Monitor Advice Requested

Motsew

Member
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CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 1000D FULL TOWER CASE (LS)
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ASUS STRIX Soar 7.1 PCIe sound card
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Any monitor recommendations to go with the above spec? Budget for monitor would be no more than £1000. Was leaning towards 32" Samsung Odyssey G7. High frames rates more important to me than 4k.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I use it mostly for gaming, soundcard is for my speaker setup and to use with my Beyers.
What speaker setup do you have?

And which Beyers?

Reason I ask is a gaming soundcard may not be the best thing depending on your config.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Speakers are Dali though I cannot recall which ones and the headphones are a pair of DT1990s.
Oh, in that case yeah, gaming soundcard is definitely not what you want.

I take it you're just connecting through to an Amp from the PC?
 

Motsew

Member
Oh, in that case yeah, gaming soundcard is definitely not what you want.

I take it you're just connecting through to an Amp from the PC?
I have yet to purchase an amp for the PC, that is next on my list of to-do's. The plan was initially to just use the 3.5mm jack in the back of the card, my DT1990's have a phono-jack lead.

E: I read the reviews for the Strix Soar and they were generally positive for its audiophile quality. Is that not the case? I just want better sound quality from my games/music/film.
E2: Also apparently there are gains (albeit it small) to be had from taking the load off the CPU and onto a dedicated card.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I have yet to purchase an amp for the PC, that is next on my list of to-do's. The plan was initially to just use the 3.5mm jack in the back of the card, my DT1990's have a phono-jack lead.

E: I read the reviews for the Strix Soar and they were generally positive for its audiophile quality. Is that not the case? I just want better sound quality from my games/music/film.
Oooooo no no no, that would be an utter travesty, please don’t do that!

We’re entering a beautiful world here!

Those speakers and headphones need some quality to run properly. If you stick a gaming soundcard on, it’s quite literally not going to be able to run the headphones at all as they’re pretty high impedance of 250ohm or something, and the speakers would sound like utter dross compared to how they should sound.

We can do justice to this setup. I take it you have quite a generous budget available?
 

Motsew

Member
Oooooo no no no, that would be an utter travesty, please don’t do that!

We’re entering a beautiful world here!

Those speakers and headphones need some quality to run properly. If you stick a gaming soundcard on, it’s quite literally not going to be able to run the headphones at all as they’re pretty high impedance of 250ohm or something, and the speakers would sound like utter dross compared to how they should sound.

We can do justice to this setup. I take it you have quite a generous budget available?
I do yes, isn't the impedance for the strix up to 600ohm though?
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I do yes, isn't the impedance for the strix up to 600ohm though?
perhaps, I'd be surprised if it was that high, but it's complete crap quality and would sound awful.

A gaming soundcard is not designed for the setup you're thinking of. It's designed for pretty low end, low power 7.1 satellites with a generic sub slapped on for the low end. All the money goes into the surround capabilities.

When we're talking proper headphones and proper speakers in a 2 / 2.1 arrangement I'm guessing? then gaming soundcard really big no no.

You need a DAC takes the RAW audio processing from the PC, and converts it to a proper analogue signal that would absolutely walk all over a gaming soundcard. Most decent DACs also include high end headphone amps which would do those Beyers justice.

The difference would be night and day, like just another world in quality.

As an example of a fairly modest DAC with good headphone amp, the Schiit Jotunheim is very highly regarded (at around £400):

Schiit Jotunheim 2 in Silver

Modules, Nexus & Continuity run inside Schiit's Jotunheim 2 | Darko.Audio

Running up to the other extreme you have stuff like the Chord Dave which is widely regarded as the best DAC money can buy (at £8500)

DAVE - The Ultimate DAC, Preamp & Headphone Amp | Chord Electronics

Chord DAVE review | What Hi-Fi?

And then there's a world in between.

When I asked about an amp, I take it you have the speakers hooked up to some kind of amp? Otherwise how do you use them?
 

Motsew

Member
perhaps, I'd be surprised if it was that high, but it's complete crap quality and would sound awful.

A gaming soundcard is not designed for the setup you're thinking of. It's designed for pretty low end, low power 7.1 satellites with a generic sub slapped on for the low end. All the money goes into the surround capabilities.

When we're talking proper headphones and proper speakers in a 2 / 2.1 arrangement I'm guessing? then gaming soundcard really big no no.

You need a DAC takes the RAW audio processing from the PC, and converts it to a proper analogue signal that would absolutely walk all over a gaming soundcard. Most decent DACs also include high end headphone amps which would do those Beyers justice.

The difference would be night and day, like just another world in quality.

As an example of a fairly modest DAC with good headphone amp, the Schiit Jotunheim is very highly regarded (at around £400):

Schiit Jotunheim 2 in Silver

Modules, Nexus & Continuity run inside Schiit's Jotunheim 2 | Darko.Audio

Running up to the other extreme you have stuff like the Chord Dave which is widely regarded as the best DAC money can buy (at £8500)

DAVE - The Ultimate DAC, Preamp & Headphone Amp | Chord Electronics

Chord DAVE review | What Hi-Fi?

And then there's a world in between.

When I asked about an amp, I take it you have the speakers hooked up to some kind of amp? Otherwise how do you use them?
They were hooked up to my Onkyo AV Receiver but I have recently replaced them with the Dali Oberon 5.1.2 system.
 

Motsew

Member
You still need an amp to drive the speakers though?

They're not powered no?
Correct. I was looking at purchasing a small one for the PC, nothing major like the Onkyo I have for the home cinema/record player.

E: I should also point out I went ahead with purchasing a monitor, it should arrive tomorrow. I went with the Samsung Odyssey G9 Ultrawide.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Correct. I was looking at purchasing a small one for the PC, nothing major like the Onkyo I have for the home cinema/record player.

E: I should also point out I went ahead with purchasing a monitor, it should arrive tomorrow. I went with the Samsung Odyssey G9 Ultrawide.
Right, that's what I was trying to get to.

You don't need a separate amp for the PC, just use your current one unless it's in a separate space?

Good choice on the G9, sorry, went rather off topic, that's definitely the one we would always recommend for this kind of build.
 

Motsew

Member
Right, that's what I was trying to get to.

You don't need a separate amp for the PC, just use your current one unless it's in a separate space?

Good choice on the G9, sorry, went rather off topic, that's definitely the one we would always recommend for this kind of build.
It is in its own space unfortunately yes.

e: Even then though, with an amp, wouldn't having a dedicated sound card also be more beneficial than using the onboard offering?
e2: I don't mind about the off-topic, this discussion is good, I do like good quality audio, I've never really bothered on my PC and it makes no sense really since I still do an awful lot of stuff on the PC that would be a lot more enjoyable with good quality audio (gaming/music/film).
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
It is in its own space unfortunately yes.

e: Even then though, with an amp, wouldn't having a dedicated sound card also be more beneficial than using the onboard offering?
e2: I don't mind about the off-topic, this discussion is good, I do like good quality audio, I've never really bothered on my PC and it makes no sense really since I still do an awful lot of stuff on the PC that would be a lot more enjoyable with good quality audio (gaming/music/film).
No, the onboard is just as good these days, but either way, you only need a raw signal from the PC, and it just wouldn't be enough to make the most of your setup to run from a gaming soundcard direct to the speakers.

The amp you have has a really high end DAC already in it, the best solution would be to run an HDMI from the GPU into the amp, that would then do all the post processing to the speakers itself with the cleanest signal. Or you could use the SPDIF Optical from the motherboard soundcard, but I'd go direct from the GPU myself.

That's the way I'd do it anyway. You can run HDMI over about 50 feet, although you'd probably need it custom made to that length in a decent quality cable.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Just further, for the best surround processing for gaming, you can buy the DTS or Dolby Access surround processing from the windows store.

Just right click on the sound icon in the task bar on the bottom right, go to spacial surround, and there you get the option for either.

I think the Atmos one is around £15 and would be my personal choice.

The DTS one is free I think although not 100% sure.
 

Motsew

Member
Yeah, not sure I'd go down that road because of the work involved as well as the fact that the AVR would not be available for the TV or record player whilst using it for the PC.
 
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