The USB plug is its own sound card, and forwards Windows' audio mix to the headphones.
There's no way the headphones will benefit from any hardware acceleration or EAX effects the Sound Blaster supports (if applicable).
Not to be blunt but I don't really understand what you could in theory have expected to gain?

buckeye wrote on 2021-03-12, 16:24:

Not retro I know but somebody here knows the answer I'm sure. Have a wireless Sennheiser GSP 370 with USB dongle, would the
sound blaster card improve the sound at all or have no effect? Right now get sound thru the mobo MSI x570 gaming pro carbon
wifi, which is where the dongle is plugged in. Can't get my head around how it could work since no USB connection on the card.

A USB connected headset, whether wireless or wired, is essentially a USB sound card (with its own DAC, though the DAC is actually in the headphones when they are wireless) that just happens to have headphones connected to it . A PCI sound card won't do anything when using a USB one .

You can't connect a USB sound card to another sound card through USB , the same way you can't connect a PCI sound card to another PCI sound card through PCI . It would be pointless anyway as you only need one sound card to drive the actual headphones .

Thanks for the comments, just needed some info on wireless sound - u don't know what u don't know.

Just saw a SB Z card for sale and it got me curious, bottom line I'll pass and save some money

buckeye wrote on 2021-03-12, 19:58:

Thanks for the comments, just needed some info on wireless sound - u don't know what u don't know.

Just saw a SB Z card for sale and it got me curious, bottom line I'll pass and save some money

Those headphones use a variant of the SBC codec (SBC HQ) according to https://www.notebookcheck.net/Sennheiser-GSP- … n.434586.0.html .

SBC is lossy and is not the most transparent audio codec there is .

Personally, I will never consider a set of wireless computer headphones until I can find a set that does lossless digital audio .

Some of the better lossy codecs, like Aptx, are apparently very transparent, but I still can't understand why, in 2021, nobody seems to be able to bring to market wireless headphones that do uncompressed, or losslessly compressed audio. At CD data rates, we are talking about 1.4 megabits per second.

In the age of WIFI that does hundreds of megabits per second, why do headphone manufacturers insist on developping ever more complex codecs that need to run on relatively powerful DSPs to squeeze ever more data into the ridiculously low bandwidth constraints of antiquated first generation bluetooth 1.x era data rates ? If a manufacturer wants compatibility with bluetooth 1.0, I could understand the strategy. However, even 16-year old bluetooth 2.0 EDR does over 2 megabits per second . And if a manufacturer uses a proprietary modulation (like in the OP's hradphones), there are no compatibility constraints.

Maybe there is something that I am not getting, but the whole wireless headphone/audio industry's approach seems idiotic to me .

If I am misguided, I would appreciate being corrected/educated .

EDIT: I imagine power optimization plays a role here (it may be easier on the power budget to keep data rates low and use a DSP for decompression), but not everybody needs 100 hours of battery life between charges.

Sorry for the thread hijack, but the point I am trying to make is that forgoing wireless might be an idea if ultimate quality is a consideration .

Maybe should start on another post but anyways I was thinking about getting some wired headphones and wanted to see
what some of you might recommend. My price range would be about 100-150 bucks, I'm not an audiophile so doesn't
have to check every box. A mic isn't a big deal to me either, any ideas please?