Is audiophile PC gaming possible?

No. BBC2 has a software audio engine.

Codemasters games tend to support OpenAL. I can select a hardware option in Dirt 2 but no option to change to headphones.

There's a list of OpenAL games here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAL

DirectSound3D games may also work with Alchemy.
 
Well, unfortunately I was getting along quite nicely, until my girlfriend decided to go and get appendicitis and have emergency surgery on Friday night to get it out asap! lol. So I've been spending most of my free time looking after her, which means no time for the blog atm. I'll continue as soon as she's back up and about again though.
 
Firstly i hope your girlfriend gets better soon, my daughter had appendicitis too not recently though she was really ill the week before hand.

I'm watching this thread with interest, i'm now looking at the FiiO E9 Desktop Headphone Amplifier and the Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro Headset. It would be paired with my Asus Xonar D2X.

Not certain if this is what i need, its for games and music.

Sighs it is a headache now thinking astro mixamp with Beyerdynamic MMX300.
 
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HNR1 said:
Firstly i hope your girlfriend gets better soon, my daughter had appendicitis too not recently though she was really ill the week before hand.

I'm watching this thread with interest, i'm now looking at the FiiO E9 Desktop Headphone Amplifier and the Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro Headset. It would be paired with my Asus Xonar D2X.

Not certain if this is what i need, its for games and music.

Sighs it is a headache now thinking astro mixamp with Beyerdynamic MMX300.
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Thanks mate, she's getting better now, she's been out of the house a couple of times and even managed to cook dinner once now! :D

As some of you are aware, I started having reliability issues when I installed my Asus Xonar DG a little while ago; causing BSODs and random lock-ups.

Weirdly now that I've removed it and sent it back, I've noticed it *is* still doing it, not as frequently, but it is.

Today I've managed to run Prime95 on blend for 8 hours, without so much as a squeak or stutter from my PC. Here's the interesting part:

If I run the Rightmark 3D Sound CPU Utilization test in OpenAL mode on loop, my machine crashes within an hour of starting the tests. So I'm certain the issue is sound related, but having removed the Xonar I'm wondering a) what the hell I can do to stop it and b) whether its a mixture of creative + xonar drivers that are causing the issues, not simply one or the other!? :confused:
 
I hope you uninstalled the Xonar drivers. They play havoc with a few creative things. It wasn't BSODs for me though. Just general inconvenience and Alchemy not working.

I'd suggest running memtest on your RAM. What seems like driver or hardware problems can often be RAM related.
 
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Blend mode on Prime95 checks RAM too, and I've done a 6 hour Memtest86+ run as well prior to the Prime run.. No errors detected.

Also it only happens when I'm doing something that uses the soundcard a lot; games, movies, youtube, soundtests, etc.

And I've just ordered a Xonar DX to test now, so I guess we'll see what happens next!?
 
Uriel said:
What errors are you getting in Windows event viewer?
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I don't get any, nothing. After re-starting I just get a few of the following:

"The operating system started at system time ‎2011‎-‎02‎-‎19T15:42:54.860398800Z."

"The previous system shutdown at 15:40:13 on ‎19/‎02/‎2011 was unexpected."

"The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

etc.

But nothing at all leading up to the crash.
 
Ok, so you would definitely need a standalone amp if you were gonna use decent headphones with them?

Used to have a fatal1ty gamer card but had so many annoying driver problems... (that and it broke) :P

How long you reckon this blogs gonna take to finish? Getting sick of these £20 Sennheiser jobbies and my onboard sound but wanna make sure I make the right decision on what to get :)
 
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Tbh if you want to know specifics ask away in here, even when I write the next part of the blog it's not going to be "finished" ever, I'm just going to keep adding to it with my experiences so far.

Off to the Bristol Sound & Vision show next weekend though, taking my Goldring NS1000s along to try with some amps! :D
 
Some X-Fi cards do have headphone amps. The Creative X-Fi Titanium HD does. So do the Auzentech X-Fis Forte and Hometheatre HD.

The X-Fi Bravura does but that's kind of like an uber suped up version of the Creative Xtreme Audio. It is an audiophile card but not a particularly good one for gamers.
 
Uriel said:
Some X-Fi cards do have headphone amps. The Creative X-Fi Titanium HD does. So do the Auzentech X-Fis Forte and Hometheatre HD.
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Oops my bad, I forgot about the X-Fi HD as it's not long been out.. The other two are X-Fi's but they aren't Creative cards (not that you asked specifically for Creative, but that's where my mind went!), Auzentech just had their latest Meridian 2G reviewed in this months Custom PC magazine, so you might want to take a look. Although for gaming I probably wouldn't recommend it over a X-Fi based card or a Xonar.
 
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Well I think I'm gonna get the goldrings, what I don't know about is sound card or amp (if I need one). Sound card would have to be pci-e, which seem to be much more expensive. Don't want to have to spend more than I need too. £200 all in would be my max though.

Edit: Reading this thread makes me want to get some beyers now

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18244493

Anyone know how well they work with dolby headphone or cmss-3d?

Gonna check over my finances and do a bit more research but seriously tempted to just go all out crazy and buy a titanium HD and some DT770's. I'm guessing it would make more sense to get a cheaper card a stand alone headphone amp though.
 
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I'm by no means an expert but I liked the beyers I've used for dolby headphone as they compensate for the way it slightly dull/muffles the sound, with cmss-3d they are very clear/precise but you might find it sounds a bit too harsh (although this can be adjusted somewhat with the x-fi eq if that takes your fancy).
 
mmm ok,i think the beyers are at the top of my list for head phones. Just need to figure out what pci-e sound card is best. Uriel says he prefers x-fi cards for gaming overall. I had a few driver problems with my last creative card but I've read the titanium hd works a lot better with vista/win7 than previous cards and has built in head phone amp. finding it very tempting, even though it is very expensive!
 
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