Xonar Essence ST bypass built-in amp - Page 3

Yeah, but I only started having the problem with these headphones, my Ultrasones. I'm thinking its a mixture of youtube's lower quality + my headphones needing more power. I'm not going to bother with ASUS support, after how they handled/are handling the situation with my fried motherboard I know they probably wouldn't even read my email.

Did 'Unified Xonar Driver' fixed it?

 

I thought you are using an external amp - if that is the case then the amplification / power issue should not be caused by Xonar, but rather amp that you are using. But external amp should have enough power. In case you are using the card's amp, the extra high gain is suppose to supply sufficient power - although providing a sonic improvement would be a separate debate.

 

 

But I still doubt this is amplification issue as you only have this on the youtune. Have you played with the sound setting and put them to the lowest output / highest output sampling possible?

 

Edited by OneSec - 9/11/11 at 12:30am

I wasnt able to paste 2 pictures somehow so I put the second screen capture here:

 

Control Panel - Playback - Device - Properties - Advance - Default Format

The unified driver doesn't let you use an amp and dolby, but the creator said he may work on it sometime later.

I don't have an external amp yet and the very high gain is worse than normal. I don't notice a SQ boost with the different gains, but I did with my old Grados, that sounded best on high, and distorted on very high.

The sound settings are on default, CD quality, and work fine for everything else.
I actually noticed some cracking and popping last night when listening to some youtube songs, which would lead me to think it could be an EMI problem, but I'm fine with everything else including games which stress the computer.

I have had some issues with flash player crashing lately though, I'm wondering if a problem with flash would mess up the sound.

I'm out of ideas :P

Good luck with your trouble shooting

 

 

Thanks for trying anyway , I'll let you know if the problem goes away when I get an external amp, but it looks like I'm going to have to save up for a mixamp as well to use Dolby.

To retain Dolby Headphone you need to use the digital out (SPDIF out), not analogue. But this means you need to run it to an external DAC that has the correct inputs, because the amp won't be able to convert the digital info to analogue by itself.

 

Sucks, I know. Would've been nice to know before you got the Essence, right? Could have saved yourself some cash and just gotten the Xonar DG or whatever for DH.

Ahh, so it isn't just software that won't let it be done? It was a good purchase because I got it a year and a half ago to go with Grado SR-80s, I couldn't afford a good DAC and amp at the time, and they seemed a good fit. I'm actually surprised I did so good, the headphones and card were my first major audio purchase and at the time I based my purchase solely on amazon reviews.

If I was just going to use the Essence as optical out to a DAC, wouldn't it be a better idea to just sell the essence and get the mixamp?