Asus Xonar D2X. I'm blown away!

james.miller said:
any EQ should be performed as close to the end of the hardware chain as you can. let the soundcard output as natural and faithful a signal as it can:)

eq doesnt get touched on mine:)
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I'd been put off ordering the Xonar because I didn't like the thought of losing the "Crystaliser" sound effect on the X-fi. Out of interest, I went to the X-fi control panel just to have a look and found I'd been running with it switched off for only knows how long, so I obviously hadn't missed it as much as I thought I would.

On that note, my will power crumbled and I've ordered the Xonar D2X :D
 
Got it installed and hooked up to the digital input on my speakers this morning and WOW! :D

There's a definite improvement in sound quality over the X-fi.

The installation did have a slight hitch and I expect that anyone with nForce 680i based motherboards will find the same thing if they get the D2x PCI-E version. On the P32 bios, it refused to see the card and reported error code 12 in device manager on the PCI - PCI-E bridge chip, saying it didn't have enough resources.

This URL will easily fix the problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942959/en-us
 
kkbigal said:
Got it installed and hooked up to the digital input on my speakers this morning and WOW! :D

There's a definite improvement in sound quality over the X-fi.

The installation did have a slight hitch and I expect that anyone with nForce 680i based motherboards will find the same thing if they get the D2x PCI-E version. On the P32 bios, it refused to see the card and reported error code 12 in device manager on the PCI - PCI-E bridge chip, saying it didn't have enough resources.

This URL will easily fix the problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942959/en-us
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Cool, another convert. lol. :D

I've been fiddling some more and realise that if you select Hi-Fi there is a different sound over if you select Music. I think on Hi-Fi it turns off all the DSP effects, which I prefer. I still use EQ on top of that though and the FlexBass. :p :o
 
Firegod said:
Cool, another convert. lol. :D

I've been fiddling some more and realise that if you select Hi-Fi there is a different sound over if you select Music. I think on Hi-Fi it turns off all the DSP effects, which I prefer. I still use EQ on top of that though and the FlexBass. :p :o
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Yeah, HiFi mode turns off all processing, so it's just the pure original source and nothing done to it.
 
chrissss said:
@ firegod

Will I notice any improvements for Css or games with my Sennheiser HD595 coming from a Xfi Xtreme music?

thanks
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Tough one. Tbh games to me sound the same, just been playing Gears Of War and it sounds similar to when I had the X-Fi in. Music is definately better. But gaming, hard to say.

I haven't tried my Sennheiser cans yet with the soundcard, so that's maybes something to try so I can then comment on the soundquality a bit more.

But games seem fine. I haven't played CSS so can't really comment though. :)
 
would the DX PCI-E version still be just as good? if not, would it still be much much better than onboard HD audio? i'd be using it in combination with Sennheiser HD595 headphones.
 
hohum said:
Yeah, HiFi mode turns off all processing, so it's just the pure original source and nothing done to it.
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you have to make sure the playback device is set to the sampling rate of the material you are playing, and that monitoring is turned off before you can really say that, otherwise i have found it does alter the sound on both the analogue and digital outputs.
 
Just ordered one, was reading a review of it and that was one of the downsides of the card, they did a bench at 800x600 and lost about 10% of the FPS. But then who games at 800x600 where you would be CPU limited instead of GPU limited?

I would think for "real" use you would be hard pushed to detect a difference in frame rate.
 
The Xonar does have an audio processor, but it doesn't offer hardware acceleration like the X-fis do. There will be a performance difference under XP, although it's insignificant given the power of todays CPUs.

Under Vista, X-fi's lose any performance they gained via hardware acceleration because MS moved the sound system out of kernel mode and into user mode, so it boils down to which card offers the better quality sound.

Between my X-fi Fatal1ty and the Xonar, it's clearly the Xonar.
 
The card might take more cycles than the X-FI but the difference in most cases in minimal and in other cases the Xonar consumes a bit more processing power. Since you have a quad core CPU and the difference in most cases is 2-3% more load on one core the difference won't show when playing games.
 
I've just reviewed the Xonar DX elsewhere and I gotta say I am very impressed. The emulation of EAX is great albeit I had issues with bioshock. Great value imo for a card what is in effect the D2X without the frills.
 
I'm tempted to get one of these, but not if the mic level is low.

You would have thought that more people using voice over IP they would have at least made the mic a decent volume.
Seems a lot of hassle to use a mic amp.
 
Do these cards come with reams of drivers and sound applications, like Creative cards? Or do they have just slim performance drivers with essential stuff like balance controls and EQ?
 
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