Is it really worth me buying a sound card for my headphones rather than using the onboard sound?

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I'd say yes, depending on which games your playing, if you get one from the creative X-fi series, then Bf2 you could benifit from, If you have 5.1 headphones then css will become alot better and easyier if you awp/snipe etc basiclly you can make out where people are coming from alot easyer[/essay]

I brought my new one a few days back (X-fi) and even on headphones you can tell the difference, I am well pleased that I got it. It was a fair bit of cash but imo well worth the outlay Big thanx to Jell for the recommendation

X-FI FTW http://www.soundblaster.com/products/x-fi/
xtreme music is the one I when for as the best all rounder

Yes, get a x-fi. It kicks ass!

Looks nice, but I still use onboard sound, and really I have no complaints. I can usually hear people moving about on CS:S quite easily, and judging their position. I think BF2 could be a bit better though... but than I never play that.

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Creative ( sound card with on board processor for the additional cpu cycles ) ftw!

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"I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself...."

Which I dont.

I'm asking is the clarity and sound performance noticeably better?

Are there any other nice features that getting a nice shiney sound card would do?

Does it really make THAT much difference with headphones?

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You're missing out! There's a lot more to it than just hearing footsteps on CS Music just springs to life with a dedicated sound card! The high frequencies are easily heard and my GOD it's a big difference... Trust me, anyone who has decent headphones and spends time listening to stuff on their PC.... you NEED a dedicated audio card and that's that!

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My Housdorff Besicovich dimension strictly exceeds my topological dimension!

your on board sound is probably capable of 48khz 16 bit playback (better than CD resolutions but not the only factor) through it's very cheap digital/analogue converters. If you bought a dedicated soundcard imao the most significant improvement would be in the quality of the d/a converters (I say the most important part because ulitmately it's all 1's and 0's till it reaches the converters). This means there would be an improvement whether you are listenning through headphones or a full on sound system. I'd say unless you have very decent headphones with wide frequency response, they are never going to sound as good as full range speakers.

You should try for at least 48khz 24 bit converters

I'm biased cos i use my computers for music making, but I have 2 sound cards - price £900 and £350 I play CSS through decent ish headset - but if i flick the soundover to my firewire 410 soundcard, which outputs digitally to my 5.1 system, the sound blows me away.....absolutely no comparison.

Personally, I'd have no doubts in recommending you spend anything up to £100 for a gaming soundcard.

Colt

Yes the sound quality is hugely improved, and I don't know about other cards but the X-fi comes with loads of extra software like, 'file converters' 'mixers' and loads of others. If you get it and run it through your headphone's (mine are only Technics about £30) you WILL notice a big difference. When I got mine i had a huge cheesey grin on my face for ages listening to all the things I'd been missing out on in games, and as for music... well... Awsome!

n1 colt

btw what progs do you use in your music production process?

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m
mmmmYou sir, are a swaggering addlepated jackanapes!
m

any good external soundcards?

i have a laptop

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http://www.roysland.net/lastpost.html

Would you say these are decentish headphones?

htxtp://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/-/543/701/-/597269/Sennheiser_PC_130_Overhead_Gaming_Headset/Product.html?searchtype=genre

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for £18, yes

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“There are some people in this world who don’t love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that!”

Capt wolf - yup - senheisers are fine - i use a set of pc145's for gaming. haven't listenned to the ones you're up for - but as a general rule, pick a quality company like senheiser (or technics who do great dj sets with extended bass response for mixing - i have a pair and they should come with a serious eardrum damage warning) or Beyerdynamic....... and accept that you get what you pay for - just pick your price and go through the range - they'll all be good but to different degrees.


3jorn - external soundcards - depends on your budget mate. loads for £130 - £400. If you aren't making loads of music, no need to spend more. In addition to what i've said above, I'd say check out Edirol USB or Firewire, or M Audio. There are loads of others that claim to have all sorts of fancy features but really, if you're spending that sort of cash on a soundcard, you don't want gimmicks - you want quality parts made by a company whose already made all their mistakes. the above two have - Edirol is Roland / Boss under a different name and m-audio have been making cards for over a decade.

Dr Strangelove - all sorts mate. I go through stages. My main system is based around Logic Pro 7.2 with Reason (running sync'd with rewire), a powercore dsp fx card, and ableton live (I do a bit of live mixing/engineering/(remixing live jazz for example - sorta jazz-dub:) and ableton is about the only program that can cut it in that environment - even when it goes nuts, it still makes great sounds ), Stylus by spectrasonic, and tonnes of plug ins etc.

I also run a PC set up with Cubase SX, Rebirth (still a wicked program and great starting point if you like bleepy acid sounds ), reason (again, a staple of my studio for many uses), Absynth, Kontact.

Soundcard wise - FW410 as mentionned earlier - good and portable, and a MOTU system based around a 2408 mk III (PCIe interface) with additional inputs and out puts (72in/out lol - although used less since I downsized my mixer:)). When recording acoustic instruments, you need tohe best da/ad converters you can afford and won't go wrong with MOTU or DIGIDesign (pro-tools and V expensive), I also always record acoustic stuff through a nice valve based pre-amp, which keeps everything sounding nice and 'warm'.

Whils I love old analogue kit (and have lots of home made bits and pieces) I'm increaslingly doing everything on my Mac - it's a Quad Core (4x2.5G) and rules my world )

OOOOO - you've got me started, must play more CSS and gibber about studio stuff less - I realise I can be a bit of a bore on it

BTW - I'm well up for working on projects with other peeps and often do - easy with t'internet - anyone reading this half interested, pm me - i'll play you mine if you'll play me yours