Gamers, What's Your Audio Set Up?

[jonneymendoza]

This is going against the grain but I am slowly coming around to think IEM might be the way for gaming. There is no weight on the head to think about.

This is much more evident since I got my Dunu, these fits my ears so well.

I use a pair of bose wired headphones and they are super light. Weight is a big issue for me as I use to have a wireless one that was some gaming one with 5.1 surround sound and it was heavy. No longer want heavy headphones for gaming

 

[Rroff]

since I got my Dunu

I did actually glancingly look at the Dunu Alpha 3 (I think) when trying to find some newer, what seem to be called flathead, earbuds recently, but at the price without hearing for myself I wasn't tempted to jump and went with the cheaper FF1 instead.

Flathead earbuds (with some caveats) and IEMs seem to have come on a long way in recent years in terms of what they can do with the limitations of the form factor - though the older Sennheiser IEs are still very good.

 

[baritonejohann]

Going through another circuit, probably not ideal for sound quality. Does the Edifer sub have a high pass? It should have so edifer sub

>60hz sent out to speakers
<60hz to the internal plate amp

Might be worthwhile getting the Asus output daughterboard, if you can buy it separately. That allows you to audio direct from soundcard to sub and speakers seperatly

im not totally worried about fidelity tbh, at this price point and with the environment its in not being ideal anyway. just after a little bore oomph on those lows.

 

[Angst]

Weight has not been an issue for me since the Ananda nano days right through to current models, in fact I found the most awkward for weight to be the Fosi i5 because of how much it sticks weight onto the sides from the massively thick pads lol and that created a hotspot on the head that was more obvious the longer the gaming session went on etc. Aside from that i could not game with any other headphone other than a planar now because of how wide the soundstage is and how deep but detailed the bass is.


Back to DACs, I just flicked over to the X9 today doing some further back and forth and yeah even with the Fiio USB driver installed, the X9 has a more immediate response to any sound Windows plays, there is still a very short delay with the K13 R2R which is the same as with the K11 R2R, so the driver has not completely removed that delay but has completely solved the crackle on initial sound playing as mentioned earlier.

The short delay was there with all previous DAC/amps so I guess I just got used to it thinking it was normal whereas jumping back to the X9 I realise that there's some engineering inside going on to not have a delay and everything plays the nanosecond audio is output in Windows.

Likely to do with the buffer size the DAC's are using?

 

[hornetstinger]

im not totally worried about fidelity tbh, at this price point and with the environment its in not being ideal anyway. just after a little bore oomph on those lows.

yeah would be preferable to high pass the speakers though, does the edifter sub have a high pass function? That's whole benefit of adding a sub, for smaller speakers you use bass management. Frees up power, lower distortion. Or is it straight pass through?

I'd look into the Asus daughterboard, then have two cables from the soundcard, one to speakers, other to sub, use bass management in your soundcard settings and possibly use PEQ as well

 

[baritonejohann]

yeah would be preferable to high pass the speakers though, does the edifter sub have a high pass function? That's whole benefit of adding a sub, for smaller speakers you use bass management. Frees up power, lower distortion. Or is it straight pass through?

I'd look into the Asus daughterboard, then have two cables from the soundcard, one to speakers, other to sub, use bass management in your soundcard settings and possibly use PEQ as well

this does sound like a much better solution. theres the normal low pass on the sub but the pass through looks like its not doing anything to the signal.

 

[baritonejohann]

yeah would be preferable to high pass the speakers though, does the edifter sub have a high pass function? That's whole benefit of adding a sub, for smaller speakers you use bass management. Frees up power, lower distortion. Or is it straight pass through?

I'd look into the Asus daughterboard, then have two cables from the soundcard, one to speakers, other to sub, use bass management in your soundcard settings and possibly use PEQ as well

for clarity, am i looking for this:? ASUS XONAR HDAV H6

 

[hornetstinger]

for clarity, am i looking for this:? ASUS XONAR HDAV H6

Looks like it, it has 7.1 analogue out

 

[baritonejohann]

Looks like it, it has 7.1 analogue out

appreciate it. had no idea this existed.

 

[mrk]

Likely to do with the buffer size the DAC's are using?

Either that or the others use a more aggressive sleep state timer for some part of the circuit when no audio is playing and need to wake up from that state whereas the X9 does not - That actually makes more sense to me I guess

 

[Rroff]

Either that or the others use a more aggressive sleep state timer for some part of the circuit when no audio is playing and need to wake up from that state whereas the X9 does not - That actually makes more sense to me I guess

Yeah power management can be a pain in the rear with devices not built for gaming, and I doubt device drivers written by Fiio are likely latency optimised either.

 

[mrk]

Oh all of them are fine when gaming, it's only the first initial start of a sound that has the short delay, like when you plug in a USB device and Windows makes that bong, or if you take a windows screenshot and the little notification pops up in the corner with the bong sound? The very first bit of the bong is not heard as the DAC internally wakes up or whatever it is doing. If sound is actively playing already, or sound has just played in the last few seconds then the DAC is fully awake and there's no delay, so once the game is loaded for example, there's always audio and no delay. The X0 doesn't have that delay at all! I suspect all DAC/Amps in that sort of price bracket will not have the delay either.

Interestingly the Questyle M15i dongle DAC did not have the delay either, though that is a current-drive architecture so not sure if that has something to do with it. The Alpha X dongle DAC I can't remember as never really paid attention to that trait with it!

 

[Timber]

Interesting to read. The only time I can recall USB audio being delayed was a time playing with the digital filters on the K11 (non-R2R). And one of those filters definitely induced a small delay when selecting YouTube videos. But it's not something I've noticed beyond switching between inputs; i.e. the time it takes a DAC/AMP to switch between optical and USB, or starting the Gremlin straight away before the tubes have warmed up. And even then all of these examples aren't the USB DAC 'waking up' as described.

I do spend 90% of my time in Fedora Linux these days and it doesn't have as many audio alerts, but I don't know if that's part of it.

 

[Rroff]

Just been playing with the Fiio QX13 and not getting any delay, no latency issues in games either with or without the Fiio drivers.

 

[mrk]

Been using it for the last few hours and there is no delay currently doing the exact same repeated actions as I was last night - Maybe it's a Windows thing with certain DACs?

It doesn't happen at all with the X9, but seems random with the others. It's no real bother, just a quirky observation and doesn't in anyway add audio de-sync to active audio or games of course. So for all intents and purposes as of this moment it is behaving just like the X9 is via USB.

The novelty of the dial lights has now worn off too so I have disabled them in the app. It remembers this through power cycles which is nice, but the moment you press the lighting on/off button on the remote it resumes all lights on or off so have to go into the app to turn off just the LEDs you want again. I leave the display window up top lighting on and set to white as that looks

 

[Timber]

Been using it for the last few hours and there is no delay currently doing the exact same repeated actions as I was last night - Maybe it's a Windows thing with certain DACs?

I'm genuinely curious now, will have to test. Although I only have the Fiio K7 (with the generic Fiio UAC 2.0 driver) hooked up to Windows 11. Maybe it's because my Linux PC is using the Topping D10B to optical to the K7 that I'm not noticing it.

When you said it I thought that's a Windows issue, but maybe it's hardware related too on the DAC, or even the USB controller on a motherboard. Don't know.

I have been using the Fosi K7 on the PS5 Pro a lot recently and that doesn't have any delay. I.e. you leave it on the dashboard and a notification pops up.

Didn't realise the price on that Hexgaming controller btw. Wow.

 

[Rroff]

I've mostly noticed it with generic Chinese stuff like the audio on my original GPD Pockets which takes a moment to wake up for Windows notifications and YouTube, etc. but is as above fine once it is playing. And other generic/noname USB audio devices which can exhibit similar issues and/or latency in games due to power management.

 

[mrk]

I'm genuinely curious now, will have to test. Although I only have the Fiio K7 (with the generic Fiio UAC 2.0 driver) hooked up to Windows 11. Maybe it's because my Linux PC is using the Topping D10B to optical to the K7 that I'm not noticing it.

When you said it I thought that's a Windows issue, but maybe it's hardware related too on the DAC, or even the USB controller on a motherboard. Don't know.

I have been using the Fosi K7 on the PS5 Pro a lot recently and that doesn't have any delay. I.e. you leave it on the dashboard and a notification pops up.

Didn't realise the price on that Hexgaming controller btw. Wow.

I figure the best way would be to replicate it on a video so here it is.

The first attempt is doing a windows screenshot and you should watch for the toast notification and when the sound happens right after, the immediate start of the sound/bong is clipped out because of the delay in the DAC processing it. I then load up a youtube video play it for a sec then stop playback and do another screenshot, notice the sound now comes on right on time with no clipping off at the start caused by the delayed wake?

It's not USB controller related as it happens on any USB port and I have 4 USB controllers between mobo and the upstream ports on the monitor so I can rule that out!

Interestingly in the USB driver the vendor is MQA for the X9 even though the driver is by Eversolo, whereas the Fiio driver is just Fiio, not sure if that bears any connection though:

Oh and someone on reddit got the silver one and it stacks nicely with a Mac Studio, one for @Raymond Lin maybe

 

[Rroff]

Try turning off power management on the relevant USB root hub if you haven't already.

 

[Timber]

@mrk yea can hear it. Will have a go later myself.

Btw that silver setup looks lovely. The 660S go beautifully too.