What has the world come to? Deciding to take advantage of the generous return policy of Fry’s Electronics since I’d already allocated myself the $100 I got back from the bad X-fi sound card, I took a look around the buyer’s remorse section of the audio hardware.
I picked up a set of Soundblaster Arena headphones. The last time I got a set of surround sound headphones it was a Zalman 6. They sounded amazing, to be fair, but promptly melted down after 6 months, which was the same problem everyone had it turned out. And they had three headphone jacks, they were, in fact, six speakers built into headphones.
Now it’s a USB set that’s its own damn sound card built in, two excellent headphones, a microphone, and proper function. So the USB headphones work better than the new sound card. What the fuck, world? I never thought I’d be happy with a set of $80 headphones, but it’s $20 less than what I already had to spend on a sound card upgrade/replacement and now I don’t have to buy a set of headphones or speakers.
On the downside, I didn’t bleed at all during the installation, so I’m not sure they’ll really hold out. I’ll see if further sacrifice is needed.
2 comments ↓
I think the USB headphones’ sound device is purely software. There is no hardware acceleration there.
I’m not gonna lie and pretend I know much about this stuff, but I bet you that you’d get better system performance with a proper piece of hardware, and more audio channels and other things probably maybe I don’t know.
USB headphones suck btw.
That’s what I certainly thought, but I decided to give these a shot. The sound is really quite spectacular, but since everyone’s little sister can work up a piece of holophonics tech I shouldn’t be that surprised.
I’ve avoided USB headphones purely because hey, I have a damn sound card, but the Audigy 2 is showing its age finally. These, though, did just what I spent money on the hardware for and actually work, when the newest cards (and USB software acceleration options) haven’t worked at all.
I’ve still got two weeks to give into buyer’s remorse, fortunately, in case I’m wrong and these end up being awful.
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