The only gear that I'd want and is an actual upgrade over what I own, all costs far too much for me to actually buy. So yeah I'm not buying anything else lol.

Any headphone that uses a headphone jack is analog in nature, and needs a separate digital to analog converter and an amp. That's what you bought as an external amp and DAC, and it's also what's built into your computer past the headphone jack. They're functionally both the same thing. If you were using just a vinyl player for example, you don't need a DAC at all as there's no digital signal to convert to analog. You'd just need the amplifier.

A headphone that uses USB as the interface has an internal amp and DAC. It's doing the work of your external amp and DAC, just inside the headphone, which allows you to plug it in with USB. It's still having to convert the digital signal to an analog one and amplify it, but it happens inside the headphone.

If it's a USB headphone then that means the headphone has it's own DAC and amp built into it. That would also mean that you can't plug it into the amp you bought though so I'm assuming that's not what you have haha.

Regardless, for any of these devices you're gonna want to make sure any audio enhancements or spatial audio things are off. You can do that even on a USB headset.

I'm not the person you were replying to, but I wanna re-iterate the audio enhancement stuff built into windows.

Amps/dacs are not a new tech, and considering you have a recent motherboard there should NOT be this big of a difference between your new amp and the on-board audio, especially not with a gaming headset.

Go to the windows control panel, search sound, click the sound options, under the playback tab find your on-board audio, click it then hit properties, then check each tab to make sure your settings are correct. Specifically, go to the enhancements tab and disable ALL of them, and go to the spatial sound tab and make sure that's off too. Anything else that's not pure volume control that you might find, also turn it off. You can also go to the advanced tab and change the sample rate and bit depth to something higher but as long as it's not commicaly low it shouldn't be making a difference.

Do this for the on-board audio, AND the new dac/amp you have. My guess is that one of them has some enhancements on that's changing your sound. If it's not in this control panel setting, then there might be an audio suite of some sort for your motherboard.

Christ everyone here is shitting on this like it's not a completely optional extra feature that you 100% do not need to use if you don't want it. Nobody is gonna make you touch your laptops screen but it's nice to have the option for those that want it.

Love it. I'm thinking of getting similar-ish keycaps for my Q60. Was looking at dolch or some other dark grey/black. How are you liking it?

I'm not here to go back and fourth with a random guy on line about RSI, and there are certainly better resources out there then my paper. But any amount of googling on the subject would tell you what I'm telling you. You can't really keep straight wrists/arms with a full sized keyboard, and bending your wrists/arms out from being straight puts you at risk of RSI if you're doing it a lot.

I've written research papers on avoiding rsi in the workplace, so I'm basing my opinions on that. It doesn't really matter how long you've been gaming or anything, I've been at it a long time as well. If your wrists and arms aren't totally straight and are resting on your desk while you game, you're at risk of rsi. You can't have both your wrists and arms be straight, with a full sized keyboard. You're bending your wrists or your arms outwards to make room for your mouse, or one is off center, something. Full sized keyboards are big enough to where you have to do that no matter who you are.

So like I said, you might not be feeling anything wrong now but it can and does effect people into the future.

I have a big desk, it's about proper ergonomics. You physically can't have your hands in good positions for long term gaming with a full sized board, you'll need to flex your wrists in an unhealthy way and you'll notice those effects long term.

Most people don't type numbers that much, and when they do a number row is fine. Plus, if you take off the numberpad you save A TON of space that is freed up for your mouse, which for games is a gigantic advantage. I play with a low sensitivity in games and need the space.

If it works with music apps then it's not a big deal, but I'm surprised it's that old lol.