I got a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros for Christmas and they sound amazing. That is, they sound amazing from my stereo, my portable cd player, my mp3 player, etc. . . Everything except my computer. For some reason, when I connect them to my computer, they sound like garbage. I'm not connecting them directly to the soundcard. My speakers have a control box with hardware volume control and a headphone out jack. I'm connecting them to that. I never hooked up the headphone out jack on the front of my case when I built it over the summer. I've always just used the onboard sound card. The board is an ASUS A7N8X-X (nforce2 chipset if that matters). Even a cd in the drive sounds bad, not just encoded music. I do love the way these sound though. A little low on bass maybe, but I'm not sure how much bass I really need to have. This is my first 'real' pair of headphones and I'd like to have them not sond bad out of my computer. I'd appreciate any help with this.

It would help to know in what way do the Sennheiser's sound like "garbage"? Distorted, no bass, not loud enough, no high end?

Have you tried plugging the headphones directly into the computer where your PC speakers are currently connected? (Turn down the system volume first.) How did that sound?

I'm not sure exactly how to describe it. It just sounded somewhat unclear. Almost muffled. Also, there was some crackling sometimes in songs. It didn't sound crisp and clear like they did when I connected them to my CD player. Yes, I tried connecting them right to the PC, but it didn't make a difference. I"m sorry that I can't describe it better.

Also, I'm aware that these headphones have a reputation for being too light on the bass and just want to say that isn't the issue i'm referring to. Something just doesn't sound right.

Ok, could be a few things:

- nForce sound chip may not be powerful enough to drive the Sennheiser phones. I didn't think so because you say they sound fine on your MP3 player and these are not typically very high powered (unless you have a Karma). Those phones are a bit higher impedence than phones made for typical low-power use (64 ohms vs. 32 ohms) meaning they will want to draw a little more power.

- these being your first high definition phones, they may be revealing the poor quality of your PC sound environment. There are several sources of unshielded radio frequency interference inside the case that can distort the sound signal.

The first situation could be helped by using an external amplifier or upgrading to a PCI sound card with more powerful onboard amps. The second might benefit from the use of an external USB sound card such as one of the several models made by Creative.

Do you have a pair of cheap portable earbuds or headphones that you could compare using only the PC sound output? Maybe the ones that came with your portable CD player or MP3 player? If so, what do you hear?

One last thing, check the settings for your sound chip. Maybe there are some bass/treble adjustments or other equalization effects that can be set to neutral or turned off. Some of this stuff just makes things sound worse.