Need suggestions for sound Sound card

deadpool287

Well I'm Hardcore gamer.

recently upgraded a machine I got off a friend(better than my old machine)

I only have a PCI slot open


working off of on board sound-which is bad.

I have Decent Logitech headphones (USB)-going on 3 years with them now.

I want new ones, but i also need a sound card.

Nothing beyond $130 for a sound card

headphones I am not sure how to approach this being as i am upgrading my sound card.

if i get a great sound card how would i go about looking for good headphones? or should i just get something cheap and upgrade my headphones? I have no idea what to do.

Please help!

Ahriakin

Good is relative. If you need good music quality aswell as gaming then the Creative Labs XFi is your best bet, besides the EAX support and high quality DACs it allows you to switch to bypass sample rate conversion (almost all PC cards resample to either 48Khz or 96Khz, and since most audio is at 44.1 you are at the mercy of the resample algorithm - which usually sucks and destroys fidelity, in Audio Creation mode you can bypass this and run pure 44.1 (and bypass the cards other audio filters quickly and easily) for the purest sound. The XFi also has some upsampling/bit depth incrementing to take 16bit to 24bit audio and it's okay, just not great. If you really want that kind of functionality add an external Upsampler/DAC later, still it's nice as a freebie.
For headphones I advise investing at least 30% of your budget for the whole thing. Sennheiser and Grado are always a good choice. You probably already know this but unless those Logitech headphones also have an extra normal headphone connector you won't be able to use them with the new card (USB headphones are in essence USB soundcards integrated into the phones, or just the DACs since like your onboard sound the PC is doing all the real audio work).

I have an XFi Fatality linked to Perpetual Audio P1a/p3a Upsampler/DAC, then to a CIA VHp-1 headphone amp and finally to a pair of Grado RS1s. I'm a heavy gamer too and music lover so my PC serves both functions brilliantly (and it's nice not having to dig out my CDs ).

deadpool287

So what would you reccomend for a microphone if i go with say:

sound card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102006

headphones

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826106328