Headphones for gaming and listening to music

Oh they’re great and the 400se EQ’d to Harmon is actually insane for the price. Non angled pads fix the imaging on the 400se and deep pads like the AliExpress ones I mentioned expand the stage significantly and trap some bass and give a lot more rumble, especially when EQ’d with a Harmon bass shelf. The Zeus is punchy as is but smooth and relaxing with fantastic imaging and staging but comes with the cautionary “dynamics with bass tend to fall apart during explosions in video games” warning so be aware of that in general around this price bracket. If you don’t mind in ears, holy shit the new HBB x Raptgo Hook-X are phenomenal. Like best I’ve ever heard from in ears and fall short at absolutely nothing whatsoever for gaming and music imo. Plus they’re more versatile being that they can be mobile and powered off basically anything (though they scale like crazy with his source gear and a clean signal) and I’d even say they outperform basically everything over ear at this point in the given price bracket but I know IEMs aren’t for everyone. Don’t be afraid to jump in and try a couple things, return policies exist for a reason so as long as you buy from somewhere reputable, your safe.

I will look further into the 400se since they seem to be highly recommended for such a cheap price. I tend to stick away from IEMs due to potential heating damage. Also, what amp would you recommend for the 400se?

Are you looking for an amp, an amp and dac separately to make a stack, or an amp/dac combo unit? Would you want portability or will it strictly be for desktop use? And last but not least, what’s your budget for this?

Probably only an amp now as I don’t know how beneficial it would be for me to get a dac. While portability would be cool, it would spend a majority of its time at my desktop. And as for the budget, probably no more than $150.

The obvious first three are JDS Labs Atom+, Schiit Magni, and Topping L30II for desktop amps, but I’m sure there are others. Do you mind me asking where you’re from so I have an idea of what would be available?

I am from the United States.

Awesome, then all of those should be available to you and I would probably go with the Magni or the Atom+ as they’re US made and both are great products. JDS Labs in particular has some of the best customer service I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with. If you search you’ll find a bunch of reddit and headfi posts about how great their service is.

Let me check on some portable stuff and get back to you on that.

Thank you a lot!

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As you’re a beginner in this, I would rather advice you with a/amp combo rather than an solo amp: an amp will have to rely on your mobo’s dac and on its amplification too get a signal. And signals from a pc aren’t the tidiest ones.

With a dac/amp combo, you will just get numerical sound from usb, and the combo will take care of the rest. These solutions are usually more expensive, but safer.

Main contenders for a beginner are:

  • ifi Zen dac → not the most analytic, but balanced and a great warm sound
  • topping dx3pro+ → powerfull and clean, but SE only
  • schiit Hel v2E (or something like that) → schiit audio, with mic input!! One of the only true desktop solution for gamers.

There must be an equivalent of the topping in the smsl range, too. Since I’m in Europe, I don’t really know schiit offering. The new Hel could be interesting

How would you see it in comparison to a Hifiman Edition XS?

I only ever owned dynamic driver headphones, so i wanted to try some planars. I used to main the dt1990 for gaming, but switched to HD560s, because i prefer the tuning and the comfort of it. Also i felt like the DT1990 doesnt really offer any benefit for gaming over the HD560s.

I also recently tried out some IEMs for gaming and found the Truthear Zeros to be quiet good, so now im debating if I should upgrade to higher lvl IEMs like the Raptgo Hook or just stay with a over ear headphone.

Going from a Truthear Zero to a Hook-X is pretty substantial and imo the XS isn’t worth the purchase unless you have a pretty decent amp, but they are pretty incredible and I think the XS is down to $350 now on aliexpress. The XS with some EQ are just incredible for the price but they can be a little too spacious for some games, though the imaging is really really good and the vertical imaging and placement is really accurate. The dead center image is a tiny bit vague, but it can be fixed with non angled pads. The HBB Hook-X don’t need any EQ whatsoever and in my opinion are like the easiest rec to someone wanting to hear epic tuning and staging right out of the box and they scale like crazy with source gear. The XS stage is colossal compared to the Hook-X, but the Hook-X stages plenty good with tons of depth and separation so it ends up working great still. The OG Hook-X was a little too warm for me personally and lacked just a touch of clarity that could sometimes be a problem in games, but the HBB retune fixes all the gripes I had with the OG Hook-X.

What’s your source gear situation?

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Thanks for your answer.

I use the SMSL M200 as a DAC, the AMP is a SMSL SP200. I also have an IFI Zen Can HD6XX Signature AMP that i use from time to time with the DAC.

With that source gear, I’d personally go HBB Hook-X. The XS really like to strain the SP200. It wasn’t awful by any means, but lacked a ton of punch and a bit of separation too.

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You’re telling him that an amp that puts out 6 watts per channel at 16 ohms can’t drive the Edition XS? I haven’t owned the SP200, but I have owned the XS which is rated at 18ohms and I think an amp with that much power would do pretty well. I guess that’s all a matter of opinion though.

If the SP200 can’t put out enough current then it’s possible. Also THX mixed with hifiman would not be my choice in a good pairing. The treble will sound compressed and sound stage will suffer a bit.

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I agree, but their measurements show nearly 10V and 6W RMS per channel which should do fine with the XS if those numbers are even close to accurate. Whether THX with XS is a bad idea isn’t an issue I can weigh in on having mever owned the two at the same time so I’ll leave that to others.

I only posted because I was reading this thread and saw that OP was being told that his SP200 would struggle to drive the XS and, having owned the XS and having driven it with amps both more and less powerful than that, I didn’t think that would be the case. Sure, the XS needs a solid amp with good power, but that’s what the SP200 appears to be based on the available numbers. That’s all I was saying.

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Oh I definitely don’t disagree with you. I know some HP amps just can’t hack it with big planars. The low impedance can be tough.
My second statement was more towards the reason why it probably sounds like it struggles. My AAA 887 collects dust because it just doesn’t do big planars justice even though the specs seem like it should.

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Interesting. Just one more reason why numbers/measurments aren’t the last word on any issue. With planars in particular I have found that bad synergy can ruin their sonic performance regardless of how powerful an amp is. I didn’t know that THX tech was something to be avoided with planars. I have only ever used it with a rig I ran dynamics on.

The new stuff seems to be better but I know the lower end stuff just never sounded right to me. Specially after I was comparing it to my JDS EL2 stack. That stack is amazing with audeze planars BTW.

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I have the El Stack 2+ and it pairs very nicely with by MM-500 and also with my Drop+DCA Aeon Closed and Open X. Those are my three favorite headphones to run on it.

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