Sound cards, D.A.C's

Its not "my forum" at all. I'm doing the same as you, just sharing an experience and an opinion and others can take from that what they like. Just because I disagree doesnt mean I'm saying your experience is wrong, just different. Your approach to audio is different from mine, it doesnt mean one of us is wrong, we just do it differently. After all audio is probably the most subjective topics you can have in the tech world because one thing can sound great to one person and sound bad to another.

@Volo: Here you go mate: http://www.amazon.com/PCI-Express-XONAR-ESSENCE-STX-90-YAA0C0-0UAN00Z/dp/B001OV789U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1390539715&sr=8-2&keywords=asus+essence+st
I'm sure you could find it on ebay as well or if you don't mind buying used, you could check out head-fi.org.
This is a pretty nice buyers guide for gaming sound equipment: http://www.head-fi.org/t/534479/mad-lust-envys-headphone-gaming-guide-updated-1-9-2014-shure-srh1840-added
As you'll probably notice, the best gaming headphones aren't actually marketed as gaming headphones.

@Budwise and Ronald: I didn't read through your entire discussion, but are you, Ronald, actually claiming that people can't the difference between an onboard DAC and a 2000 dollar DAC? Is that a joke? I can tell a huge difference between the Yahama DAC in my Galaxy S2 vs the Wolfson DAC in my Galaxy S1 with anyone of my headphones (and both of those are rather cheap DACs). Sure, through low resolution headphones you won't be able to, but through either my custom iems, Ultrasone Signature Pro or Audeze Lcd-2 rev2 the difference is very audible. Also, cheap onboard DACs don't support gaming algorithms such as EAX and whatnot, which for many is reason enough to get a discrete sound card.
Last but not least, a sound card isn't only composed of the audio chip, there is a lot more to it than just that, but I'm sure you're already aware of that...

Onboard sound is terrible. I've had the SoundBlaster X-fi and I have a Toneport UX2 for audio applications and simple mixing. They aren't even close to being the same.

First off... the major difference in 5.1 audio using something like ADA995 speakers which were like $400 new. Very solid speakers for gaming and audio. I also have some DT770 headphones.

The main difference is that using Creative X-fi you get true 5.1 surround which the Toneport won't do ... even try to. Even onboard audio doesn't make stereo sources into Dolby Pro-logic like the X-fi or similar cards. I don't know about the Z cards.... but apparently they don't have an audio "mode" anymore...they do it automatically. I think that's actually a backstep though. I want to select either Audio mode or gaming mode or Theater Mode if I want. I thought that my X-fi crapped out on me...it's been a long time since I've owned it and it was just Win7 being lame....but I took out the card and used the onboard and I just felt lost. I had 5.1 speakers and everything was hooked up, but I felt so lost without the abilities of the card itself combined with the audio console. Realtek's software just felt so basic and stripped down. Another thing is, I've never had serious issues with Creative's drivers. Toneports ASIO drivers are better though. The latency is much lower now.

Now I know this soundcard by heart and I know how it sounds. Onboard doesn't come close AND it picks up external noises unlike both the Toneport or X-fi, which are both dead silent.

I can't say that ALL onboard is crap...I also think there will always be the exception but not in my case and not in my PC with 2 different motherboards and not in my GF's computer either. My Audigy 2 crapped out 1 day...just stopped working and I had to use her onboard and it was just awful.

Now back to the original main difference for me between the Toneport...the music/audio device and my X-fi. If the source material if 5.1 audio, the Toneport doesn't sound proper. Hard to explain, but it sounds exactly how you would think 6 sounds trying to merge into 2 speakers would sound without proper decoding. So although strictly stereo mode might sound better though the headphones...I'm not going to switch back and forth since a lot of things I watch use 5.1 audio. This isn't even an opinion...these are plain as day facts. Now listening to the 5.1 using the X-fi into headphones...guess what... Still good. It does something in the software that enables the proper channels to separate, probably because it comes with a DTS and Dolby decoder.

So I can't say other DAC's don't have that... but I'm only going by the onboards I've personally dealt with.

Plus... with the Toneport you can't really color the audio with a built in EQ nor would you want too but you can alter the sound with Creative's software for nighttime listening..basically a compressor. It does in fact have built in effects, like reverb, delay, and compression on each 5.1 channels in audio mode. If you only want the center (Voice) channel louder, you can do so.

Just some thoughts.

thats crack and the shape, really interested, thank you

I'm just going to leave this here....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1rXcJuEsy0[/youtube]

http://www.mav-audio.com/base/product/tubemagic_d2

Couple of my friends went this way and are really happy. Price is not high end but quality is really good. Tubes are for preamp only and don't affect if used just as outside dac+headphone amp. Didn't have the desk space myself so I headed for Soundblaster zxr myself.

Basically same dac to most gamer ears plus it can take all of my wires permanently. Soundblasters Amp is enough to drive any cans and so is tubemagic. Also doing some video stuff and SB does magic on adc side also. There's Soundforge and other software to work with sound, but this allowed me to drop that workphase out of whole process when importing old stuff.

Oh and i don't agree with that video also. They are not totally wrong, but they do cut corners. But if you can, do try any onboard "soundcard" with external dac and be amazed! (well use something better than a potato for headphone still...)

Old tropes die hard so this one will run and run.

See if any of you find this guy any more convincing.

On Board Audio Info.

Old tropes die hard so this one will run and run.

See if any of you find this guy any more convincing.

On Board Audio Info.

I wish I could "like" posts or give thumbs up. I can't, so I'm just going to say that's one of the most informative things I've read about computer audio, an DAC's for a while. Thank you for that.

I'm just going to leave this here....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1rXcJuEsy0[/youtube]

Nice video!
If anything this agrees with what I stated in my post. If you want good quality, you need an external setup. If you care about gaming sound emulators, you need a dedicated soundcard. It really depends on your needs and desires. Given that the OP is using gaming headphones, it's a safe bet that the latter is of greater importance to him.

I have a foot in the audio camp. So I already know that current on-board audio, properly implemented, is functionally transparent to the human auditory system. I also know that audio gear marketed towards gamers generally represents poor value.

This runs counter to received wisdom over the past 15 years. So I don't want to labour the point.

What did surprise me was the claim in the gormless fat blokes video that gamers are better advised to avoid wasting money on Dolby 7.1 emulation and instead to get the best pair of stereo headphones they can afford.

So I've been doing some experimentation and much to my surprise I think they might be right after all.

You only have two ears. With one ear you cannot determine direction (unless you move your head slightly : n/a with headphones) because sound is a wave. With two ears you determine direction by mentally calculating the delay. So with headphones on it's all to do with the timing of the sounds where they appear on the soundstage. Something easily manipulated.

This video provides some good examples if you want to try it for yourself.

Virtual Barber Shop.

A recent article from Tom's Hardware which is pertinent to this thread.

Comparision of a $2000 USB DAC, A $200 USB DAC, a $150 Sound card and previous generation $2 Realtek on board.

DAC/Amp comparison.

A recent article from Tom's Hardware which is pertinent to this thread.

Comparision of a $2000 USB DAC, A $200 USB DAC, a $150 Sound card and previous generation $2 Realtek on board.

DAC/Amp comparison.

I agree with BUD. Onboard is a crock. First off, is you have SB Z it can drive 60ohm headphones, not the gaming toys, you can't do that with onboard.

Positional audio makes a huge difference. The SB software does it in real time, such that in games you can select 5.1 or 7.1 and it does the timing so that it sounds 7.1 on your *stereo* headphones (I agree that phones with multi drivers are a waste of money).

In addition on my SB Z I have an external phone volume control, built in noise canceling directional mic (no read for retarded boom headphone mic). It also has multiple inputs for up to 2 external phones of mics if you want to.

On top of that the DSP can adjust the bass or other harmonics in real time. The effect works really well, it's not like some cheap DSP gimmick from the 1990s.

On top of that soundcards typically come with a Faraday cage to isolate EMF. Good luck with the crappy on-board Realtek.

Finally a lot of people don't realize that full 360 audio (as opposed to mere 7.1) is possible with a soundcard DSP. What killed this was Microsoft pulling the DSP API from Window Vista - they claimed that the CPU could do it. Of course this never happened since the CPU is always used for Graphics/Physics/AI. There are some older games you can try which give you full positional. If you don't believe me try this test.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlsIPwSj6Q0

We are truly in the Dark Ages of audio thanks to Microsoft and those 2 opinionated buffoons.

I bought ASUS Xonar D2/PM and Razer Tiamat 7.1.
I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with the quality even with the Asus drivers not being the best, its better than the on board Realtek by far for games, movies and music.

Hey,

I have a Creative sound blaster X-Fi Titanium HD and the audio technica ATH-AD700 headphones.

Never had any issues with creative drivers, maybe because I uninstalled all onboard realtek audio drivers. seing some posters are soundblaster X-Fi users I have a couple of questions.

Which encoder do you use for gaming? DTS, Dolby or no encoder? I wonder if encoding does a difference for gaming?

I just run CoH 2 with CMSS-3D enabled on game mode, EAX, no encoding.Then set up 5.1 on CoH 2 options.

Finally, what's your stance on X-Fi Crystalizer? Never used it myself sounds gimmicky.