Keep Asus Xonar essence stx ii or use on board?

Geo-Gamer · 22 Jul 2017 at 11:32

Hello everyone hope all is well.

I am currently thinking of going sli on my 1080ti strix but in order to do so i need to remove my Asus xonar essence stx ii sound card.

Question is, I have a Asus maiximus xi forumla and wondering if the on board sound is good enough to match the stx sound card as i have been reading on board sound has improved lately?

Or could anyone recommend me an amp/dac or even a external sound card may be a viable option? I use the AKG K702 headphones.

The system is mostly for gaming.

Thanks for the help!

himen256 · 22 Jul 2017 at 12:07

If you are using headphones its night and day, get something like that Link. I have one and work just fine and let me move my sound card down so graphic card have more room to breathe.

Huntyz · 22 Jul 2017 at 12:17

I have the same motherboard and ran 2 Titan X Maxwell's with a STX II slotted in the middle of them no problem.

But i'm guessing your running the cards on air and want the space for airflow/card sticks out too much?

Onboard cant touch a dedicated card for sound quality.

Geo-Gamer · 22 Jul 2017 at 13:24

Thanks for the input guys! Sadly I aint water cooled and the ti's take up 2.5 slot bays each!

I'l forget about the on board sound then even with a high end mobo like mine.

I have narrowed it down to a external sound card like this : https://www.overclockers.co.uk/crea...-card-with-headphone-amplifier-sp-183-cl.html

How does that compare with the Asus essence stx ii , will it give me similar audio quality?

Or would you go for a amp/dac instead such as the E10k

Thanks again!

EsaT · 22 Jul 2017 at 17:04

Geo-Gamer said:
I have narrowed it down to a external sound card like this : https://www.overclockers.co.uk/crea...-card-with-headphone-amplifier-sp-183-cl.html

How does that compare with the Asus essence stx ii , will it give me similar audio quality?

Or would you go for a amp/dac instead such as the E10k!

Signal quality wise reaching limits of human hearing doesn't require the fanciest and most expensive components and motherboards would be well capable to it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-19.html
But driving not the easiest headphones like K702 in all situations is likely different thing unless motherboard maker has spend lot more budget than usual for integrated sound card's implementation.
(though even Realtek chips themselves are better than some totally overpriced Sennheiser GSX with its low end phone/tablet DAC/output buffer chip)

And for gaming you'll want binaural-simulation.
Start listening from stereo sound at 13 minutes and then return to start.

With AKG K702s being one of the best headphones for competitive binaural gaming should sound like entirely different game...

DACs don't have any such features because they're just dumb single job digital to analog converters.

Marsman · 22 Jul 2017 at 18:57

Soundblaster G5 is a good choice, especially if you want to make use of the positional sound effects that SBX provides. Should be fairly comparable to the Essence/ZxR cards, as it uses the same headphone amp. The K702 need a good amp, so no problem there. The DAC isn't quite as good, but for an external device that costs £120 and provides positional sound features, such as SBX, it's as good as you're going to get without paying a lot more. From purely a sound quality point of view, there are better external options, but you'll end up paying double that at the very least; and in the case of a Schiit stack, you won't get access to SBX.

builder22 · 22 Jul 2017 at 19:01

Sorry for mini hijack but any amp would stilll allow the positional effects if the DAC or onboard sound supported it?

EsaT · 22 Jul 2017 at 20:34

builder22 said:
Sorry for mini hijack but any amp would stilll allow the positional effects if the DAC or onboard sound supported it?

Correct, you can chain separate amplifier between signal source and output device, be it headphones or speakers.
That's actually quite common especially with speakers.

Though you won't be getting binaural-sound from plain DAC which is dumb single purpose device just taking zeroes and ones in and turning out analog signal.
DAC is literally what it says in tin: Digital/Analog Converter.
Sounds cards tend to come with lot more features including inputs with their ADCs (Analog/Digital Converter)
Neither can Realteks integrated into motherboards do binaural sound because it needs more complex algorithms than just downmixing 5.1 signal to 2.0 and some crossfeed.

Though it can be done in software before sound card/DAC device and some Gigabyte's gaming motherboards come with Creative's software bundled:

Earlier Creative also sold software to end users in their web store but they seem to have stopped that.

But for example you could take overal very cheap for its features Sound Blaster Z and then add high performance headphone amplifier like Objective2 ending to lower total price than top class sound cards with technically way worser TPA6120 based outputs.
(TPA6120's 10 ohm output resistor requirement makes it lot les than ideal for lowest impedance cans)

rids57 · 23 Jul 2017 at 02:41

.... except that the sound quality will be limited by the weakest link, which is probably the headphone amp in the SB Z - plus you will get increased noise due to double amping

Rroff · 23 Jul 2017 at 03:23

EsaT said:
Signal quality wise reaching limits of human hearing doesn't require the fanciest and most expensive components and motherboards would be well capable to it.

Problem with motherboard audio - very few manufacturers (and even then it tends to only be their top tier boards) have any proper attention paid to the routing of traces, etc. making them far more susceptible to EMI and other parasitic currents than other sound devices. I also quite commonly see pants on head things like using a reasonably decent sound processor and DAC but then sticking cheap and nasty aluminium electrolytic capacitors in the signal path or vice versa using audio grade capacitors but "workhorse" barrel scraping op amps that might be on paper "transparent" but suck any life out of the audio - though even external consumer DACs, etc. aren't immune to that.

While I am a bit of a sucker for a nice boutique "audio grade" capacitor, etc. I've often subjectively found a little bit of it can go a long way in testing in terms of making things sound a bit more pleasurable.

EsaT · 23 Jul 2017 at 09:07

rids57 said:
.... except that the sound quality will be limited by the weakest link, which is probably the headphone amp in the SB Z - plus you will get increased noise due to double amping

Having line input as load is lot lighter to drive for output circuitry than headphones.
Load/output current has major effect to electrical performance of opamps.

Though I guess if used opamp is some exotic hype radio frequency opamp mostly fit for radio transmitter you never know what it might do...

rids57 · 23 Jul 2017 at 14:07

if using line output then the virtual surround won't be available, which is the main idea of using a sound card in the first place

Rroff · 23 Jul 2017 at 14:26

EsaT said:
Having line input as load is lot lighter to drive for output circuitry than headphones.
Load/output current has major effect to electrical performance of opamps.

Though I guess if used opamp is some exotic hype radio frequency opamp mostly fit for radio transmitter you never know what it might do...

Pretty much all op amps used for audio these days are in the MHz range with GHz or higher more specialised op amps that don't tend to be used for consumer audio. For some reason op amps designed primarily as DSL drivers aren't completely uncommon in use here but the crude slew boosters they tend to use, which aren't a problem with their intended use, aren't ideal for audio.

Without a gain switch and/or depending on how the volume control is implemented in the topology driving an amp from a higher level source can result in excessive noise being amplified or driving them into clipping or distortion but a well designed amp should handle line level input really and minimal issues with headphine output even if amped if you have control over the volume before the last amp.

llamadal · 27 Jul 2017 at 14:51

a lot of good feedback in this thread but it ultimately comes down to the difference that you hear...

Take out the stx for a couple of weeks, use onboard and see how you feel about it.

Onboard sound used to be utterly terrible but while it will never please the audiophiles, they have come on a decent amount so not worth entirely ruling out.

Admetos · 27 Jul 2017 at 16:21

When it comes to sound the ultimate test is to experiment and listen.

I recommend keeping the Asus STX in and switching between this on the on-board sound, you need to play different music and do this over a weekend with sleeping in-between testing. I suspect the STX will still be better, but the on-board may be good enough that it's not worth the trade covering over a graphics card.