Replacing a Xonar D2X

Hank_Marvin

Hank_Marvin

Hank_Marvin

Soldato
Joined
12 Sep 2005
Posts
3,652
Location
Norwich, England
Hello,

I have a D2X which is still great although the mic input has always been weak and there's no real solution, seems to be the same all over the web.

So my option is a Blue Snowball Ice to move to USB mic or I did look at the STRIX SOAR 7.1 PCI-E SOUND CARD which gets good reviews but i'm not sure if its a downgrade to the D2X, although it does have the built in headphone amp that the D2X doesn't.


Output wise I use Sennheiser 595's. Anyone been in a similar situation? Think i'm leaning more towards a Blue Snowball.


Cheers

 
I think that card is actually/unfortunately precise continuation...

Strix Raid Pro which according to reviews is exactly same card with additional volume control/connector dongle has 100 ohm output impedance:
http://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/amp/asus-strix-raid-pro.php#rw3
That makes SB Z's average 20ohms look good.

High output impedance drops damping factor with lowish impedance headphones, meaning lot less than ideal control of especially bass.
And because of HD595's huge impedance spike to 220 ohms at driver's resonant frequency also bass gets boosted:
http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=7&graphID[]=3041&scale=30
At nominal impedance frequencies only ~40% of outputted power drives headphones, because most of voltage is spent on output impedance.
But at that resonant frequency that part rises to ~70% of outputted power.


If Asus had been satisifed with using TPA6120's manufacturer specified 10 ohm output impedance then that card would certainly be quite nice especially for the price.
But that output impedance kinda "waters down" proveness of headphone output.

Anyway for sound quality those big desk mics tend to be superior to small capsule microphones of headsets and such.
 
If your sound card still works fine and you have no drivers issues, then I don't think moving to a newer card similarly price card will offer much difference.

You'd probably have to look at the more premium sound cards for better microphone input quality. Unless you need a headphone amp (which the HD595's don't really) or some other feature, I wouldn't say a premium sound card would be worth the extra money over just buying a decent USB microphone for half the cost.
 
Yeah the sound cards fine, it is just the mic input which has just always been disappointing, only reason I started to look. The mic's on ebay go for around £30 so i'll give one a bash and see. Cheers
 
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