asus dgx 5.1 pcie vs maximus viii

GSXR Gaz Mc

GSXR Gaz Mc

GSXR Gaz Mc

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barrow in furness cumbria
is it worth upgrading to a DGX card over my on board audio

some local lad on fb is selling one for £18

i have a pair of edifier speakers and a pair of audio technica ath-m50x headphones

if anything sometimes i wish the on board was just a tad higher volume while on headphones

oh and yeh used for gaming and music
 
Might be worth getting for £18 if you want a bit more volume from your headphones.

Slight caveat, is that to have speakers and headphones connected, you'll have to use the front case audio jacks, or get something to connect both directly to the sound card; either a splitter or switch box. You can't re-assign connections on sound cards like you can with onboard audio.
 
GSXR Gaz Mc said:
if anything sometimes i wish the on board was just a tad higher volume while on headphones
Click to expand...
Motherboard's integrated must have some serious problem, because ATH-M50x has ludicrously low power requirements.
42 millivolts and 50 microwatts is enough for 90dB:
https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/AudioTechnicaATHM50x.pdf

I wouldn't wonder if you could hear AC hum just by touching connector's sleeve with one hand and tip/ring with finger of other hand.

GSXR Gaz Mc said:
where can i find more on these unified drivers?
Click to expand...
http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/
Just not sure if those have Dolby Headphone, which would be useful for gaming.
Though Dolby Headphone isn't good for strong bass headphones and ATHM-M50X is likely seriously too inaccurate for demands of binaural sound.

You can test it with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_20T8x_OI
Dolby Headphone starts 7:13
Standard stereo from game 12:57
With actually good headphones there's also good feel of distances besides direction.
(if listeners head shape is close to average)

Also with super high sensitivity of those headphones there's risk of this bug of Xonar sound cards being seriously bad for hearing:
http://maxedtech.com/uni-xonar-faq-troubleshooting-guide/
18. Occasionally I get loud white/static noise. Why is that and is there something that can be done to prevent this?

There are at least two instances:
  1. It may be a issue or incompatibility between the motherboard and the Xonar audio card. Ironically, ASUS motherboards are most prone to this issue. Unfortunately there isn’t much it can be done. You should look into updating the motherboard BIOS to the latest version. If that does not solve the problem a possible solution would be to change the motherboard if you think the card you own is worth it.
  2. A Windows 10 only issue. Discussions for this case are talking place on this page. No solution has been found so far except reverting back to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.
General recommendations: If you run into this issues and have not found a solution you should either buy a different audio card that’s not powered by C-Media audio chips (so no ASUS or HTOmega), buy an external DAC or at least take some precautionary measures like controlling the volume with a amplifier while having Windows volume always set to 100%. Keep in mind that nothing is worth permanently damaging your ears.​


And as Marsman said, common with all budget sound cards is having no separate headphone output and line output for speakers.
So you'll need to use splitter cable/audio switch, or connect front audio connectors of case to sound card and use those for headphones.
 
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