The Xonar Essence STX Q/A, tweaking, impressions thread - Page 3

Here it's A8N-SLI Deluxe. I have all the multipliers and frequencies on stock.

they set L and R at 76% in the control panel mixer, increasing it to 100% is in good order? and disable SW/CD of course, I'll try 0dB test tones tomorrow.

and is it like the 49720 take a while to burn in? coz they sounded muffled and simply terrible when I first popped 'em in!

I put back the stock amps, it sounds way better

also, I've read some ppl saying that the PLL jitter was very much audible

so I've put everyone under passive cooling, the card gets really hot anyway..

Possibly bad card?
Can you test it in another system?

the card definitely doesn't like o/c PCI-E bus, it's a "100MHz or nothing" kind of deal

if it's o/c, it simply doesn't show up in the device manager, and the drivers give Please plug in "ASUS Xonar Essence STX Audio" and install driver again. at the installation.

why on the earth would you oc the pci-e? to get 3 additional frames from GPU? mine gets hot too, but i don't give a damn as long as it runs.

Yup, I've had it in another system for a couple of months running absolutely OK in the third PCI-E x16 slot of a nForce 790i Motherboard.

@leeperry

I have absolutely no observations of excessive heat with this card. Even sitting on the very next slot to a 9800gx2, it keeps relatively cool.

Well, the PCI-E wasn't oc'd but I figured the MB was stressed enough that the additional load of the Essence brought it over the limit somehow. In any case, lowering system bus values fixed it, so no need to worry any more.

my system bus is OCed too, i haven't had problem with that so far. however, i did have problem with 'Cool & Quiet' enabled. sound got stuck in repeating loop for a second or two whenever cpu multiplier had changed. it stopped when i updated the bios.

so you guys keep L and R at 76% in the control panel mixer ? I was told that the 49720 take 3 days to burn in..yikes!

mobo limitation. my GA-P31-DS3L raises the PCI-E bus speed >350Mhz FSB...and I found the PC snappier at 8*415 than at 9*369. but anyway, the card is not detected if the PCI-E is not 100Mhz(which is understandable)

did you run Intel Burn Test? if you can run this for 10 passes...nothing will ever crash your box.

Yeah, I've run Intel BurnTest with calibrated temp sensors and even though it's getting darn hot it's still within safe bounds. I've got a (with quiet fans) well equipped Thermaltake V9 case and the CPU cooled by a Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme and 2 Scythe Slipstream 1200 rpm (with fan control to make them virtually inaudible).

On a side note, I'm contemplating switching out the opamps since I think my DT150's lack a bit of air coupled with the stock Essence. Still haven't played them 200 hours though, so I'm holding off on that. Things are probably good enough for me as they are, also. I'm not a hardcore audiophile and my ears might start to be the limit - and then, music comes first after all.

I have some plain 4562, might try them over the 49720

but it's not easy to take off/in these darn op-amps, don't wanna run the risk of breaking a leg...besides SQ is stellar already

sounds like there's some crazy burn-in going on....now I'm using the lowest impedance profile and I'm at 12 o'clock! yet my cans are 600Ω

Just curious, why not use high gain for the burn-in?

sound is really distorted in max gain, I guess these are for 2000Ω headphones or sumthing

in fact, volume is OK w/ lowest gain but it's not properly driven...mid impedance at 9 o'clock works like a charm, the PRAT is pretty intense...the Travel The Galaxy CD from Ed Rush & Optical is just constant head bouncing

still dubious about L/R set at 76% in the drivers, though

Is it 110 % guaranteed that bit perfect will become available? Also curious how well the DDL Live works? don´t work all the well on my Elite PRO but then it´s not officially supported either.