Not impressed with my Xonar DG

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I have just installed a Xonar dg and to be honest my on board sound was just as good if not better I am using the latest drivers (1794). Mobo is Z68XP-UD3P

My last system had onboard sound and when I put my Creative x- fi card in it sounded much better.

Any suggestions?
 
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Depending on whether or not you can fit a PCIE card in, then either a Xonar D1/X, or an X-Fi Titanium.

What was the reason you got a DG to replace the X-Fi?

You wouldn't be the first person to find it not very good in comparison to an X-Fi Xtreme Music/Gamer, or similar X-Fi.
 
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Depending on whether or not you can fit a PCIE card in, then either a Xonar D1/X, or an X-Fi Titanium.

What was the reason you got a DG to replace the X-Fi?

You wouldn't be the first person to find it not very good in comparison to an X-Fi Xtreme Music/Gamer, or similar X-Fi.


I do have a spare PCIE slot left I only went for the Xonar because the creative card is still in my old rig.

I will give the brainbit drivers a go cheers
 
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I'm pretty sure it won't make any difference to the sound quality. Drivers cannot magically make something sound better than it is.

Some people think the modified drivers for X-Fi and Xonar cards does improve the sound quality. If they do, it's very slight, and not a clear difference.

I'm not convinced modified drivers do sound any better.
 
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I can empathize with you on this, I decided seen as though my paypal had £20 id get a DG just to see if it made any difference to my x-fi xtrememusic (5 yr old), while it sounds cleaner, its still lacking something i cant figure out, but at the same time i like the sound, but Dolby headphone dsp isnt for me, sounds like a bathroom lol.

What you using with the DG? im using a razer carcharias headset, even with the DG still lacks any punch as with the x-fi.
 
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When my old X-Fi Xtreme music broke I replaced it with a Xonar DG and to be honest it sounded awful in comparison. It only lasted a week before I swapped it for another X-Fi which sounded a million times better.
 
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Guys, you are comparing apples to pares here. :p X-Fi Xtreme Music is a £65-£75 bracket card; just cast your minds back to when it first came out. DG is a good budget punt by Asus, with an HP amp and some dolby effects thrown in, but it is by no means in the same league in terms of actual components utilised on its board.

DG's direct competitor is the integrated Realtek army, which got progressively better over the years. Your mileage will vary, depending on exactly which chip and driver/codec set you are comparing to. If OP feels that the HP amp and dolby aren't his cup of tea, then he should just return the card. It is not a difficult decision. It all comes down to one's ears, in the end.
 
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I'm pretty sure it won't make any difference to the sound quality. Drivers cannot magically make something sound better than it is.

Some people think the modified drivers for X-Fi and Xonar cards does improve the sound quality. If they do, it's very slight, and not a clear difference.

I'm not convinced modified drivers do sound any better.

They ooften have tweaked EQ settings, people mistake the change in sound for an improvement in sound.
 
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OP
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Guys, you are comparing apples to pares here. :p X-Fi Xtreme Music is a £65-£75 bracket card; just cast your minds back to when it first came out. DG is a good budget punt by Asus, with an HP amp and some dolby effects thrown in, but it is by no means in the same league in terms of actual components utilised on its board.

DG's direct competitor is the integrated Realtek army, which got progressively better over the years. Your mileage will vary, depending on exactly which chip and driver/codec set you are comparing to. If OP feels that the HP amp and dolby aren't his cup of tea, then he should just return the card. It is not a difficult decision. It all comes down to one's ears, in the end.

This true the X-fi was more than £25, but I would expect it to be better than the onboad.

I have put the X-fi in my new rig and it sounds pretty good, gonna use the Xonar as a door stop, I am surprised at all the glowing reviews the card is very average
 
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I found that at first with my DG, after trawling through the options and setting stuff to what it needed to be it did actually produce a lot better quality sound than my onboaed Realtek.
Unfortunately it also produced lots of sound hangs in BF3, so I had to revert back to onboard.
I feel like giving it another go though, just for the hell of it :)
 
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I bought a DG for my new Seinheissers HD 558s and the sound quality was the same if not worse imo as onboard for me (probably because my onboard is x-fi stuff). I then bought an x-fi titanium HD and it sounds awesome, gaming is much better aswell.
 
Soldato
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Did you disable the GX function? That is known to cause crashes in certain games.

Good advice. I had 5.1 sound running in bf3 and thought I had turned off all 3d sound emulation but the positional sound was still hit and miss. Eventually noticed gx button was enabled so turned it off. Sound is now working very well positionally in bf3.
 
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Good advice. I had 5.1 sound running in bf3 and thought I had turned off all 3d sound emulation but the positional sound was still hit and miss. Eventually noticed gx button was enabled so turned it off. Sound is now working very well positionally in bf3.

Ya I'm quite happy with the DG in BF3 (apart from having to set it to 5.1 each startup) and that has actually replaced an Xtreme gamer.
Xtreme gamer was great in stereo but not happy when I moved to a 5.1 headset.

The DG is better than my onboard.
 
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