Audiophile computer motherboards and headphone amps.

[Detosx]

I did a quick search but apologies if I have missed a thread that fits my question. I'm new here. Is that a good excuse? Still finding my way around, enjoying what I am reading. I picked up a pair of AKG 702 and Beyer Dynamic DT990 headphones in a sale, quite a while ago, and promised myself at some point I would get a headphone amp that would actually drive them, which my PC motherboard, being that they are 600ohm headphones, probably won't. I haven't even tried. The codec and audio circuitry on the Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-D3H-TH is basic. So, audiophile wise, here's my question.

I know that audio codecs, audio circuitry and headphone amps have apparently improved a lot in recent years but... well, here's my thought process and I'd appreciate your thoughts. I want to build my own computer case, with built in speakers, the speakers being built into bamboo or metal wine bottle coolers, the motherboard, preferably M-ITX, being screwed into a homemade motherboard tray resting on a very spongy layer of foam to try and reduce vibration from bass frequencies. Or, long story short, is the quality of ALC 1220 codec and claimed audiophile circuitry on midrange Intel or AMD motherboards a misappropriation of the word 'audiophile', or not?

I can't pretend it wouldn't be nice to have an excuse to upgrade my computer to a six core AMD Ryzen CPU for productivity and a midrange motherboard with the 1220 codec and a decent quality audio circuit. Most of the reviews I see of motherboards, though, where the audio quality is rated, it seems to me it is rated by half a dozen measurements that include things like signal to noise ratio, and so on, but they tell me little how one motherboard compares to another on sound, versus a USB sound card/DAC. Thoughts welcome. I feel guilty when I look in my cupboard and see the unopened headphones boxes!

[Light Dependant Resistor]

Hi Andrew
Welcome to the Art of Sound Forum, your understanding of products and their uses needs a bit of assistance
which I will attempt to do.

Flac stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec it is a extremely good piece of code that works on the majority of
equipment, and has promise to be the world default standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC
Because it is free to use, free to copy, free to study, and modify should you wish to do so.
Its licence type is GPL GNU http://www.fsf.org

But what has captured your attention is a codec that severely limits your ability to use it. The usual entry
point is " you need to pay to use our product " and you will no matter how the sun shines be very restricted how you use it.

Here we see a forum with persons struggling to make it work
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/r...thread.213617/
and of course using anti community methods being what is called fabless. The firm developing
gets all the credit and exploits the people actually doing the hard work

You will end up disappointed in some manner being attracted to this product
because it is founded on exploitation and exists to be non operational, serving
temporary purpose as advertisement for the firm involved... so wise up to FLAC. .

A set of AKG 702 are 60 ohms impedance not 600 ohms
To drive a set of headphones requires ability to drive approximately 200mv
with great purity of audio. Generally Class A or distortion cancelling circuits
with extremely good power supplies will be exactly what you need.

Hope this helps steer you in the right direction.

Cheers / Chris

[Detosx]

Hi Chris, thanks for your thoughts, and of course you are right on the headphone's impedance, at the time that I purchased both models I read that the Beyer Dynamic DT 990 were high impedance, though the model I have is not the 600ohms model but the 250ohm one, and I started looking at motherboards that claimed to have isolated audio circuits, good quality caps and headphone amps capable of supporting 600ohm 'audiophile' and other high impedance models. At the moment I am using a set of Philips Downtown headphones via the GA-Z77MX-D3H-TH and it sounds okay but not great. I am told that motherboard headphones audio quality has moved on a lot since that model.

Ideally, I want, if possible, to find a M-ITX motherboard with the best quality sound via headphones that I can afford within a fairly tight budget but that if there are stand out midrange models that go above and beyond, I would try and find money for one of those, unless there is a better way, via USB.

There are other possible considerations, just to add how clueless I am on some of this. I have an old Korg M1 keyboard with very hissy preset sounds and would like to keep using the keyboard but add in a breakout box with better sampled sounds. I feel I need to also read up about DACs and... it would be nice to have a so-called 'Altoids' CMOY headphone amp, or something with valves. I have basic soldering skills. Basically, I am looking for affordable ways of bringing a disparate series of multimedia interests together with as few breakout boxes as possible at the best quality I can get but that my mindset, at the moment, is possibly starting with a new computer setup with a motherboard with a decent - hopefully decent - integrated headphone amp that does some justice to the headphones I bought, which is to say I don't want my first experience of them to be a disappointment via the old Gigabyte motherboard (basic audio circuit, with VIA VT2021 codec).

[Light Dependant Resistor]

Hi Andrew
The effort made here looks impressive to satisfy the best audio possible,
http://www.ap-linux.com/

and carries recommendations of what components work best, so worthwhile studying.
As I understand every effort is being made to direct resources to sound reproduction
called low latency including the motherboard chip, rather than sound being just an application.

There are others as well like http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=avlinux

With headphones the usual method is to run a SPDIF out or with professional sound cards
AES/EBU which transfers the digital data stream prior to analog conversion. You can then
really go to town with choosing the best DAC Headphone amp combo. http://www.head-fi.org/

Similarly I have some AKG 701's that I use quite a bit, but would be nice to work toward
a better headphone experience.

Cheers / Chris

[Detosx]

Thanks for the links, Chris!

I think as a stopgap measure, while funds are tight, I want to get a budget CPU and graphics card and spend a healthy chunk of the PC build budget on at least a midrange-budget motherboard with a well isolated audio circuit and headphone amp, I just don't know, from a lot of not very helpful reviews, which to go for!