Hi folks, this is my very first post at Hydrogen Audio, nice to get to know you
excuse my poor english cuz it is not my first language...

I started my audiophile journey with purchasing a senn HD-580 and a CT-470 PDCP, thinking i would get a decent source later on. then i came to realize i listen to mp3s much more often compared to CD's so money would be better spent on if i upgrade the soundcard i figured. After a bit of searching on local FS/FT BBS's, i ended up getting a hoontech DSP24 MK2. (for those of you who might be wondering, it is a envy24HT based 24/96 capable card and has better reputation from Korean BBS's than terratec DMX6 fire as far as its analogue output output goes.) When I ditched el-cheapo Maya 5.1Gold for the new card, I was welcomed by warm and detailed music reproduction that was immediately appreciable. however, i was a bit short on time back then and had no time to fiddle with settings, forced to live with default settings.

Luckily, I am getting a bit more free hours of my own lately, so i went on the internet and did some homework on fb2k and asio settings.
I followed the guideline given by certain members on head-fi forums, 24bit padded to 32bit, trigangular noise shaping, advanced limitter and ASIO output plugin enabled. My gripe is whenever I try to set SSRC resampler to anything above 48000hz, the output becomes something like what you get when you mess around with 'tempo' setting on winamp. Say, it turns britteney spears into marylin manson, if you get my drift on the sound card's control pannel, i set everything as followed :
Waveout driver buffer : 256 Samples per second
Audio data handling : Allow operation when data exceeds converter resolution
Clock and sample ratez - Internal master clock : 96,000 (rate locked : unchecked, reset rate after play : checked)

...and it reads ASIO latency of 2ms and Convert resolution of 24bit on the Driver Informations tab

and of course, i would REALLY appreciate other suggestions on how to further improve sound quality i get from the sound card. i dont do anything that demanding when i listen to music, so high CPU utilization is of least of my interests.

From what I have gathered thusfar, KS and ASIO avoid resampling and internal kmixer so they are both preffered, the latter being more advisable. what the hell is GSIF then? i got a hunch its more of a recording driver of some sort more than anything.

while 10-band EQ on foobar is more than acceptable for general use, I was told to use convolver for more fine-tuning purposes. Which one of the standard impulse files should i use for HD580? or otherwise is there a third-party impulse files for HD580 made avialable for downloads?

Oops, fb2k's EQ is 18band, not 10band! what the hell was i thinking
going thru posts in this thread right now to see if it helps...

With your Hoontech card, you don't need to use resampling at all.

For listening to music, there shouldn't be a difference between ASIO and kernel streaming (both are bit-exact since they bypass kmixer), so you should just use whichever produces the fewest problems.

As for equalization, I don't know of any equalizer/convolver presets for HD580. I am using them without any DSP effects other than crossfeed, and I'm quite happy with the sound. Frequency response is pretty linear as it is, and messing with equalization may actually bring more harm than good.

Finally, a word of advice: don't believe everything that you hear on head-fi A lot of people down there don't bother doing blind tests before making statements on sound quality, which makes these statements highly unreliable.

I see... everything must be taken with salt and grain! hell, i am not even a member over there at head-fi thx for your advice - i guess i will go ahead and turn some of the things off and see how they sound.