Asus Xonar Essence STX driver settings

Ross92

Ross92

Ross92

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So last week I bought the Essence STX card along with the Sennheiser PC360's.
I've been thoroughly enjoying them for music and movies!

but I'm wondering how to set up the audio drivers best for gaming, the options are totally vague and I'm not really sure what I'm ment to be doing in terms of pairing options with each other.

For watching movies and listening to music, I'm switching it onto hifi and that's it, no dolbey headphone or anything and it sounds good.

But for gaming, specifically BFBC2 I'm trying the GAME mode with dolbey headphone mode, should i be putting on the pro logic and the virtual surround aswell? I've tried a few of these and it blows up the in game sounds but makes it almost static aswell.

Do any of you guys have any experience of the PC360's and the STX pairing and can you give me some hints and/or tips to help me get the best sound available?
 
Here is what I set my STX to when gaming:

Audio Channel: 8 channels
Sample Rate: Doesn't really matter but I think 48KHz is for games.
Analog Out: Headphones
Dolby Headphone Checked
DH-1 selected on the right side above the picture of the head and speakers.

Make sure all 'DSP Mode' buttons are disabled on the far right under the volume control.

As for BCBC2, I don't know if it's just the game's sound engine, but everyone is a frickin' ninja! Footsteps are not audible (except my own) and it's definitely not my sound issue because in CSS, L4D2 and CoD:Blops I can soundwhore no problem. Also, gunfire and people shouting "grenade!" etc are fine and can be used to locate enemies, but footsteps specifically are silent.

Is it a design thing to level the playing field? I hope BF3 doesn't have this as getting knifed in the back by a sprinting ninja carrying full combat gear is rage inducing.
 
Last edited:
Haha, tell me about being ninjas! :D

What settings do you use for music and dvd's then shamrock?

Thanks a lot for the super quick reply aswell ^^
 
If movie watching with headphones I'd generally use the same settings (8 channels and Dolby Headphone giving virtual 7.1), but then you can maybe change to DH-2 or DH-3 to increase the size of the virtual room giving a more spacious sound or even use the speaker shifter to move them around to suit your preferences.
 
To help with the 'ninja's' lol in bfbc2, as well as doing the things shamrock has said, I increased the 7.1 virtual speaker shifter to max. Seems to work for me.
 
When i'm listening to music on the Xonar Essence STX with headphones I always use the following settings to obtain the very best sound quality:

Audio Channel: 2 Channels - as standard audio CD's are all stereo.
Sample Rate: 44.1KHz - this is the sample rate used on all standard audio CD's.
Analog Out: Headphones
DSP Mode: Hi-Fi - this disables all other effects which may change the sound of the audio.

It is important to choose the 44.1KHz sample rate for music, as this matches the standard CD format. If you choose anything else here the card will perform sample rate conversion, which can potentially affect sound quality. For DVD's, Blu-Ray's and games however the normal sample rate is 48KHz.
 
Is using the Hi-Fi DSP mode the same as just having all sound effect turned off in the control panel?

I have all the sound effects (equaliser, room effects, etc) disabled on mine and don't notice any difference when enabling the Hi-Fi mode.
 
Yes using the HI-FI DSP mode turns off all other DSP's and effects so that's why you don't notice any difference.
 
Shamrock said:
I doubt anyone could hear the differences between 44.1, 48 and 96 sample rates in a blind test.
Click to expand...

It's not really the sample rate itself that's important, just selecting the one the same as the source to stop SRC. I'm not sure if the Xonar drivers will be using the windows SRC (probably are) but there's a bug that causes serve sound quality reduction on SRC from 44.1kHz -> 48kHz at frequencies around 100Hz.
 
I just think any "sound quality reduction" from resampling would be so negligible that nobody would even notice.
 
If it's just general resampling you are probably right (though why spend lots of money on good equipment to not spend 5 second setting your software up?), however, with the bug in the windows SRC the sound quality loss is massive if WaveOut is used.

We aren't talking 'You might just tell the difference' on that one, that quality loss is huge. Terrible artifacts in the sound.
 
Shamrock said:
I just think any "sound quality reduction" from resampling would be so negligible that nobody would even notice.
Click to expand...

Whilst that may very well be true in most circumstances, it's always best to match the sample rate to the source material being played. I mean you wouldn't buy a full HD 1080p monitor and then choose 720p as your display resolution, so why have your soundcard perform sample rate conversion when it isn't necessary to do so? By using 44.1KHz for CD music and 48KHz for DVD/Blu-Ray/Games you are playing at the source's original sample rate.
 
DarkBahamut said:
I'm not sure if the Xonar drivers will be using the windows SRC (probably are) but there's a bug that causes serve sound quality reduction on SRC from 44.1kHz -> 48kHz at frequencies around 100Hz.
Click to expand...

The sample rate setting in the Xonar Audio Center overrides the Windows default sample rate settings (on windows 7 64-bit anyway). When I plug my PC into the DacMagic on my Hi-Fi and alter the sample rate in the Xonar software, the incomming sample rate displayed on the DacMagic also changes. You can therefore be sure that if you set the Xonar sample rate correctly to the source being played, you will be fine.
 
I always have mine on 44.1khz in the Xonar control panel, inlcuding the windows sound control panel which is set to ouput at 44.1khz/24bit, this way there is no conversion going on when listening to CD audio (44.1khz/16bit). From what I know, 16bit audio can be represented as 24bit audio losslessly.

I know I almost certainly couldn't tell the difference anyhow, but I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing that my music isn't being messed around with. :o
 
titaniumx3 said:
I always have mine on 44.1khz in the Xonar control panel, inlcuding the windows sound control panel which is set to ouput at 44.1khz/24bit, this way there is no conversion going on when listening to CD audio (44.1khz/16bit). From what I know, 16bit audio can be represented as 24bit audio losslessly.

I know I almost certainly couldn't tell the difference anyhow, but I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing that my music isn't being messed around with. :o
Click to expand...


That's my thinking too! So long as I have 44.1KHz selected, my music is being played as was intended.

I'm also pretty sure that setting to 24bit output in Window's control panel is fine. When using the 24bit setting it's my understanding that when playing 16bit audio files, zeros are added to "pad out" the file to the full 24bits. The bonus of this of course is if you have any high resolution 24bit audio files, they aren't downscaled to 16bit (which would affect the sound of those files).
 
Does the bug affect 44.1KHz > 96khz?

I'm pretty lazy and changing my sample rate every time I decide to listen to music or play games or watch a movie is effort! :p

Leaving it at 44.1 all the time would mean downsampling would occur on 48Khz stuff which is worse than 44.1 being upsampled?

And yeah, windows sound control panel setting has to match the Xonar settings.
 
Shamrock said:
Leaving it at 44.1 all the time would mean downsampling would occur on 48Khz stuff which is worse than 44.1 being upsampled?.
Click to expand...

I personally find the opposite to be true. 44.1KHz when upconverted to 48 KHz sounds worse than 48KHz downsampled to 44.1KHz. To be fair I can't really tell when the sample rate conversion downscales a DVD or Blu-Ray to 44.1KHz (not that I've bothered to test the matter that much, as changing the sample rate in the Xonar software seems far easier).

Shamrock said:
And yeah, windows sound control panel setting has to match the Xonar settings.
Click to expand...

This certainly isn't true of Windows 7 64-bit. I have the sample rate in the Windows sound settings constantly set at 44.1KHz 24-bit. When I change the Xonar software to either 48KHz, 96KHz or 192KHz, that sample rate overrides the one set in the Windows sound settings. This is easily verfied by my DacMagic which has LED's to display the sample rate which it is being fed by the PC. When using the Xonar software their is no reason to keep changing the settings in the Windows control panel, just set it in the Xonar software itself.
 
Fair enough, I think I'll just stick everything at 24/44.1 then and leave it. I doubt my hearing is good enough to discern any differences even though my gear should be.
 
That's how I'd personally do it if I wasn't wanting to change the sample rates about.

The differences on my system (even through my rather critical Grado SR225i headphones), aren't exactly terrible. In fact, if I wasn't trying to deliberately focus on them I probably wouldn't even notice. I just found the differences were a bit easier to pick up when 44.1KHz material (like my lossless FLAC music files) was upconverted.
 
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