ONKYO SE-300PCIE: X-FI with discrete opamps!! Hail the new king... - Page 2

discrete opamp stage > replacable opamp 

Quote:

Originally Posted by raymond555 

Wait a minute..no replaceable OpAmps?

Any news on this one then?

I think you'll only find something on japanese forums/blogs so far, here's some1 who also got Essence STX and the google translate makes it no easier to read (only gives headache) so didn't get much out of it at all http://club.coneco.net/user/14407/review/62673/

Ah, yes, it doesn't seem Google translate handles Japanese very well.

I am still debating whether to get an internal soundcard, I was going for one of the EAX cards pretty much because I wanted to try proper EAX5.0 for once and supposedly you can still get some of those acceleration features in modern games - on the other hand, due to college and such I don't game nearly as much so I don't think I'd be losing that much with an outboard DAC; something like the EMU0404, preferably balanced.

Which is why I was hoping to see if this Onkyo card turns out good - there is no shielding from what I can see which I believe would be a problem in my particular PC, my onboard audio picks up a lot of noise and you can hear literally any increased hard drive, graphics card activity etc., so I'd rather move the D/A conversion away from all of that if possible.

It does have shielding but only for the crucial parts 

http://www.jp.onkyo.com/pcaudio/pciedigitalaudioboard/se300pcie/technology.htm

http://www.jp.onkyo.com/pcaudio/pciedigitalaudioboard/se300pcie/gallery.htm

Looks nice, but what I'd like to see is a really high quality purely digital DAC-less sound card, with only digital outputs. Something in the ~$200 range or so. Since most audio enthusiasts use expensive external DACs anyway, the need for analog outs seems kinda limited?

Any new word on this?

At this rate, it looks like Onkyo has no plans to release it outside of Japan. Too bad, because it looks like the end-all be-all of X-Fi cards. (Capacitors everywhere!)

I'm also curious to what the drivers are like compared to Auzentech or vanilla Creative. They're undoubtedly still Creative drivers, but maybe someone like Daniel Kawakami could find a new feature in the Onkyo drivers that could be backported to Auzentech and Creative owners for all I know. (Or the inverse might happen, in that the SE-300PCIE page makes absolutely no mention of Dolby Digital or DTS...as if anyone would use S/PDIF on a card like this.)

EMU 1010pci  is smth like that, which is the mothercard of 1212M, SPIDF out is very good,

Quote:

Originally Posted by th0m 

Looks nice, but what I'd like to see is a really high quality purely digital DAC-less sound card, with only digital outputs. Something in the ~$200 range or so. Since most audio enthusiasts use expensive external DACs anyway, the need for analog outs seems kinda limited?

at that cost no wonder its only Japan card, but if I have to buy a card for my pc, I would buy this one,

love the cupper shielding lol.. 

Anyone have updated news on this card?

I think it's available in their web store, but I wasn't able to get to anything that looked like a cart so I can't be sure.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by raymond555 

Wait a minute..no replaceable OpAmps?

Really overrated concept.  The people who designed this board aren't a bunch of guys banging rocks together.  

Its not over rated when you wanna change the sound signature of your source to tailor it to your likes or toward your headphones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by genclaymore 

Its not over rated when you wanna change the sound signature of your source to tailor it to your likes or toward your headphones.

If changing opamps actually changes the sound it probably means the new opamps are running way out of spec, or in some more exotic cases, has created a radio.  

For that matter, isn't that task of changing the sound signature better left to the EQ? The X-Fi DSP has a very good hardware EQ; just make sure you keep the driver volume around 25% or lower to avoid clipping when moving upwards.

Ideally, the analog hardware itself needs to be as acoustically transparent as possible. Let any desired colorations be introduced through DSP effects.

Opamp swapping feature is invented for cheap audio circuits,

they sell it as a plus, but is a mark of cheap and poor audio design, entry level cards and dacs, should have their own sound signature,

If you replace the opamps on Emu1212M yo`ll have little or no change in sound, because that is designed by audio professionals, with no use of tricks to sell more..

I like the sound of NOS DACs, but that`s another story..