Which would you get?

Slayer · 10 Oct 2013 at 14:34

Hi All

I have been using on-board sound for the last 10 years or so (last sound card was a Sound Blaster Audigy) and looking to purchase my first sound card in a long while. I mostly would use it to game with and sometimes watch a film or two. I would either use Sennheiser PC 360 headphones or Harman Kardon soundsticks but am looking to get a 7.1 setup at some point. The motherboard this would be going into would be a ASUS Sabertooth X79.

I have sort of narrowed it down to 3 choices,

Asus Xonar Essence ST Sound Card
Asus Xonar Essence STX Sound Card
Asus ROG Xonar Phoebus Solo 7.1 PCI-E Soundcard

I think that you can add a daughter card to the ST that would give me an option to go with 7.1 but not on the STX, with the ST being an older board (could be wrong on this) but both are supposed to be better quality than the ROG Phoebus but that’s a card aimed at games and AAAAHHHHHHHH

I am now suffering from research fatigue and I think I am at the stage that I just need someone to say “this one because……….”

Please help an old man choose.

Cheers

melmac · 10 Oct 2013 at 15:53

None of the above if you are going to be mainly gaming.

You will be wasting a lot of money for nothing.

Are you going to be going 7.1 speakers or are you talking about 7.1 headset?

And are you going to be mainly gaming? I know you said it in your post, but just want to double check!

Slayer · 10 Oct 2013 at 17:54

I would be looking at 7.1 speakers and yes just for gaming at the moment in fact about 95% of the time. I was concerned that I may have over specced a bit but just using on board sound for so long I am very out of the loop on what's good or bad.

I suppose my worry is that I get a sound card and not notice a difference which is why I was aiming in the high side as I was equating (possibly incorrectly) that high cost = high quality. But I just don’t know so would welcome any advice.

melmac · 10 Oct 2013 at 19:05

What size room are you putting the speaker system into? Is there much space behind the listening position? Have you any idea are you getting seperate speakers and receiver or are you buying a 7.1 surround set?

I can understand your concerns. But if you are gaming only it's a waste of time getting a really expensive soundcard.

Slayer · 10 Oct 2013 at 20:27

It’s a medium sized room so there is a fair amount of space behind the listening position and I would be looking at a 7.1 set as opposed to a separate system.
I am starting to wonder if I am indeed aiming to high and would be better saving £50 to £70 pounds and getting a mid-range sound card and putting the saving into a little better speaker system. Just thinking now if that would make more sense?

melmac · 11 Oct 2013 at 11:50

Well, unless your room is huge, I wouldn't bother getting 7.1, especially if you are worried about quality. Spend the money on getting a good 5.1 set of speakers first. There are good gaming 5.1 sets out there.

Have you any idea of a budget? If you have a reasonable budget you might be able to consider getting a receiver and speakers and dont buy a sound card at all for the moment.

shadow_boxer · 11 Oct 2013 at 14:36

Was thinking the same. AV receiver and 5.1 system would give you much better sound quality but really depends on your budget.

Slayer · 11 Oct 2013 at 15:19

I was thinking in the region of £300. The main reason for thinking about 7.1 was the idea that it might give better positional audio for gaming (slightly sad I know). Again could I be aiming to high and a more reasonable 5.1 system would give me equal or better results?

melmac · 11 Oct 2013 at 17:06

haha, not sad at all :-)

Don't worry about it. Personally I would invest more money in a 5.1 setup than spending less on a 7.1 setup. But since you are gaming only then it's probably as much of muchness.

Have you any 7.1 systems in mind?

Slayer · 13 Oct 2013 at 13:33

No nothing in mind as yet as that was going to be step 2 after the sound card. So any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for the help so far

kedge · 18 Oct 2013 at 12:02

A 7.1 system needs a 7.1 source for true 7.1, most games are either stereo or dolby digital 5.1. Get a good seperate sound card, i use the sennheiser pc360d 7.1 with the sennheiser g4me1 device but i much prefer my old soundblaster x-fi titanium even in 2.1 stereo. You can only get true surround by seperate comonents, like a 5.1 speaker system with a surround sound receiver or surround amplifier and stream digital audio oput from the sound card and let the amplifier do the leg work (so to speak). But everyone is different when it comes to sound reproduction, my best experience is with a true 5.1 speaker system with a decent surround sound receiver/amplifier.

Uriel · 18 Oct 2013 at 12:38

kedge said:
A 7.1 system needs a 7.1 source for true 7.1, most games are either stereo or dolby digital 5.1.

Not true. There are very few stereo games these days.

There are several game sound APIs and approaches. The main ones are OpenAL, DirectSound3D (not natively supported in Windows since XP but can be handled by some soundcards via legacy support software) and software options such as FMOD / Miles Sound System and in-game audio engines etc.

OpenAL or legacy DirectSound3D create a game soundscape and mix it to as many channels as you give them. Most games software engines support at least 5.1 and many of them 7.1. This isn't always shown in game options but will usually default to whatever you have the Windows Audo output set to.

A good deal of games support 5.1 but not Dolby Digital 5.1. That's a proprietary format for sending 5.1 audio over SPDIF (which is natively stereo). Some soundcards (and indeed onboard audio) do support Dolby Digital 5.1 via Dolby Digital Live. In that case the only difference is you can send 5.1 over SPDIF what you would normally need 6 channel analogue cables for.

Despite Creative's occasional bad press, nobody else handles older (Win XP era) games better than they do with their Alchemy software. Creative cards also tend to do the best with OpenAL games, supporting the most features (via EAX etc). For primarily gaming, I would seriously consider an X-Fi or Soundblaster Z series card. Older DirectSound3D games will default to stereo if you don't have an appropriate sound device with software wrapper (Creative, Asus, and highher spec C-Media and Realtek onboard audio all support variations of this but Creative's AlChemy is the most customisable and reliable).

If limiting to those Xonars I would go with the ST or SX. This is purely my personal preference, as the Phoebus supports a later version of Dolby Headphone that I find poor in comparison with the 3 different Dolby Headphone algorithms given by the ST and STX. IIRC the ST and STX also support Dolby Digital Live 5.1 over SPDIF in games and I don't think the Phoebus does.