Asus Xonar D2X or New Mobo Sound

I have had an Asus Xonar D2X for ages now. It's a great sound card but I have had it a long time.

How does a sound card like this hold up against up to date integrated sound processors on motherboards? Do new mobos provide the same performance as a 7 year old sound card or is the discrete sound card still better?

I don't know what components are typically used now, anyone know?

If you're using it to feed your Little Dot I'd just hang on to it to be honest.

That's what I figured.

I'm building a new PC in the next few months. Just wondering if it was worth salvaging for the new rig. Planning to put SLI cards in, so counting up the PCIe lanes I need!

Unless you go very high end, most half decent on-board audio is probably as good as DGX but no better.

D2x is still a great dac and card stick with it

I'd grab an external DAC/sound card if I were you. Saves on PCIe lanes, less electircal interference from internals and decent value for money if you buy a good one. I've ordered mine along with some new headphones today. PCIe lanes are precious these days, especially with SLI/CF and M.2 SSDs around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1rXcJuEsy0

mahius said:

I'd grab an external DAC/sound card if I were you. Saves on PCIe lanes, less electircal interference from internals and decent value for money if you buy a good one. I've ordered mine along with some new headphones today. PCIe lanes are precious these days, especially with SLI/CF and M.2 SSDs around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1rXcJuEsy0

Click to expand...

Why not have the best of both worlds with good game sound dolby headphone an external dac isn't vastly superior to the dac on most decent soundcards.
I'd much rather have a decent soundcard and headphone amp than an external dac amp and no soundcard.

So I'm looking at putting together a new desktop. I have been using Dolby Headphone on the D2X for ages and I do enjoy it. So I was looking at something like the Asus Hero Mobo that has a lot of "this is amazing audio" stuff in the blurb, but importantly to me it includes a virtual surround feature, seems good to me.

What that video (good video btw!) told me is that the Headphone mode in games does that virtual surround thing for you, no need for a surround sound processing in software or hardware.

I'm probably still going to get a higher end motherboard for overlclocking and whatever other features I think I need. Inevitably that means I'll get one with "the best ever audio" as well that I can either use or bypass entirely with an external DAC.

I already have a decent external DAC, but was considering getting a Chord Mojo which means I don't really need to think about anything else. Again, what is important to me is the virtual surround which is often enabled within the game.

Just keep the soundcard you wont be able to sell it for THAT much anyway so for the sake of £30 just keep it.

"Some" games produce a binaural stream (virtual surround) but certainly not all and probably not even a majority.

Im almost fed up with the options with soundcards these days.
I like the creative cards with the live drive panel thingy and my Recon3D was the last one I had, but the headphone socket went and started to fail on me, and so I had to use the rear port, and the switch on the drive bay, but then the card started to play up and so I went and after going through my other cards, I decided that the older ones are not as good and so I then opted to try the ASUS ... Whatever the hell I have now? Strix thingy with the external volume thingy with RAID audio rubbish.... Well that card is utter junk, the thing occasionally drops sound and if I go between the speakers and headphones, it often fails to do it and even crashes some games... You have to make sure that no sounds are playing in order to change that over... Its junk.

My DX2's Power was a useless effort too, and I have now re-soldered a new floppy power port onto it, but I have no way to flick between the headphone and speakers quickly, withotu going through the output selection.

I have had enough really... I might just forget the lot, and stick with 2.x audio and simply make myself a box with a switch to select the audio output on it... At least I wont care anymore about what card to use.

rids57 said:

http://maxedtech.com/xonarswitch-beta-testing/

Click to expand...

I have also got a program simliar ( at least it looks similar ) to this I think its called SOUNDSWITCH.

It is not a bad program at all to be fair.

I forgot all about it till now... The ASUS STRIX Soundcard works by enabling and disabling the Sound Devices and this seems to be where its flaw is... it just kills some programs and sometimes when you flick the switch, you end up ruining any chances of getting the sound to work at all until you restart the PC and this is simply not good enough... Not for a big company like ASUS.

I know that I have been so utterly disgusted with too many Asus SoundCards to want to stick with them and I am going back to creative... As much as I see many people whine about them, I myself have found them to be almost flawless andcertainly less hassle than the ASUS cards have been thats for sure.

Although, I will certainly givbe any options a fair run for the money. I need to make sure that I exhaust all my options because a new Recon3D with the drive bay is close to 200 notes and thats not something that I want to throw away "just because".

Thanks for the link... I will give it a play shortly.

Depends which Asus cards you go with, I've had zero problems with my STX across Win 8. 8.1 and 10