I guess what really bothers me is the representation of this soundcard as being "high end"... It's not.
It's a fancy gamer soundcard, and that's about it. If it was left at that, it would be one thing. However, when you start discussing SNR, channel seperation, noise levels and such, you're really venturing into the audiophile range anyways. When you posit that this is a "high end" card in that light, it's an obvious falsehood.
Even if it's never reviewed, it would be interesting to have the data from a decent (what's a better adjective, professional?) soundcard (m-audio, etc...) for comparative purposes.
If you have speakers that cost less than your car you will not hear a difference between the xonar (or any other affordable soundcard) and the "high end" stuff from m-audio and such. however, even the cheaper xonar slaps on board sound around and does the happy dance on its corpse, not only do you get better sound quality, there is also something else, lower cpu usage.
What I mean is that the xonar (or x-fi (if you survive the drivers)) is pretty much as good as it gets for the average consumer who only spends a few hundred £ on speakers, so it is "high end" as in everything above would be pointless overkill.
Of course there are other cards avalaible for the audiophiles, but they also spend thousands to have good sound from all the way from the source to the speaker. For them the Xonar (x-fi as well) is low end "rubbish", but its a different target audience with different priorities and different requirements.
:|When are we going to get rid of the floppy power connector? my motherboard uses one, my fan controller and if i was to get one of these (which i might do as it looks very nice) then that would be another.
Originally Posted by steveo_mcg Why, only a few people could/would make use of them. A discrete sound card, imo, is better than on board for a simple reason, i don't want to listen to every piece of data that is exchanged inside the box.
That's true.
I guess what really bothers me is the representation of this soundcard as being "high end"... It's not.
It's a fancy gamer soundcard, and that's about it. If it was left at that, it would be one thing. However, when you start discussing SNR, channel seperation, noise levels and such, you're really venturing into the audiophile range anyways. When you posit that this is a "high end" card in that light, it's an obvious falsehood.
Even if it's never reviewed, it would be interesting to have the data from a decent (what's a better adjective, professional?) soundcard (m-audio, etc...) for comparative purposes.
I don't really see the need for reviews of professional audio equipment here. Added to that "high end" is a subjective term anyway. M-audio cards are to this, what Quadro FX is to Geforce. By your logic a 9800GTX isn't high end.
Funny, since when is "No one ever told people to reduce their Audio Quality to get better frame rates" evidence that native hardware audio support isn't needed? Try running BF2, a 3 year old game on Highest settings with High Hardware Audio settings through AC97. I've seen frame rates plummet just because of this.
Can you hook it up to 9800gtx so can output audio over HDMI?
I'll wait to see how Creative's PCI-Express XtremeGamer compares. Then have to locate descent 5.1 wireless speakers.
Asked this a couple of years ago and the answer was no. But I'll ask again now..are there YET any soundcards capable of putting out Spdif/RAW rather than decoding and then outputting? Cheers.
Originally Posted by Hamish if the spdif out doubles as the mic in does that mean you cant use digital output and have a mic?
Yup, a problem if you do team-speak, but a consequence of the cards price in many respects.
teamtd11 - I've been complaining for ages for a Molex instead.
Denis_iii - only if you have an S/PDIF to 2-pin cable - there's no internal loop back pins. That's a good point, actually, and in fact the holes on the PCB at the back labelled S/PDIF out are unused.
Ok so i bought this card about a month and a half ago and it was for one reason, music. I use the card in a 16x slot (4x electrical), and it works prefect. I just run it stereo out to my Technics SA-DA10 receiver which is bi-amping my M80 newton series cambidge soundworks speakers with running no post processing on the receiver end. Let me just say the first song on perfect circle's album Thirteenth step "The package" is pretty amazing. The newest released NIN album the one for free (the slip), i got it in 24bit 96khz, track 4 Discipline thats sounds amazing too. I can't really describe it other than amazing sorry. However good it sounds to me for music, which i don't think i could get it sound better for me, I have run into a game issue with it on none other than system shock 2 and apparently its kinda the same issue it was having with bioshock, weird. It cause the game to crash at certain points which isn't a surprise considering how many times it has crashed on me, i just got past that part of the game by disabling my soundcard, but hey the game is going on ten years old they don't publish it anymore so its not a complaint, really the only complaint i have with it is when i boot up my computer right before windows loads the soundcard itself makes a funny internal clicking noise like "click click" does anyone else hear that same sound, it just kinda worries me. Oh the ss2 crash windows says it was caused by "cmgxsrv.dll" so me being the bright person that i am i google it and low and behold one page shows up talking about xonar bioshock patch well i run the patch but now i'm having a problem with cmgxsrv2.dll so go figure. In the end i don't care about the game support it makes my music sound amazing and thats all that counts for me, best album Metallica And justise for all, that also sounds amazing. Love it
Originally Posted by Denis_iii Can you hook it up to 9800gtx so can output audio over HDMI?
I'll wait to see how Creative's PCI-Express XtremeGamer compares. Then have to locate descent 5.1 wireless speakers.
It has a connector (well atleast mine came with one) to transfer sound over hdmi so yea
I'm going to get headphones for around 400€. Will there be a (great) difference between this card and the "big" brother Xonar D2? Or should I get a different sound card at all? It will be ONLY used with the headphones, a never use speakers with my computer (plus speakers are crap anyway).
Quite long isn't it. Is that a front panel audio connector on top? Out of interest does using a fp audio connector pick up any more interference than for example just using the jacks?
Ive been having a cracking issue with my Audigy recently, and as i use Vista64 im simply putting this down to the software and the mobo electricals(pci slot).
Looks like as i listen to music mostly this is the card im going to get, pretty hard to beat for £50.
What would the difference be like with his against the first Audigy?
Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. (Even the demo will work, actually.)
If EAX5 is working, you'll get nice, smooth transitions between echo regions, and you'll get obstruction and occlusion effects as you move around. If it's not working, then transitions will be jarring.
Even Creative's own host-based EAX5 implementation is broken -- if you try Uru on an Audigy2, it sounds correct, but if you run it on an "Extreme Audio" card, echoes will have a nastily metallic ringing quality.
I just wish Asus would make a notebook-compatible version of the card -- they'd need both Cardbus and ExpressCard versions, since some notebooks do still have the former.
Originally Posted by steveo_mcg Quite long isn't it. Is that a front panel audio connector on top? Out of interest does using a fp audio connector pick up any more interference than for example just using the jacks?
it is i haven't been able to get mine to work but i haven't really tried too hard, not alot of stuff to read about to help you with it
Originally Posted by Aterius Gmork I'm going to get headphones for around 400. Will there be a (great) difference between this card and the "big" brother Xonar D2? Or should I get a different sound card at all? It will be ONLY used with the headphones, a never use speakers with my computer (plus speakers are crap anyway).
Originally Posted by Aterius Gmork I'm going to get headphones for around 400. Will there be a (great) difference between this card and the "big" brother Xonar D2? Or should I get a different sound card at all? It will be ONLY used with the headphones, a never use speakers with my computer (plus speakers are crap anyway).
If you're actually thinking of spending that kind of money on headphones I'd say you should look at something much better tbh - £250 on headphones and then £55 on a source is just stupid.
Can you recommend a different card (not Creative)? I really do not need all this EAX (or whatever) surround sound gaming enhancing bs, Quake III Arena is already running with more frames than I can handle. I use it for listening to music. No (professional) recording. The thing is... I am a student, and with these headphones I am already playing with fire, there is no way I could spent another £250 on a sound card. I have around £330-£350, preferrably less.
Originally Posted by Aterius Gmork I'm going to get headphones for around 400€. Will there be a (great) difference between this card and the "big" brother Xonar D2? Or should I get a different sound card at all? It will be ONLY used with the headphones, a never use speakers with my computer (plus speakers are crap anyway).
i think you could get by with just this card don't have to spend the extra for the bigger. the real difference as he said in the article was the burr brown on the higher end one and if you don't really know what that is i don't think you're going to have a problem at all with the way this one sounds i have it and i think it sounds wonderful, playing through my makeshift $700 system, for music regardless of what other people gifted with godlike ears may say about it. i would recommend it to you its that or one from creative.
Comments 26 to 50 of 76
ReplyIf you have speakers that cost less than your car you will not hear a difference between the xonar (or any other affordable soundcard) and the "high end" stuff from m-audio and such. however, even the cheaper xonar slaps on board sound around and does the happy dance on its corpse, not only do you get better sound quality, there is also something else, lower cpu usage.
What I mean is that the xonar (or x-fi (if you survive the drivers)) is pretty much as good as it gets for the average consumer who only spends a few hundred £ on speakers, so it is "high end" as in everything above would be pointless overkill.
Of course there are other cards avalaible for the audiophiles, but they also spend thousands to have good sound from all the way from the source to the speaker. For them the Xonar (x-fi as well) is low end "rubbish", but its a different target audience with different priorities and different requirements.
Anyway, great review!
I don't really see the need for reviews of professional audio equipment here. Added to that "high end" is a subjective term anyway. M-audio cards are to this, what Quadro FX is to Geforce. By your logic a 9800GTX isn't high end.
I'll wait to see how Creative's PCI-Express XtremeGamer compares. Then have to locate descent 5.1 wireless speakers.
YAY FOR A MID-RANGE CARD THATS NOT CREATIVE!
Yup, a problem if you do team-speak, but a consequence of the cards price in many respects.
teamtd11 - I've been complaining for ages for a Molex instead.
Denis_iii - only if you have an S/PDIF to 2-pin cable - there's no internal loop back pins. That's a good point, actually, and in fact the holes on the PCB at the back labelled S/PDIF out are unused.
It has a connector (well atleast mine came with one) to transfer sound over hdmi so yea
I hope that's OK - it's not like it lights up or something.
Looks like as i listen to music mostly this is the card im going to get, pretty hard to beat for £50.
What would the difference be like with his against the first Audigy?
Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. (Even the demo will work, actually.)
If EAX5 is working, you'll get nice, smooth transitions between echo regions, and you'll get obstruction and occlusion effects as you move around. If it's not working, then transitions will be jarring.
Even Creative's own host-based EAX5 implementation is broken -- if you try Uru on an Audigy2, it sounds correct, but if you run it on an "Extreme Audio" card, echoes will have a nastily metallic ringing quality.
I just wish Asus would make a notebook-compatible version of the card -- they'd need both Cardbus and ExpressCard versions, since some notebooks do still have the former.
it is i haven't been able to get mine to work but i haven't really tried too hard, not alot of stuff to read about to help you with it
Probably night and day mate.
If you're actually thinking of spending that kind of money on headphones I'd say you should look at something much better tbh - £250 on headphones and then £55 on a source is just stupid.
i think you could get by with just this card don't have to spend the extra for the bigger. the real difference as he said in the article was the burr brown on the higher end one and if you don't really know what that is i don't think you're going to have a problem at all with the way this one sounds i have it and i think it sounds wonderful, playing through my makeshift $700 system, for music regardless of what other people gifted with godlike ears may say about it. i would recommend it to you its that or one from creative.
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