Hi. so I have finally got my new pc and life is fine and dandy.
The next thing I intend to upgrade next is the sound. But this is something I know little about and would like help on what to do for the best low price sound soloution.
I have a mic so i thought i'd get a nice set of headphones and saw the sennheiser hd 201's which look really nice for the money. only £18 from amazon. I also use razer surround which i think is a brilliant virtual surround emulator ( i use it with a pair of in ear headphones and the difference in game is amazing). On top of this i had a look at a new sound card and saw the relatively cheap creative go! pro
What I am asking is will the sennheiser headphones work with the usb sound card and razer surround and secondly is it worth getting the creative go?
I haven't ever experimented with the 'GO! PRO' myself, however, I would definitely recommend the use of a dedicated internal PCIe sound card over that of a USB device.
In my opinion, the sound from the Razer Surround was terrible in comparison to that of my Creative X-Fi Titanium HD. Now, I'm not saying to go out and buy my card, it's very expensive and I wouldn't even buy one new; deminishing returns is definitely something to watch for.
Assuming you're a gamer - the Creative Recon3D isn't a bad choice. I know of quite a few gamers that are very happy with it. However, it's a little bit more expensive, at £45.
With regards to the headphones, £18 does sound a little bit cheap, in my opinion. With headphones, essentially find your limit in terms of price, and find a pair in that price region, and read reviews for what you'll be using them for. Overly-expensive headphones aren't always necessary, however, you will get what you pay for - to a degree, anyway.
the headphones i am fine with as they are supposed to be really good quality and most people recommend them for the price but for a sound card would this do
Whether the sound card is better than your onboard sound or the Creative Go!, I do not know. This is going to have to be a research task for you, I'm afraid.
In my opinion though, I wouldn't go spending that bit more for the Recon3D if you're only going to spend £18 on headphones. To me, £18 for a set of headphones seems a bit too cheap - I may be wrong, of course. A sound card can do brilliant things, but they can't turn an £18 pair of headphones into a £300 pair of headphones.
tl;dr - Don't spend more on a sound card if you're buying cheap headphones.
You're going to have to decide what you want out of them, and make your decision from there.
The only sub £30 headphones that sound any good IMHO are the Koss Porta pro.
And unless you are getting good headphones, there is little point in spending money on a dedicated soundcard. If you got a little more cash, iv been really impressed with the Philips CitiScape Uptown headphones (£40ish)