getting the most out of my cans

April 21, 2008 7:57 PM

How can I get the most out of my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's?

I picked up a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros the other month, and while they sound nice, I still hear some buzzing and don't think they quite live up to my old Grado SR-60s. I love the closed design though so I won't be going back.

My headphones are plugged straight into my PC's soundcard, which is a Soundblaster Live! 24bit. Would I be better off upgrading this card or maybe getting a headphone amp? I also hate having to go to my taskbar to adjust the volume...

I'm on a pretty tight budget, and probably not willing to spend more than $75 or so.

Thanks

posted by pilibeen to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

If you're hearing buzzing, you're probably hearing interference that your sound card is picking up from the computer. An external USB sound card would probably solve this. There are also headphone amps that have an integrated USB sound card out there.
posted by zsazsa at 8:08 PM on April 21, 2008

zsazsa is absolutely right. Your soundcard is picking up internal computer noise. And Creative hardware generally sucks. What you should do is get a USB soundcard -- which brand/model is not terribly important -- and you'll find that the noise will go away completely. External DACs are the way to go.

An amp will just amplify the annoying background noise. I wouldn't go that route.
posted by fake at 9:14 PM on April 21, 2008

HeadRoom Total BitHead. $150 for a portable headphone DAC/amp.
posted by kcm at 11:18 PM on April 21, 2008

I have a cheap Griffin iMic I use at work to get around audio hiss issues, and it's pretty cheap. It won't do any amplifying of the signal, but it'll definitely sound cleaner.
posted by mikeh at 9:04 AM on April 22, 2008