Any reason to upgrade to Xonar?

ciaran500 · 1 Jul 2009 at 10:46

Currently have this soundcard with these speakers and are used for movies, games and music. My parents PC needs a new sound card so I was thinking of upgrading to a Xonar and giving them my old card.

But is there any point? My connections are all digital so I think I'm correct in saying the high end DAC and SNR won't be an advantage to me. Will I hear a jump in sound quality moving to the Xonar?

gurusan · 1 Jul 2009 at 11:08

I would just give them the soundcard and use onboard digital out if I were you, provided you have coax/hdmi/optical out capabilities on your mobo or GPU.

No sense in running through 2 dacs....

Uriel · 1 Jul 2009 at 11:12

Do you use headphones much? I would recommend a Xonar (not DS) for its Dolby Headphone capability. If you game primarily with speakers an X-Fi would have better compatibility for a number of games.

As for sound quality, what receiver are you currently using?

ciaran500 · 1 Jul 2009 at 12:20

gurusan said:
I would just give them the soundcard and use onboard digital out if I were you, provided you have coax/hdmi/optical out capabilities on your mobo or GPU.

No sense in running through 2 dacs....

My mobo has an optical out but I always thought onboard sound was best avoided.

Uriel said:
Do you use headphones much? I would recommend a Xonar (not DS) for its Dolby Headphone capability. If you game primarily with speakers an X-Fi would have better compatibility for a number of games.

Almost never use head phones and I just plug them into my reciever when I do.

Uriel said:
As for sound quality, what receiver are you currently using?

Its the one in the link, Sony STR-K890.

gurusan · 1 Jul 2009 at 12:22

ciaran500 said:
My mobo has an optical out but I always thought onboard sound was best avoided.

Yes but the onboard isn't doing anything in this case....in theory it's just transferring a pure digital bitstream out to the DAC. Which is why a soudncard is a waste IMO unless you want funky gaming effects and stuff which in my opinion is worthless.

Try it now..just connect up the system to the mobo digitally.

ciaran500 · 1 Jul 2009 at 12:25

gurusan said:
Yes but the onboard isn't doing anything in this case....in theory it's just transferring a pure digital bitstream out to the DAC. Which is why a soudncard is a waste IMO unless you want funky gaming effects and stuff which in my opinion is worthless.

Try it now..just connect up the system to the mobo digitally.

Never really thought of it that way, will give it a go in a little while.

ciaran500 · 1 Jul 2009 at 16:08

ciaran500 said:
Never really thought of it that way, will give it a go in a little while.

Have this setup now and it sounds fine. But there's no DTS pass through and only one sound can play at once. Is there any way around this or is this just Vista's pain in the hole audio setup at work?

C64 · 2 Jul 2009 at 17:08

In a word No if your card is good enough.