My old sound or new mobo

jrwagh333 · 8 Nov 2017 at 16:40

My old sound card is a Creative XFi Fatality and I'm wondering if the onboard audio from my new motherboard is actually any better?

Mobo is a CrossHair VI Hero and the headphones I'm driving is a pair of Tritton 5.1 Analogue headset.

EsaT · 8 Nov 2017 at 17:43

For technical D/A conversion quality there really shouldn't be much of difference.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-19.html
But for competitive headphone gaming X-Fi's CMSS-3D is one of the best. (though lacking in fan factor because of killing bass)
If you had actual proper headphones instead of cheap Chinese gaming garbage...

Though entirely other thing is that if it's original serie X-Fi it uses antiaquated PCI bus/slot, which has no place in todays world.
(outside industrial use legacy stuff)
And that motherboard doesn't have those, because they would eat space from good positioning of PCI-express slots.
(and would need separate PCI bus controller chip)
So anyway you won't be using that sound card on that motherboard.

jrwagh333 · 9 Nov 2017 at 13:57

I have the PCIe x1 version.

EsaT · 9 Nov 2017 at 21:48

Well, Creative still offers drivers for X-Fi Titanium serie (and even original PCI versions) so if you like the card/it's features you can keep using it.

Though those Tritton gaming junks sure aren't up to what X-Fi could do in competitive headphone gaming...

jrwagh333 · 10 Nov 2017 at 17:06

I've had them for about 7 years now - And It really is hard to find true analogue 5.1's

EsaT · 10 Nov 2017 at 18:14

jrwagh333 said:
And It really is hard to find true analogue 5.1's

Maybe because they're marketing BS which actually can't fully work as claimed?

5.1 surround sound is intended for speakers, with sound from left side speakers reaching right ear and vice versa.
While during their travel to opposing ear sound waves get delayed and also frequency response of signal changes compared to signal traveling to ear in direct path.
That's how brain deduces sound directions and also distance in real world.

In headphones that sound traveling to opposite ear doesn't happen.
So directionality won't be natural and also soundstage likely sucks.
And getting good sound from headphones requires making driver and headphone casing to work together and is always balancing between different things.
So haphazardly cramming in more even cheaper drivers never improves sound quality.

With human having only two ears/receivers two audio channels is enough for 3D sound.
It's called as binaural sound and it works really well with actually good headphones.
http://berkeleybside.com/sound-dimensions-of-binaural-recording/

Same can be simulated by taking 5.1/surround sound and processing it with correct algorithms.