Just got new ATH-900s, need some help

[bloodandsoil]

Need some technical help here. Just got my ATH-A900 headphones. And I have a Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card.

My sound card has 3 audio-outs (as well as 1 audio-in, microphone jack). Currently I have my monitor's built-in speakers plugged into the audio-out #1 jack on my sound card. And that works fine.

Well so I plugged in my headphones to the audio-out #2 port, but I can't hear anything. Why is that?

My idea is that I want to have my monitor speakers plugged into audio-out #1 and my headphones plugged into audio-out #2, so that when I want to listen to my headphones I will just mute my monitor speakers.

[diekaste]

Nice Cans, I have a set of Arts myself. Each audio out is for a channel. The ones your speakers are plugged into would be center channel in 5.1 for example. Honestly either get yourself a headphone amp to do those some justice or you'll have to use/get some desktop speakers with headphone out. On the cheap I would recommend some M Audio desktop speakers from MusiciansFriend's open box section.

[ooeric]

you can find cheap headphone amps at headfi.org

the used ones people sell 50-150$ would serve justice good.

unless you wanna spend some more for the 150$ + ones.

[bloodandsoil]

I don't need an amp because these headphones only have an impedence of 40. I think my X-Fi can drive them alright just fine.

[ooeric]

adding an amp on top of any cans, makes them sound better regardless. lol
trying my amp on my old sennheiser hd555 50ohm,, wow , literally the cans gained another lvl from stock.

[zoob]

I've been trying to find a way to remap the outputs on the X-Fi as well.

The only thing I came up with was:

Hook up your front audio panel connector to your X-Fi. Then you can plug in your speakers to the back and headphones to the front. Both will have output at the same time, so turn your speakers off if you don't need them :)

If anyone does figure out a way to remap the rears as a cloned front output (without resorting to CMSS 3D trickery, since I use CMSS3D for 5.1->Headphone in games), that'd be sweet...