitter wasn't the right term at all.

What I'm really trying to avoid is wasting money on one component because the system bottlenecks it. But lets say you had $300 to buy a soundcard, subwoofer, two speakers and an amplifier that had at least 2 inputs. What would you buy?

Che Guevara Wrote:What I'm really trying to avoid is wasting money on one component because the system bottlenecks it. But lets say you had $300 to buy a soundcard, subwoofer, two speakers and an amplifier that had at least 2 inputs. What would you buy?

$300 is barely enough to buy the absolute cheapest equipment in existence for all of that. You're talking about buying an entire 2.1 audio setup including the amp and audio card. For that budget I would seriously consider looking at used equipment on ebay. I've actually gotten all my equipment through ebay so far because I'm so poor....

I also think you should bump that up to $400. $100 for the audio card, $100 for the subwoofer, $200 for a pair of active speakers. Hell I would recommend spending at least $300 for a good pair of active speakers actually but I guess you can't afford that. You might also consider dropping the sub from your setup. For $100 you really can't get anything but a low end sub (which tend to produce very muddy bass that I don't like) even used. I would prefer reinvesting that money into better speakers/amp but it's up to you.

I paid $600 for my entire 5.1 setup including a/v receiver used on ebay and it was a steal at that price (about half of what I would have paid to get all the parts new). And that's for minimalist parts. Yeah, home theater setups are expensive. No wonder so few people have them even though they're amazing.

Humm, maybe I'll stick with a sound card for now and build up to a $400 system later on.

How could I attach two different devices to the speakers if i bought active speakers instead of an amplifier?

Joseph Stylin Wrote:How could I attach two different devices to the speakers if i bought active speakers instead of an amplifier?

....you don't. Why would you need to do that? Just follow the setup that I listed above.

teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:My budget would be around the 50-buck mark... That said, I don't really need new headphones right now. I was just looking at possibly upgrading. And one of my main criteria is comfort, as I often wear them for hours at a time, nearly every day; as long as they sound good - i.e. I can hear the bass, no crackling or obvious distortion, etc. - I don't really care about sound quality that much.
I'm probably gonna keep my current ones for a while until they start to fall apart (the mic's already broken XD), since they suit my needs perfectly.

Yeah $50 is far from midrange. That's entry level:


Everyone has different tastes (treble vs. bassy vs. neutral, open vs. closed, small vs. big, etc.) so I can't tell you 100% what will work best for you but I can point you in the right direction to useful information to help you make an informed discussion. Here's a guide written up by the head-fi community: http://www.head-fi.org/a/headphone-buying-guide

And some old 4chan /g/ and reddit /r/technology guides I dug up on google (I find that these more specialized sub-communities spend so much time fighting over the most miniscule differences that they end up coming to some pretty well thought out conclusions):

(03-15-2014, 01:52 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]....you don't. Why would you need to do that? Just follow the setup that I listed above.

Well you said most amplifiers have 2 inputs. So one would be from the soundcard and the other would be from the TV... so if I skip the amplifier for active speakers, how would the speakers connect to two different devices?

NaturalViolence Wrote:$50 is far from midrange.

I had no idea headphones could be THAT expensive. The "high-end" ones look more like something only professionals would use... IDK, professional DJs or something...

Well, I guess people who spend $50 for a graphics card could say the same about the high-end ones. XD

Anyway, thanks for the links and guides; I have decided that the ATH-AD700 will be my next headset.


EDIT: Also, seeing as I live in the UK, my "budget" is actually 50 pounds... Which I instinctively converted to 50-60 dollars, while in reality it's more like 80-90 dollars. So, it's actually somewhat closer to the mid-range mark than $50.

Edit 2: Aaaand after realising that the AD700 can only be bought used, I am torn between trying my luck on ebay or getting the Sennheiser HD 558. Oh well.

Thinner version of kim jong-un Wrote:Well you said most amplifiers have 2 inputs. So one would be from the soundcard and the other would be from the TV... so if I skip the amplifier for active speakers, how would the speakers connect to two different devices?

In theory you should avoid doing that at all costs. But if you must then a switch should be used. Or something with a switch built in. Or you could manually unplug/plug the devices. A switch avoids problems associated with connecting high power electronics like speakers to multiple inputs at once (reflections for example).

teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:I had no idea headphones could be THAT expensive. The "high-end" ones look more like something only professionals would use... IDK, professional DJs or something...

Actually I rarely see professionals using them. They're more likely to be used by rich audiophiles (audio enthusiasts).

teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:Anyway, thanks for the links and guides; I have decided that the ATH-AD700 will be my next headset.

Good choice. I had considered that one myself a few years back. Don't forget to grab a clip on boom mic. and a cable sleeve so that you can sleeve the headphone cable and mic. cable into one cable (no messy cable clutter).

teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:EDIT: Also, seeing as I live in the UK, my "budget" is actually 50 pounds... Which I instinctively converted to 50-60 dollars, while in reality it's more like 80-90 dollars. So, it's actually somewhat closer to the mid-range mark than $50.

Yeah there is no formal definition for midrange but I would consider it anywhere in the $100-200 range. That seems to be the optimal point for quality vs. cost.

The reason peoples concept of the midrange pricerange is so skewed is because most headphones that people buy are cheap models. And most places people buy headphones from only sell cheap models. This is because our society doesn't value high quality headphones very much. So if you were to look at the bell curve of expenditures you would assume the midrange is somewhere in the $25-75 range since that's what most people pay on average. But as far as the models that are made it's far from it. Most big headphone companies make a variety of different models at different price points with different quality levels and their midrange is far from that. The concept of a midrange price point should be based on what manufacturers are producing, not what consumers are buying. Because what consumers are buying will be heavily determined by how much personal value they place on the product (most people don't care very much about how good their headphones sound), not what it costs to make a good one.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Actually I rarely see professionals using them. They're more likely to be used by rich audiophiles (audio enthusiasts).

Some people just have too much money...

NaturalViolence Wrote:Good choice. I had considered that one myself a few years back. Don't forget to grab a clip on boom mic. and a cable sleeve so that you can sleeve the headphone cable and mic. cable into one cable (no messy cable clutter).

My audio card actually comes with a mic. I know it's most likely crappy, but I don't really play online competitively and it will definitely suffice for video calls in Skype.

And by the way, I'm interested to know: what headset are you using right now (if any)?


EDIT: Also, I can't seem to find any new AD700s for less than $300. Darn.

And while searching around, I realized that nearly all headphones will have most reviews saying that they are perfect... Except the higher-range ones, which are often compared with other similar ones and criticized accordingly. The irony...

JVC HA-RX900 with a clip on zalman microphone. They're fairly old but I mainly use speakers anyways so I haven't bothered to upgrade them. I'm forced to use integrated audio for the time being since my x-fi extrememusic edition finally kicked the bucket after 9 years and I haven't gotten around to getting a new audio card.