Just when i thought i had picked my card....

Uriel said:
Auzentech X-Fi uses modified Creative drivers - Alchemy and all.

I actually think Alchemy is the best available solution to the lack of HAL / DirectSound3D in Vista. The Xonar cards use something called DS3D-GX, which needs to be turned on for DS3D games - and often turned off for games using other audio types. You can't do a set-and-forget like you can with Alchemy.

Yes - the D1 shares many of the higher end Xonars' features, but it doesn't have an inbuilt headphone amp. It's never going to be as good for driving a set of high end headphones as the STX. Nothing that can't be solved by buying a separate amp. There are lots of headphones that it will do just fine with.
Click to expand...
I will be fine as I am using a Earmax Pro valve dedicated headphone amp driving Senn HD 600's.

How will I know which games use DS3D-GX. Is Dolby headphone still enabled for non DS3D-GX games. If not then there is not much point in changing to Xoanar. Mmmmmm maybe I should cancel my order. The whole Vista sound thing is complete c....k up in my opinion. most of us posting on this forum are fairly tech savy, how the hell do the average punters cope.
 
saguy said:
I will be fine as I am using a Earmax Pro valve dedicated headphone amp driving Senn HD 600's.

How will I know which games use DS3D-GX. Is Dolby headphone still enabled for non DS3D-GX games. If not then there is not much point in changing to Xoanar. Mmmmmm maybe I should cancel my order. The whole Vista sound thing is complete c....k up in my opinion. most of us posting on this forum are fairly tech savy, how the hell do the average punters cope.
Click to expand...

Yes, Dolby Headphone works for non DS3D-GX games. As a rule of thumb, you will need to use DS3D-GX on any game that requires Alchemy (i.e. uses DS3D). As well as performing that function, it also emulates some higher level EAX effects.

There is a list of games here, with what type of game audio they use: http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/Lists/Games/AllItems.aspx
 
Forgot to clarify. DS3D-GX also emulates higher level EAX 3, 4 and 5 effects in some OpenAL games. If in doubt, try it both on and off. Worst case scenario - you turn it on when you shouldn't and you might get some sort of crash. This has been less of a problem with recent drivers.
 
Woody...!!! said:
i wanted the essence because it is a top notch card, i listen to music and movies on my speakers, and i play games on headphones...

this is never right how hard it is to choose
Click to expand...

- games, I meant music. Urgh, exams have created a slight daze mate :/

I think the best advice would be to get either card;, and don't over analyse the fact you haven't got the other :)
 
Uriel said:
This. Computer hardwarde upgraditis is a slippery slope. Audio equipment upgraditis is arguably worse. Soundcards are the worst of both worlds.
Click to expand...
Tell me about it. I went through a month of insanity a couple of years back. Bought some top end Senn headphones, then realised I needed a headphone amp. I tried 3 and finally settled on the most expensive. Finally I ended up with a top end audio CD player and an additional pair of Grado's.

The travesty is I hardly ever use this gear for music so that why I've moved the amp and Senns to my PC as I mostly game.

Lately I have been obsessed with mice and six months and 3 mice later I am still not completely happy with my G9.
 
I just installed the Xonar D1 and have been unable to run EAX & GX in any game so far without issues. I will try some more tomorrow.

Thief 3 will not allow me to enable EAX Advanced HD & EAX multiple environments
The Witcher with EAX enabled distorts and sound is low quality
Clear Sky - no sound with GX enabled and when I leave it off the sound is not particularly great as it sounds flat.

It is not looking good as these are the only games I tried so far and each one has an issue with EAX. Upon Googling I see these issues are widespread for these games. Looks like I have wasted another £65.

Appears that the GX EAX is just a marketing gimmick that does not actually work.
 
saguy said:
I just installed the Xonar D1 and have been unable to run EAX & GX in any game so far without issues. I will try some more tomorrow.

Thief 3 will not allow me to enable EAX Advanced HD & EAX multiple environments
The Witcher with EAX enabled distorts and sound is low quality
Clear Sky - no sound with GX enabled and when I leave it off the sound is not particularly great as it sounds flat.

It is not looking good as these are the only games I tried so far and each one has an issue with EAX. Upon Googling I see these issues are widespread for these games. Looks like I have wasted another £65.

Appears that the GX EAX is just a marketing gimmick that does not actually work.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, sorry about your loss of money
 
Woody...!!! said:
Thanks for the info, sorry about your loss of money
Click to expand...
I am going to play around with it a bit more as I am finding the control panel confusing and may be doing something wrong. So far I would say Thief 3 actually sounds better on the Xonar without EAX enabled than the X-Fi. Clear Sky and The Witcher sound better on my X-Fi.
 
DS3D-GX is very good when it works. There are a significant number of older games that use EAX 3 and 4 (including Advanced HD) that don't work with it. In these cases EAX 2 usually works.

I'd seen that Thief 3 didn't work with EAX Advanced HD when Xonar cards were reviewed on a couple of hardware sites. I can confirm from personal experience that Rome: Total War will only let you enable EAX2, not EAX3. It's why I still recommend X-Fis for anyone gaming with speakers. The better compatibility swings it.

In my opinion Asus really shot themselves in the foot with the way they announced higher level EAX emulation. They made it sound like a cure-all. It's nice to have, but in my opinion they should have just kept advertising Xonars as an EAX2 card and release a games list where they've got higher level EAX to work.

Edit: A couple of games where it works very well are Assassin's Creed and Bioshock.
 
Last edited:
I have played around with the Dolby headphone settings which I had setup incorrectly to begin with as they can be a bit confusing. Anyway I changed my mind regarding the Xonar's D1's gaming ability.

I have Clear Sky sounding just as good, if not better than my X-Fi even though I am not enabling DS3D-GX as this disables all in game sound. Weirdly enough STALKER SOC works with DS3D-GX and EAX enabled and sounds fantastic. Thief 3 sounds so much better than the X-Fi even with the EAX and advanced EAX disabled in-game. The sound is far more natural with added clarity and punch, and the positioning is better - this is the case for most games.

The only game that looses out to the X-Fi without a doubt is The Witcher which sounds a bit flat compared to the EAX enabled X-Fi. Also some of the sounds seem to be missing like the patrolling guards in Vazima.

I did have a new problem in far Cry 2 which I suspect was sound card related. I suddenly got major geometry graphical corruption that looked like the sort of thing that happens when the GPU overheats. I checked the card temps and they were normal. I closed the game and was left with a loud high pitched noise which was resolved with re-booting.

I would recommend the Xonar to anyone gaming with headphones. The only thing the software really needs apart from improved Vista drivers, (not great for all makes of cards) is a profile manager to save your settings for various games. It gets damn difficult to remember them all.
 
saguy said:
I would recommend the Xonar to anyone gaming with headphones. The only thing the software really needs apart from improved Vista drivers, (not great for all makes of cards) is a profile manager to save your settings for various games. It gets damn difficult to remember them all.
Click to expand...

Agreed. That's the main thing about Alchemy that's really superior to DS3D-GX. It's a major pain though. If I was building a gaming PC for a less tech-savvy friend I wouldn't put a Xonar in for that reason.

If you're playing anything that doesn't use DS3D, enabling DS3D-GX can really cause problems.

I would encourage you to get in touch with Asus's technical support. I've kept on reporting problems I was having to them. They've been responsive, asked me to send screenshots relating to any issues I was having and most things have been resolved with more recent drivers. Although driver releases are a little infrequent for my liking, I've been far more impressed with them than with my attempts to contact Creative.
 
Latest betas seem to do better for me. They sorted out a few glitches I was getting older games using DirectSound / EAX2.
 
Woody...!!! said:
Ok, i went for the forte, goldring dr150's and the logitech z-5500
Click to expand...
Never heard of the Goldring's as I am a rather biased Sennheiser man but the rest of the gear will sound awesome - enjoy :D

I would recommend playing through Thief 3 again, as I am doing just for the sound alone.
 
goldrings sound crap...

for the first few hours, then they warm in and sound fudging amazing!

ideal time for them to sound optimal is like 200hours. so they just keep sounding better and better
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom