Recent content by BadBoyGreek

I had a similar problem years ago with a preamp and it ended up being the optical input board on the preamp. If you're finding that there's a difference in the sound between the two optical ports on the receiver, odds are that's your point of failure. Instead of buying a new receiver, you...

This is purely subjective and depends on your idea of "better" than onboard sound. What features do you need from an aftermarket sound card that your onboard can't provide? These days, unless you need a super high signal to noise ratio or other IO connections not available on your motherboard...

CAT5e is a class of network cable. Odds are whoever built the house intended to run network cables through the walls etc. to keep them hidden. Though you could technically use it as speaker cable, since it is copper, I don't recommend it.

Did you buy this Dell pre-loaded with the OS and all of the "tools", anti-virus etc.? Pre-built brand name systems usually come loaded with all kinds of bloatware, utilities and extra rinky dink apps that you don't need. If this is the case, I'd suggest a clean reinstall of the OS without all...

There are a number of encrypted USB drives you can buy, Ironkey being one of them as below here: http://www.ironkey.com/en-US/ Encrypted USB drives are quite expensive though. To keep things simple and costs down, I believe you could also just encrypt a drive with Bitlocker and give the drive...

The HD 598 headphones have impedance of only 50 ohms, so you're fine leaving it on the normal gain setting. The high gain setting is for 600 ohm headphones that are extremely hard to drive, typically headphones in the high end.

There's lots of great USB audio solutions, but some of them tend to cost more than a dedicated PCI-E sound card. Unless you're trying to power high impedance headphones, stick with a modestly priced Asus Xonar or Sound Blaster.

As long as the sub's output power and impedance are in line with the specs of your bookshelves, you shouldn't have a problem using them together.

HD 558 is an excellent pair of headphones and difficult to rival in that price range. If you can hold out and find a deal on them, the HD 598's are even better. Amazon sometimes has them for around $90-$100.

For Sony headphones, any solution in your price range from Creative or Asus will do just fine. If you want actual RCA jacks to output to your receiver though, you'll need to go higher end as I don't think most of the lower end cards will have RCA jacks.

Spray, curious, what kind of headphones?

Sounds like legacy support for USB in BIOS could be turned off. Have you tried a PS2 keyboard to access BIOS instead?

I'm afraid emdea22 is right. You could probably expect to fetch about the same price that a non-Alienware laptop with similar specs is selling for currently.