Sound Cards

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Mypro-D

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Hey All.

A friend of mine wants to buy my Creative X-Fi Platinum Card. He wants the Midi inputs for his guitar etc.
So what would I replace it with? An Asus or something? Im not too clued up on the whole Sound Card thing.

Running an I7 with Z5500's.

Any help would be great :)
 
Mypro-D said:
Thanks

So they are pretty much the best I can get. Is it a worthy upgrade or should I rather stick with the X-Fi?

http://www.landmarkpc.co.za/store/a...ity-virtual-pciexpress-sound-card-p-2580.html

http://www.landmarkpc.co.za/store/asus-xonar-essence-ultra-fidelity-sound-card-p-2969.html

Guess its between these two?
Click to expand...

Nono, those cards are intended for headphones & 2.1 speakers (got my Sennies and Z-2300's hooked up to the Essence STX - wonderful!).

What connectors do the Z-5500's have?

You probably want to look at the D2X/Hdav1.3.

http://www.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Cards/Xonar_D2X/
http://www.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Cards/Xonar_HDAV13/

Just not sure on what connectors the Z-5500's have, so not sure if they even connect to the above cards. Alternately you could just run them off the optical on your motherboard - this does no processing to the sound, simply passes through the digital signal for your Z5500's internals to decode, in which case you wouldn't really benefit from a higher end sound card (optical is optical).

So how are they currently hooked up?
 
Oh dear me.

I just saw the connectors :D haha

Currently they are connected through the 3x 3.5mm Jacks. Optical is used for the Ps3 and Xbox through a splitter on the Z's
 
Well if you have 3.5mm jacks then I definitely recommend the D2X as it has the required 3.5mm jacks, yes?

Definitely do a Google as well to get info on okes pairing the Z-5500's with the D2X. :)
 
It's so awkward that I'd recommend Creative over Asus, but in this case, I'd take the Titanium Fatal1ty's over the D2X. The D2X has been discontinued and has generally had several problems. For 175 on top of that, they're completely useless, since for 5 dollars more you can get the Asus Essence STX which'll blow both of those cards out of the water.

Seriously, if you're willing to pay 175, go for the Essence STX. Since you're not using 5.1 or 7.1 that's perfect. It even has a headphone amp, but honestly, your equipment isn't high enough enough to make full use of the sound card.

That said, I would grab the Titanium Fatal1ty for 100 bucks.

That was from some other Forum :/ Bwahha. Oh hell.
Should I just keep the one I have? Is the Asus going to be better or not?
 
I can't comment on whether they are better or not, but what I can say is that the above comment was regarding 2.0/2.1/2 channel speakers - which is what the Essence's are intended for running. The person must have had a 2 channel setup and was asking about the D2X; the D2X is intended for 5.1/7.1.

One thing, the Essence ST (PCI version) does come with a connector that gives you 7.1 3.5mm connectors. The STX (PCI-e) does not. So you could get away with the ST. ;)

*edit*

Oopsie, my bad, it's the Xense bundle sound card that comes with the 7.1 3.5mm connector.

So ja, don't go for the ST/STX, as you need 5.1.
 
Last edited:
What do you want it for?

Creative X-Fi chipset = gaming
Cmedia chipset (Xonar, etc...) = music

The EAX emulation on Asus cards is pretty horrible and buggy for the most part, and it needs things like OpenAL Soft, because it is pants with OpenAl too, but that is largely Creative's fault, since they own OpenAL.
 
Audio for me in Starcraft 2 and Black Ops is insane. Can't say I have any X-Fi to compare it to though.
 
It is not the quality, it is the support for EAX, surround, and general hardware acceleration. Using headphones or 2.1 will not show any immediate differences, though Creative's version of Dolby Headphone (the name escapes me atm) is supposed to be better for gaming. I have struggled with a number of games just to get surround working with my D1, e.g. Stalker: CoP and Amnesia, and simply could not get it working on others, like the Penumbra games and System Shock 2. OpenAL Soft does help, but it is not a magic bullet.
 
Good to know. The Dolby "presets" definitely make a huge difference. Obviously "Game mode" automatically enables Dolby Headphone.

To me, directional accuracy was better on the STX + a R100 Logitech headset than on the Roccat Kave's ...
 
PostmanPot said:
Audio for me in Starcraft 2 and Black Ops is insane. Can't say I have any X-Fi to compare it to though.
Click to expand...

Serious? on my prev pc it was pretty rubbish... for eg the water in the distance in the one mp map would play on and off like ta-taa-ta ta, simply awful. Haven't tried it yet in my new pc, there is hope :D
 
I leave mine on the entertainment all the time as the Preset on the Creative console.
I dont know if that helps at all. I just dont want to lose out on quality.
 
xera said:
Serious? on my prev pc it was pretty rubbish... for eg the water in the distance in the one mp map would play on and off like ta-taa-ta ta, simply awful. Haven't tried it yet in my new pc, there is hope :D
Click to expand...

With which sound card?
 
xera said:
Serious? on my prev pc it was pretty rubbish... for eg the water in the distance in the one mp map would play on and off like ta-taa-ta ta, simply awful. Haven't tried it yet in my new pc, there is hope :D
Click to expand...

I'm comparing onboard with dedicated decent sound card. Specifically onboard Intel P45 audio vs Xonar Essence STX. :)
 
PostmanPot said:
With which sound card?
Click to expand...

Onboard, on Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R mobo. Was realtek something or other, HD. Maybe it was some other problem though, music was fine through it, and it was only black ops that had the sound problem. Could even be a bug in their game, it was terribly buggy when just released.
 
I'm not claiming the sound is good in the Game, just saying there's a massive improvement over onboard, and that I found the R100 Logitech headset, while connected to the Essence STX, to have better directional accuracy than the Roccat Kave's.
 
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