Best PC sound card or amp for gaming / movies

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

So I know that modern gaming motherboards usually have pretty decent built-in audio, but I am looking for something a bit better. I had a Sound Blaster Z sound card for the last 4 years, but it recently just stopped working. Also, the drivers for Windows 10 were terrible and the software was pretty bad. I switch from my speakers to my headsets quite frequently and I use both my Sennheiser GSP 301s and my Sennheiser Game Zeros quite regularly. My GSP 301s don't really need a sound card or amp and work great without them, but my Game Zeros need some extra help due to their high impedance.

Does anyone have any suggestions? So far in the running are the Asus Strix RAID Pro 7.1, the Sound Blaster X AE-5 or the Sound Blaster ZxR, and then last, but not least the Sennheiser GSX 1000 Amp.

 

[RejZoR]

AE-5 is superb, just the software is glitchy a bit which is annoying. But it seems to only be couple reboots and startups and then works fine. Not sure why is so. Never used ASUS Strix, but their old soundcards were horrible. HW was good (I had Essence STX), but drivers and software was absolutely terrible.

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

AE-5 is superb, just the software is glitchy a bit which is annoying. But it seems to only be couple reboots and startups and then works fine. Not sure why is so. Never used ASUS Strix, but their old soundcards were horrible. HW was good (I had Essence STX), but drivers and software was absolutely terrible.

Yeah, I have my eye on that AE-5... before my Sound Blaster Z died, it was actually a very good sound card.

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

What about Sound Blaster's G6? I think that would be ideal because essentially its an external sound card with a built in headphone amp that works for both PS4 and PC- sounds like a win / win to me!

 

[Iciclebear]

What are you passing signal into? or are you just using the headphones?

I had a SBZ and just recently upgraded to the gsx1000 earlier this year.

My sound blaster z worked well enough. I use a Yamaha YSP-1400 for my pc audio and the optical out on the sound blaster allowed me to have dolby and DTS decoding on the sound bar for movies. That YSP does a pretty passable attempt at fake surround and there was an option on the Z to pass the stereo output over optical as well. Games that supported cinematic surround sound would always surprise me when I'd hear sound reflections out of that bar when it would switch to Dolby. Turning on Dolby or DTS on the sound card did add a bit of latency to the sound, which was unfortunate.

As far as games or headphones though the GSX > the sbz. The GSX has one of the best surround engines I've ever heard in a PC product. The first few weeks I was just blown away by the surround sound processing. If you dont want to use the virtual 7.1 you can crank the quality up on the stereo output and it disables the 7.1 option. The 4 profiles are pretty nice too.

My headphones are Sennheiser PC360s, and I've also tried my HD598's on the amp with good results.

I haven't used the other items you mentioned, but the SB G6 does sound interesting.

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

What are you passing signal into? or are you just using the headphones?

I had a SBZ and just recently upgraded to the gsx1000 earlier this year.

My sound blaster z worked well enough. I use a Yamaha YSP-1400 for my pc audio and the optical out on the sound blaster allowed me to have dolby and DTS decoding on the sound bar for movies. That YSP does a pretty passable attempt at fake surround and there was an option on the Z to pass the stereo output over optical as well. Games that supported cinematic surround sound would always surprise me when I'd hear sound reflections out of that bar when it would switch to Dolby. Turning on Dolby or DTS on the sound card did add a bit of latency to the sound, which was unfortunate.

As far as games or headphones though the GSX > the sbz. The GSX has one of the best surround engines I've ever heard in a PC product. The first few weeks I was just blown away by the surround sound processing. If you dont want to use the virtual 7.1 you can crank the quality up on the stereo output and it disables the 7.1 option. The 4 profiles are pretty nice too.

My headphones are Sennheiser PC360s, and I've also tried my HD598's on the amp with good results.

I haven't used the other items you mentioned, but the SB G6 does sound interesting.

Well on PC I was just connecting my headphones to my Sound Blaster Z sound card, yet my sound card died recently. This left me with two options, get another internal sound card, or get an external sound card.

I primarily game on PC, however, from time to time I also game on my PS4 Pro and because of this I thought the best option would be an external sound card. I have had my eye on the GSX 1000 for awhile (even the newer GSX 1200 Pro), however, neither of these are compatible with PS4.

This is where the Sound BlasterX G6 comes into play.

The G6 is compatible with both PS4 and PC, but it isn't just an external sound card because it actually has a dedicated headphone amp. I think overall this would be the best option until Sennheiser makes a GSX amp that is compatible with both PC and PS4.