Hello all - boy am I glad I found this place.

First let me explain my self induced predicament. Basically I have built my pc with the intention of turning it into a home entertainment center. Everything goes tickity boo until I decide to listen to some of my favorite music. Pink Floyd and then that War of the Worlds 2 disc set. My equipment currently is a set of Sennheiser HD500 phones, audigy 2 sound card. No amp.

Okay after listening to these albums I thought, hmmm...wouldnt it be great to have better sounding headphones. This lead me to researching headphones, then amps, and now soundcards....boy this is getting expensive.. lol

I have a headphone amp being made for me. I was going to build one myself but thought it would be best to wait till I have more experience in electronics before attempting that. I am going to build a couple of little cmoy's for portable use so after these experiments I will attempt a better home based headphone amp.

So my first question is which headphone? I have looked at but not heard Audio-technica A900, these would be purchased online, I have got recommendations for Senn's HD580's (but not heard) and am going to look at and listen to grado 225 and 325 tomorrow.

For my style of music soft rock, blues, some classical, acoustical guitar which phones would you guys/gals recommend?

2nd question - I realize that the audigy card is not ideal for listening to music, I play games as well and use surround sound on my klipsche speakers for that. But am willing to pick up a dedicated sound card for listening.

Well thats all the questions I have - for now

I guess my budget should be known. I dont want to have to spend more than 500 cdn for both the card and headphones. The amp should be here this week sometime.

Headphones:

If you can get your hands on a pair of HD580s I have heard that they are the "best bang for your buck" Senns you can get. I was under the impression that they aren't being produced anymore, however, and if that is the case you might have to go up to the HD600. I have a pair of Grado SR80s and I think they sound amazing, better than the HD500 that I had a chance to try once but I can't make any direct comparisons between them and the HD580/600.

Sound Card:

The Chaintec AV710 (~$35 CAD) is highly revered around here and would probably make some kind of a measurable difference over your Audigy 2. However it may not make a difference large enough for you to hear, there is a good probability that no sound card will (so long as you resample your audio to 48kHz at playback for your Audigy). Although if you have $500 to throw around perhaps you would perfer to have the better card and peace of mind.

If you aren't currently resampling to 48kHz the easiest way is to use foobar2000 and the PPHS resampler. This helps because Creative cards (other than the SB PCI 128 and SB AWE 64 ISA) can't playback audio at 44.1kHz only 48kHz, there were some reports of quality loss due to the SB Live cards poor internal resampler, the Audigys resampler is much better but you will still probably get some benefit out of resampling with foobar.

Chaintech AV-710 is the budget choice around most forums, avsforum, head-fi and including here. The AV-710 has a very nice Wolfson WM8728 24bit 192KHz DAC which powers the jack closest to the optical out. Do not use the other outputs of the AV-710, it's connected to a VIA VT1616 AC97 codec, the sound quality you get from that is your typical onboard audio from the likes of Realtek.

http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread....8255#post848255

Setup Guide for AV-710
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75655

Note that the AV710 does not have a headphone amplifier, even an op-amp - I think - so you will want a seperate amp. An annoying business; there are so many more amps than headphones to choose from.

I have an amp being made for me as we speak. So that part of the equation is taken care of (for now, until I start to make my own then I am sure I will be "upgrading")

Yes this is an annoying business all right Well after going over the grado's today - they were nice headphones, but I decided against them - my own personal preferences which I won't get into - I read the TOS

I have friends who own the AT A900's and decided to order a pair of them. Also I picked up a Chaintec card for 35 bucks.

I think this will keep me busy for awhile

Thanks