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RE: DAC / external soundcard under 100$

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First of all, when a budget is under $100, quality cannot really be of "prime importance" as well. The trouble with good $100 phones (even though those seem to be rated as kind of medium quality closed phones) is that they probably WILL be revealing enough to show limitations in a lesser audio interface.

Also, you are mixing choices there where some have headphone amps / volume control and some are just audio interfaces with pre-amp level signals. Some cards have the current capacity to drive headphones directly and others do not. I can say that X-Fi's have excellent sound to dollar value, but that is used only for PRE-AMP signals and I am not sure you can run headphones direclty off an X-fi unless you get an expansion bay.

Do you have a receiver that you can put in between the audio interface and the soundcard? That would be best bang for your buck - maybe get into a nice little headphone amp. The M-Audio transit headphone amp is NOT going to be a very high quality headphone amp. If it sounds good at all at that price point, it would score huge points in the value department. I would try before you buy if you can. If you don't have a headphone amp or receiver, you'll need one if you want to get a better amp that what will be in those sub $100 units.

Or you could try something like this:

http://www.audio-ideas.com/reviews/accessories/headroom-bithead.html

The reviewer thinkgs it apparently betters the Echo Indigo on your list, and Echo is not a bad brand at all.

Sorry for being blunt - you just can't get a lot for $100 these days.
Also check parts express for headphones. You can get semi-open AKGs for $125... you might find better value than the phones you already picked.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Presto

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