Stick with Mobo sound or go for the Xonar D2X?

[sparky05084]

Evening all.

Just noticed that the Asus Xonar D2X is on offer at £59.99. Now, I have the MSI Z77 Mpower mobo and planned to stick with the on board audio and utilise my existing Creative T7900 speakers.

Looking at my Mobo specification I see that it contains the following regarding the chipset for the in built audio: "8 Channel (7.1) HD Audio with THX TruStudio Pro".

My current mobo is an ageing 775 Foxconn and the on board audio is pathetic (have an XFI Extreme Audio card).

I'm not sure if I'd be best leaving this deal out and at least trying the on board audio first.

However, I hear very good reviews about the Xonar D2X so as a result I am in a catch 22.

I game on a regular basis as well as listening to music and watching movies. How much of an improvement would this soundcard be over the mobo audio?

What would you do?

Thanks

Sparky05084

 

[synixx]

That motherboard has the Realtek ALC898 chip which is excellent for onboard. The DACs are rated at 110db SNR, standard realtek chipsets are around the 90-100 mark (your old motherboard probably has an ALC888 or similar which is terrible even compared to an xtreme audio). I can say from personal experience with a similarly good Reatek chip on my motherboard (ALC889A, 108db DACs) that it sounds about as good as a standard x-fi xtreme music card so it should be a definite improvement from your current xtreme audio card (having owned both the xtreme music is a lot better!).

My upgrade path went like this ALC888 -> X-fi Xtreme Audio -> X-fi Xtreme Music -> ALC889A -> Modified X-fi Xtreme Music

I hardware modified (hotrodded) the X-fi Xtreme Music, with the opamps changed to the same ones on the Xonar D2X and STX and all the main capacitors replaced with audio capacitors (same ones used on the STX) and the general consensus is that the modified X-fi represents a pretty high end sound card as it addresses the main flaws with the X-fi, so i'd say it's as least as good as the Xonar D2X. Anyway, it sounds a lot better than the ALC889aA so that says something as the stock X-fi sounded very similar.

Now, back at the start I had a set of Logitech X-140's which I thought were amazing before I dived into the world of audio. I noticed an improvement when I upgraded to the XA and an even more substantial improvement when moving to the XM. There wasn't much of an improvement after doing the hotrodding so i'd clearly reached the limits of those speakers (not bad for the £15 i'd spent!). My Steeleries Siberia V1 headset (~£50) showed a bigger improvement but still not as good as I had wanted. I now have a pair of audio technica ATH-M50 headphones and a pair of bookshelf speakers with a dedicated amp; they both sound absolutely amazing with this mod.

Your speakers, while expensive as a whole package, are cheap on a speaker to speaker basis and therefore unless you can replace the front channel speakers with some decent quality bookshelf speakers I wouldn't bother getting the D2X. The ALC898 will perform perfectly fine in that situation. The output from onboard audio is always quite quiet so if your amp can't provide the juice to drive the speakers at a decent volume you may actually benefit from the D2X. I don;t expect that to be the situation though.

The audio junkie in me wants me to tell you to buy it though as a sound card is a 'sound' investment imo

 

[shuzzbutt]

I just upgraded from onboard audio on my p67 asus sabretooth mobo to the asus xonar dgx soundcard and the difference is definitely there!

I was sceptical at first but it only cost £24 and was the only upgrade I had not done yet so thought may as well.

It might be because I'm exclusively using headphones but I have noticed a much more detailed and cleaner sound with barely any noise whilst listening to music and watching video.

However, my biggest improvement has been the massive increase in quality of my mic recording and voice comms. Mic recording is infinitely better using the same settings as before but the soundcard does wonders

 

[synixx]

Shuzzbuzz, your motherboard has the ALC892 chip which is very standard these days. His motherboard comes with the vastly superior ALC898. Not that I'm saying your contribution isn't valid because it is, especially the headphone amp on the DG which makes it excellent for headphones above onboard audio and as you say it vastly improves recording capabilities.

EDIT:

The ADC's on the ALC892 have a 90db SNR, so it's no wonder the DG cleaned up the mic recording a lot!

Here are the specs of both:

ALC892 Features

Hardware Features
DACs with 95dB SNR (A-weighting), ADCs with 90dB SNR (A-weighting)
Ten DAC channels support 16/20/24-bit PCM format for 7.1 channel sound playback, plus 2 channels of concurrent independent stereo sound output (multiple streaming) through the front panel output
Two stereo ADCs support 16/20/24-bit PCM format, multiple stereo recording
All DACs supports 44.1k/48k/96k/192kHz sample rate
All ADCs supports 44.1k/48k/96k/192kHz sample rate
Primary 16/20/24-bit SPDIF-OUT supports 32k/44.1k/48k/88.2k/96k/192kHz sample rate
Secondary 16/20/24-bit SPDIF-OUT supports 32k/44.1k/48k/88.2k/96k/192kHz sample rate
16/20/24-bit SPDIF-IN supports 44.1k/48k/96k/192kHz sample rate
All analog jacks (port-A to port-G) are stereo input and output re-tasking
Port-D/E/F built-in headphone amplifiers
Port-B/C/E/F with software selectable boost gain (+10/+20/+30dB) for analog microphone input
High-quality analog differential CD input
Supports external PCBEEP input and built-in digital BEEP generator
Software selectable 2.5V/3.2V/4.0V VREFOUT
Up to four channels of microphone array input are supported for AEC/BF applications
Three jack detection pins; each designed to detect up to 4 jacks
Supports legacy analog mixer architecture
Up to two GPIOs (General Purpose Input and Output) for customized applications. GPIO0 and GPIO1 share pin with DMIC-CLK and DMIC-DATA
Supports mono and stereo digital microphone interface (pins shared with GPIO0 and GPIO1)
Supports anti-pop mode when analog power LDO-IN is on and digital power is off
Content Protection for Full Rate lossless DVD Audio, Blu-ray DVD, and HD-DVD audio content playback (with selected versions of WinDVD/PowerDVD/TMT)
1dB per step output volume and input volume control
Supports 3.3V digital core power, 1.5V or 3.3V digital I/O power for HD Audio link, and 5.0V analog power
Intel low power ECR compliant and power status control for each analog/digital converter and pin widget
48-pin LQFP ‘Green’ package

2.1. ALC898 Hardware Features
�� High performance DACs with 110dB signal-to-noise ratio(A-weighting)
�� High performance ADCs with 104dB signal-to-noise ration (A-weighting).
�� Meets Microsoft WLP3.x (Windows Logo Program) audio requirements
�� Ten DAC channels support 16/20/24-bit PCM format for 7.1 sound playback, plus 2 channels of
concurrent independent stereo sound output (multiple streaming) through the front panel output
�� Three stereo ADCs support 16/20/24-bit PCM format, multiple stereo recording
�� All DACs supports 44.1k/48k/88.2k/96k/192kHz sample rate
�� All ADCs supports 44.1k/48k/88.2k/96k/192kHz sample rate
�� Primary 16/20/24-bit S/PDIF-OUT supports 32k/44.1k/48k/88.2k/96k/192kHz sample rate
�� Secondary 16/20/24-bit S/PDIF-OUT supports 32k/44.1k/48k/88.2k/96k/192kHz sample rate
�� 16/20/24-bit S/PDIF-IN supports 32k/44.1k/48k/96k/192kHz sample rate
�� All analog jacks (port-A to port-H) are stereo input and output re-tasking
�� Port-A/B/C/D/E/F/G/H built in headphone amplifiers
�� Port-B/C/E/F with software selectable boost gain (+10/+20/+30dB) for analog microphone input
�� High-quality analog differential CD input
�� Supports external PCBEEP input and built-in digital BEEP generator
�� Software selectable 2.5V/3.2V/4.0V VREFOUT
�� Up to four channels of microphone array input are supported for AEC/BF application
�� Two jack detection pins each designed to detect up to 4 jacks plugging
�� Supports analog GPIO2 to be jack detection for CD input which is used as 9th analog port
�� Supports legacy analog mixer architecture
�� Up to 3 GPIOs (General Purpose Input and Output) for customized applications. GPIO0 and GPIO1
share pin with DMIC-CLK/SPDIF-OUT2 and DMIC-DATA.
�� Supports mono and stereo digital microphone interface (pins shared with GPIO0 and GPIO1)
�� Supports anti-pop mode when analog power LDO-IN is on and digital power is off.
�� Built-in analog LDO.
�� Content Protection for Full Rate loss-less DVD Audio, Blu-rayTM DVD and HD-DVD audio
content playback (with selected versions of WinDVD/PowerDVD/TMT)
�� Hardware Zero-Detect output volume control
�� 0.75dB per step output volume and input volume control
�� Supports 3.3V digital core power, 1.5V or 3.3V digital I/O power for HD Audio link, and 5.0V
analog power
�� Intel low power ECR compliant and power status control for every analog/digital converter and pin
widgets.
�� 48-pin LQFP ‘Green’ package

 

[shuzzbutt]

Shuzzbuzz, your motherboard has the ALC892 chip which is very standard these days. His motherboard comes with the vastly superior ALC898. Not that I'm saying your contribution isn't valid because it is, especially the headphone amp on the DG which makes it excellent for headphones above onboard audio and as you say it vastly improves recording capabilities.

EDIT:

The ADC's on the ALC892 have a 90db SNR, so it's no wonder the DG cleaned up the mic recording a lot!

Here are the specs of both:

Thanks for the info! If I had known/researched that before I would have been a lot more confident in taking the plunge into discrete audio and would have done so a lot sooner