Soundcard WITHOUT built in amp! - Page 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syltburken 

Because it feels much more simple. I am off gaming pretty much moving around my computer and then I wont be able to take both the external dac and amp with me. And when you look at soundcards there is a lot of more reviews and stuff. But I don't know if you know a really nice external DAC from 150-250$ then please link me ;)

Then there's an advantage to having an amp built in, isn't there?  The STX, for example, according to reviews and specs (voltage swing) has a sufficiently powerful amp to do justice to high-end high impedance headphones (i.e. Sennheisers) for transportable use (i.e. LANs or whatever)...  You wouldn't necessarily need to take the amp with you.  Or are you saying that you would take it but somehow wouldn't be able to take an extra little box?  That doesn't really make sense either, considering how small DACs are...  It's hard to guess exactly what you mean in your second sentence there.

Also, you have to realize the economics of producing such a component.  The market for an internal DAC card with no DSP or headphone amp would be tiny.  To begin with, desktop sales have been falling for years and will continue to fall for some time to come.

The largest existing market for desktop computers - corporate, government, and educational uses where a laptop's portability is its biggest disadvantage - isn't at all interested in that sort of product.  Nor are budget-conscious econo-box buyers.  The remaining significant market - gamers and power users - explicitly wants all those extra features the vast majority of the time.  What's left?  Not much in the way of a market, and none of the sound card manufacturers are interested in developing an internal product for the minority of minorities - audiophiles that actually want an internal no-frills DAC...

That said, if you want to consider external DACs, you can find the answers you're looking for regarding them all around here in the plethora of DAC reviews and recommendations.  For something comparable to the STX, for example, you might consider the E-Mu (i.e. Creative's pro audio line) 0204.

If you don't mind about those DSP features you can just use the line-out.. or just get an external DAC which I think more recommended

I was looking for similar thing before but for my case was that I want DSP features like Dolby Headphone and that's why I wanted a soundcard instead of a DAC. My research has lead me to the xonar d2x.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syltburken 

 

 

 

Does that mean that I still have to pay for the extra money the built-in amp will cost? :S
 

 

The amp feature is a simple op amp chip on the board of the card. The part could cost less than $1 if you were to buy it from a website like Parts Express. It doesn't cost as much to include the amp on an existing card.

So it wouldn't be comparable to buying a stand alone amp if thats what you're thinking.

Think of it more along the lines of getting a headphone amp for free.

Will it be as good as the stand alone desk top amp? Probably not but if it serves your purpose and you're happy with it thats all that matters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syltburken 

For example:

 

You say that it's comparable with the Xonar essence STX, but the E-Mu 0204 cost only like 15 dollars less than the essence STX, and then the STX is my first choise ofcourse.

 

I ordered the essence stx today and I feel like it is a good choise :) But thanks for your help.

Well, in the US the 0204 is only $130 shipped from Amazon - $40-$50 or more less than the STX.  I didn't see before that you're in Jönköping... Did you add that to your account details later?

The STX uses a wolfson DAC if I am correct, and the X-Fi uses a Cirrus Logic.  The wolfson is better imo~

As far as features, the asus STX has a hardware dolby decoder, the X-Fi does not.  The STX can do Dolby Headphone(5.1,7.1 emulation thats damn good), the X-Fi has CMMS-Headphone which imo is no where near as good.  Rather let me re-literate, the Dolby Headphone implementation in the STX is accurate and can be used for movies and 5.1 music where CMSS-Headphone is more pinpoint accurate in games but suffers a huge SQ hit.

In terms of feature support they are about on equal grounding but I would personally give the edge to the STX even if your not using its amplified outputs.  The digital output of the ST/STX is higher quality as well... in case you plan on going with an external dac for music as most dacs have better coax inputs than they do USB.

I have owned an X-Fi Prelude for a long time but don't use it anymore. It is just collecting dust in a closet(well its covered)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninjikiran 

The STX uses a wolfson DAC if I am correct, and the X-Fi uses a Cirrus Logic.  The wolfson is better imo~

 

As far as features, the asus STX has a hardware dolby decoder, the X-Fi does not.  The STX can do Dolby Headphone(5.1,7.1 emulation thats damn good), the X-Fi has CMMS-Headphone which imo is no where near as good.  Rather let me re-literate, the Dolby Headphone implementation in the STX is accurate and can be used for movies and 5.1 music where CMSS-Headphone is more pinpoint accurate in games but suffers a huge SQ hit.

 

In terms of feature support they are about on equal grounding but I would personally give the edge to the STX even if your not using its amplified outputs.  The digital output of the ST/STX is higher quality as well... in case you plan on going with an external dac for music.

Actually the Titanium HD uses a Burr Brown, and it beats the Wolfson IMO.

The Titanium HD has both Dolby and DTS decoding, and Dolby Headphone is close to worthless (STX), just like CMSS3D (Titanium HD), I think those virtualization techs just lack any quality at all.

Anyway, it's good to know all the things I've said to OP were in vain. Just came here to correct that misleading info.

Software decoding ;)
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

Actually the Titanium HD uses a Burr Brown, and it beats the Wolfson IMO.

 

The Titanium HD has both Dolby and DTS decoding, and Dolby Headphone is close to worthless (STX), just like CMSS3D (Titanium HD), I think those virtualization techs just lack any quality at all.

 

Anyway, it's good to know all the things I've said to OP were in vain. Just came here to correct that misleading info.

Re-Quoting:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninjikiran 

As far as features, the asus STX has a hardware dolby decoder

Where??

Confused Decoding with Encoding ;).  Regardless it was in an old Xonar review, don't really want to go digging for an old review.  I did some research before being the X-Fi Prelude.

The STX actually uses Burr Browns best DAC , the PCM 1792a. The PCM1792a & PCM1794 are equal quality but one is software controlled volume & the other is hardware controlled.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kn19h7 

If you don't mind about those DSP features you can just use the line-out.. or just get an external DAC which I think more recommended

 

I was looking for similar thing before but for my case was that I want DSP features like Dolby Headphone and that's why I wanted a soundcard instead of a DAC. My research has lead me to the xonar d2x.

The D2X is a very good card & I find that it really doesn't need modification to sound better than most any soundcard save for the ST or STX cards. I have the PCI version of that card & am using it with no modifications. If I were to modify it I would look to the powersupply first & formost as that is really the only weak link that I see as far as improving sound with it. I modded my STX due to losses that I could hear in the coupling caps, there are no coupling caps with the D2 cards hence no losses there. Power supply filter caps could be better on these cards though (D2X-D2/PM).

These cards (the D2 series ) seem to have a slightly warmer sound but with very small losses in the imaging & soundstage departments compared to the Essense cards when the Essense cards are modde to D.C. coupling like the D2 cards come stock from the factory. The D2 cards performance in objective terms is really only slightly lower that the ST or STX, not enough to make any real difference in real terms with all but the most sensitive IEM earphones, you know, the ones with 120db/1milliwatt or better sensitivity.
 

I was doing a little bit of thinking & in actual fact the D2X card is actually better for driving overly sensitive earphones than the Essense ST or STX. Let me explain.

The ST & STX headphone amp is actually designed with high impedance low sensitivity earphones in mind. Since the different impedance settings on these cards is really just lopping of the top 3 bits to get to the 64ohm impedance setting & the 300+ohm setting yields 117db dynamic range with this card, lopping off 3 bits dynamic range would yield 99db dynamic range for the 64ohm impedance setting where as the D2 cards would yield the112db dynamic range due to only having to drop 1 bit to achieve the same volume level as the Essense cards out thier headphone amp. Granted much of the noise (about 7db) comes from the amp itself on the essense cards so the should actually do a little better than I stated sinse the DAC's themselves are capable of 124db dynamic range. 18db from 124db still would only yield 106db assuming that is the only loss so the essense cards can only at best on the 64ohm setting yield 106db & is likely to do slightly worse than that by 2-3db, the D2 cards are definately the better card to drive low impedance high sensitivity earphones as they would yield 6-9db better dynamic range in this situation than the Essense cards will. 

The Essense ST or STX is still the best bet for driving an external amp though from it's line out espescially if modded to full D.C. coupling as in this case you get the full 124db dynamic range from the card itself. Hopefully the external amp has as good of noise specs as the Essense cards do in thier line out. The Titanium HD card from Creative Labs does in deed have a headphone amp on it designed to drive up to 330ohm headphones (6db less gain than the Essense cards have).