Xonar DG - ultimate budget headphone card?

[Uriel]

There seem to be relatively few people on Head-Fi that have heard Goldrings and plenty that have heard Audio-Technica. There is one user review on there that directly compares the two and the DR150s were rated higher than the AD700s.

We pay roughly the same price in the UK for DR150s that Americans do for AD700s. Going from one to the other would be more of a side grade than an upgrade.

HardOCP gave the AD700s a glowing review but they've only reviewed one other set of headphones (which I don't believe they amplified properly). All their other audio reviews have been headsets.

 

[Marsman]

I have seen one review that rated the AD500's higher than the AD700's. They both appear to be the same cost, and both are too expensive. Very good phones certainly, but considering what Goldring's cost, one would have to have a very good reason to pay 2x as much, for what appears to be lesser phones. I think some people are swayed by the cost of things. They cost 2x as much, so they must be a lot better, etc. Maybe similar with these gaming headsets, the £100+ ones at least. I did see that review Uriel, I think he rated the DR150's higher than quite a few other well know headphones.

It's a shame that so many headphones are way over priced here in the UK. It narrows the choice down significantly. There is another thread here, where the guy want's something different phones from the DR150's he has, as they have too much treble for him. Good job he didn't buy the DR100's then. Upto £100, what else offers the same SQ but with not as much treble. Maybe the NS1000's, don't know how much treble they have in comparison. Sennheiser HD595's maybe, but at 2x the cost? Point is, there is hardly anything else to choose from that offers the same SQ, without paying quite a bit more, which is a shame.

I think this is going too off topic now. I'm not helping matters by talking about headphones in a sound card thread. Antran, if you want to talk about what headphones to buy, you should make a separate thread really

 

[robnut]

Just grabbed one of these to feed dh to my aune ampdac and tbh im blown away. Sounds the same as my old xonar d2 and damn i missed dh.

Would i see any benefit using optical out to a optical/coaxial converter rather than an rca cable?

Anyway, for the money is outstanding. FP sensing is a good feature too not that ill use it, but it works!

 

[Prof.Chaos]

Does this card have 500ms delay for line-in port that other xonars have that I read about?
I can't even get this card since no retailer carries it in North America. How did UK got these first. Argh...

 

[Auraomega]

I don't know but the Uni drivers may fix that issue (I read something about a low latency version).

I've just installed the Uni drivers myself and I must say, it's fixed 1 thing that was really bugging me; stereo up-mixing. Finally this card doesn't produce sound over all 5 speakers

 

[Marsman]

Good point about the upmixing issue. People have complained about that for 2 years I think, and Asus would not address the issue. Probably because they didn't know how to. From their point of view, better to ignore the issue, than to say, 'sorry, we don't know what we are doing'.

 

[Auraomega]

I wondered why the quality from my speakers was so dire, then I moved back from my PC and realised I could hear music behind me as well. I find the sound becomes flat and almost mono when you've got a speaker directly in front of you playing both the left and right channels.

And if they can't fix something simple like that then they really don't deserve the yearly salary, I sometimes wonder if it's more a severe case of idlitis than not being able to; they've got our money, so what if they can't do the after sales stuff as well, you could always move to another brand with the same philosophy I'm sure

 

[Marsman]

I'd thought it was a case of CBA to fix it, but according to the Uni drivers site, the C-Media devs made it work fine with the original drivers. Since then, Asus devs screwed it up. If Asus screwed it up, seems more, can't fix it, than, CBA to fix it. Either way, they are useless and need to employ people who can and will sort out driver issues, not leave it for some lone guy to sort out.

 

[silverlai3]

hum.. nice award for this little card!

Quote"Over the last couple of years we have seen ASUS take an innocent sound card market and tear the rule books to shreds. They’ve left competition with their collective heads spinning atop shoulders, not knowing what to do next, and we only see this continuing into the future as ASUS assure that the Xonar is the only choice for serious enthusiasts, whether as a gamer, movie lover or music listener. Why look further than a Xonar?..."

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3575/asus_xonar_dg_pci_sound_card/index6.html

 

[Ravenger]

Is it worth getting one of these over my current card, a Creative Labs X-Fi Gamer?

I'm interested in how much better the sound quality of the Dolby Headphone is over CMSS-3D, and I'm fed up with having to switch between Entertainment and Gaming modes.

 

[Marsman]

You have DR150's IIRC, Revenger?

Goldring's are more suited to DH than CMSS 3D. I own both an X-Fi and a Xonar, but I have only tried DH with L4D/2, as they are the only FPS games I play now. L4D games have their own surround sound processing, so comparing the two isn't fair really. I have been intending to install a non Steam FPS game, maybe FEAR, see how CMSS 3D compares to DH. I have the X-Fi in my gaming PC, and the Xonar Essence in my HTPC, which I use for music. I'll put the Essence in my gaming PC tonight, hopefully, time permitting, and give it a whirl.

 

[Participant]

Is it worth getting one of these over my current card, a Creative Labs X-Fi Gamer?

I'm interested in how much better the sound quality of the Dolby Headphone is over CMSS-3D, and I'm fed up with having to switch between Entertainment and Gaming modes.

You'll still need to stick the gaming effects on in the Xonar CP.

 

[Ravenger]

You have DR150's IIRC, Revenger?

Goldring's are more suited to DH than CMSS 3D. I own both an X-Fi and a Xonar, but I have only tried DH with L4D/2, as they are the only FPS games I play now. L4D games have their own surround sound processing, so comparing the two isn't fair really. I have been intending to install a non Steam FPS game, maybe FEAR, see how CMSS 3D compares to DH. I have the X-Fi in my gaming PC, and the Xonar Essence in my HTPC, which I use for music. I'll put the Essence in my gaming PC tonight, hopefully, time permitting, and give it a whirl.

Yeah, that's right, I have the DR150's. The CMSS-3D works pretty well, though as you say it's a bit hit-and-miss in some games. Bioshock works well, as does L4D - as long as both are set to 5.1 or 7.1 sound. Bad Company 2 sounds amazing, but the surround effect is drowned out by the environmental noise of the explosions.

The surround effect does seem fairly close to the head though, not very wide spaced, but I've heard this lack of spatial separation can be an issue with the Dr150's. It's a pity you can't adjust the CMSS-3D settings to change the volume of the virtual speakers, because I tended to turn the rear speakers down on my surround head-set to more easily differentiate between front and rear.

 

[Marsman]

Last night I tried FEAR with DH and CMSS 3D. It's the first FPS game I have tried DH with that isn't a Valve game. Before, using DH, I had 6/8 channels selected in the Xonar CP, same for L4D games. This worked fine for L4D, with FEAR, DH was pretty useless. That was probably down to L4D having it's own surround sound processing. Selecting 2 channel, DH worked very well with FEAR, better than CMSS 3D. DH appearing to be better, was more than likely down to my DR150's being better suited to it, than CMSS 3D.

 

[Uriel]

Marsman, just thought I'd mention that FEAR has known issues on Xonar. IIRC hardware surround doesn't work at all on Xonar, hence you were restricted to software 2 channel mode. Might be an idea to try more games.

It does illustrate one of Xonar's limitations for gaming though, as this isn't an isolated case. That sort of thing is why I eventually moved back to an X-Fi, using an external receiver for Dolby Headphone.

Edit: While you have both cards in the same machine, it might be a good time to experiment with virtual audio cable software. That might allow you to process multi-channel gaming audio on X-Fi and output it with the Xonar with Dolby Headphone.

Another thing I'd be interested in you trying would be running a game that requires AlChemy and seeing if you can enable EAX with both cards installed. I tried this a while ago without success. Newer X-Fi drivers might help though.

If you have time to try either it would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Marsman]

Marsman, just thought I'd mention that FEAR has known issues on Xonar. IIRC hardware surround doesn't work at all on Xonar, hence you were restricted to software 2 channel mode. Might be an idea to try more games.

Ah, I see. I did wonder if it was because there is no option to choose the amount of channels within the game. I found 2 channel worked fine though, at least for FEAR.

I have very few FPS games. Other than Valve games, the others I have are CoD1, Far Cry, Deus Ex and Soldier of Fortune. I'll certainly give them a go though.

FEAR has EAX, so I'll give that a go, or attempt to at least.

 

[Marsman]

GX enabled on the Xonar does allow me to enable EAX in FEAR. The sound is messed up though, there is some lag and cutting out of the sound. Ironically, EAX is greyed out using the X-Fi. Looked at Creative's guide to setting up Alchemy, and I have set that up accordingly. I'm using pretty recent PAX drivers.

I'll have a go with virtual audio software another time.

 

[Uriel]

http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/Lists/Games/AllItems.aspx

Looks like Alchemy should autodetect FEAR when you run it. Run Alchemy first - then the game.

Sounds like a typical half-hearted ASUS driver 'fix' for a legacy game. I found they were pretty good at releasing fixes for new games but forget anything more than a few years old. If an old game doesn't work now, I'm not sure they'll ever sort it out. Shame really.

I still think Microsoft should have given everyone a universal work-around to the HAL problem. Not even Alchemy's perfect. DS3D-GX is a distant second and the less said about Realtek (like a shoddy version of Alchemy) or C-Media's offerings (basically an old version of DS3D-GX) the better.

Edit: http://pages.globetrotter.net/samaust/Files/Tril-Velbac.html - Velbac has been recommended as a Virtual Audio Cable application for running an X-Fi and Xonar together by Stephen Wall who does most soundcard and headset reviews for Guru3D. He's ROBSCIX on Head-Fi and and a few other forums.

There's a seemingly more up-to-date VAC program here: http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm but I've not seen any user feedback for it.

 

[alex24]

Off on a tangent here for a sec - good quality 3.5mm splitter for my X-Fi anyone? I'm outputting to an amp through the day (Cambridge Audio with a decent 3.5mm to phono cable) and am using onboard to power the headphones atm, but want to get rid and use the X-Fi for both. My amp doesn't have a headphone port. It's an A1 mk3. Is that the best way to wire it up?


X-Fi -----> CA A1 mk3 -------> Tannoy F1
onboard audio --------> Fiio E5 --------> NS1000


What I propose:


X-Fi --------> Splitter -------> Fiio E5 --------> NS1000
___________________ -------> A1 mk3 -------> Tannoy F1

 

[Uriel]

Ooer - and I thought my posts were getting a bit tangential...

Splitter setup should be fine. It's very similar to what I've been running until very recently. The A1 doesn't have pre-outs does it?