Can't hear a difference between sound cards and my onboard.

A hearing defect because you hear no difference??

The ALC889 is supposed to be very good, so I wont have any fear.

btw: My roomate also hears differences that I dont hear with my equipment but I am lovin the sound :)

In my experience, those headphones you have don't benefit much at all from amping or from a good source. I've had those two headphones and I could hardly tell a difference with those plugged into a $449 HDP, my RS1 on the other hand showed a bigger and more apparent differences.  Over time, I noticed some difference but I wouldn't say they are huge differences on the AD700 and RX700. You should allow yourself to spend some time with the STX. just listen to it for a long time for a few days at least then switch back to onboard and note anything that you hear different. Also, give these audio demos a try. I think you should be able to at least note tonality differences of real instruments when comparing the onboard vs STX

http://www.nuforce.com/hp/media/Nuforce%20Demo1/index.php

TBH I didn't notice much of a difference between my old onboard (ALC888 IIRC) and my Xonar DS (which even has an upgraded OP-AMP). 

But having some kind of proper control panel with which I can avoid resampling (I can notice resampling in some cases, and my onboard was stuck at 48 or 44.1 most likely), and also being able to output more than 64 sounds in games (my onboard started saturating at 64) isn't a bad thing at all. I noticed a difference in films, but that could very well be due to the resampling, as the difference was definitely hard to notice in music (can't say I noticed any tbh). 

Maybe I was lucky but there was not the slightest background noise on my onboard, I didn't use the front panel ports though (didn't even plug them in), only the ones coming straight out of the card. 

However my laptop had a terrible onboard audio and the difference was night and day when I got my FiiO e7. 

This is bad news. I was planning on upgrading the ALC889 to something better (even considered the DG) but if you can't hear any difference...I sure hope the EMU 0404 USB 2.0 is enough of an upgrade to notice a difference, that thing is expensive (for my budget anyway).

On a side note, what is the reason you don't trust FLAC files?

Well I don't know about you guys but I hear a VERY noticable SQ improvement switching between onboard Realtek ALC889A and my Audigy 2 ZS (mind though which I have kX Audio drivers installed for which to my ears bring a very noticable difference to Creative's drivers) and this card is what? +5 years old now and the Realtek chip is not even that old (maybe 2~3 years or so), it's a Gigabyte P55-UD5 (socket 1156) motherboard. My current headphones I own are also very easily driven ones and yet it's still very noticable difference, biggest difference is obviously in the lows which the Realtek cannot even always output properly and mutes the rest of the range instead.

I wouldnt say that you cannot hear any difference but as kalston said also for me it is very difficult to hear some improvements.

I have to add that I can only compare it at work where I have an amp with USB input and the ALC889. When I am comparing this I even find the ALC889 slightly better or at least equal to the USB input (external DAC).  In a few weeks I will get another DAC and then I can it compare again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RPGWiZaRD 

Well I don't know about you guys but I hear a VERY noticable SQ improvement switching between onboard Realtek ALC889A and my Audigy 2 ZS (mind though which I have kX Audio drivers installed for which to my ears bring a very noticable difference to Creative's drivers) and this card is what? +5 years old now?

Wow...and from what I've read around here that card is archaic and should by no means be better than even onboard...I could get that one cheaply but not sure if it is worth it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WrxSTI 

Wow...and from what I've read around here that card is archaic and should by no means be better than even onboard...I could get that one cheaply but not sure if it is worth it.

I would only get it for sake of kX Audio drivers, they are very good but not 100% compatible with Windows 7 yet but for headphone use it should be perfectly alright which has been for me. It's hard to beat it in price/performance ratio if using these drivers if you get the Audigy 2 ZS card for say $15 used. I would upgrade to for example Essence STX if I'd find it worth it but I don't as the kX Audio drivers have such a useful DSP plugins and the best hardware EQ ever I've heard by far which doesn't distort the sound even if boosting the frequencies by large amounts which is something hard to find be it software or hardware EQ. The Realtek onboard EQ is so bad that you can hear a sound quality drop as soon as you enable the EQ without even having to touch a slider!

if you are using spdif/toslink you might not hear a difference going to a dac. the analog outputs i am sure you should hear a difference. the xonar is much better than the onboard. consider yourself very lucky then. you can just be happy with cheap stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cuad 

But still, there are a lot more people saying that they hear a difference between sound cards. Where is it coming from?

You need to consider what headphones they have, not all headphones will show the same differences through the same source which you probably already know by now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cuad 

 

 

My laptops onboard sounds terrible as well, but my ALC889 is noiseless. Can I ask where you got the number 64? I've been trying to find that number for the ALC889 and my Titanium HD but they don't seem to be officially published anywhere. All I can find are random forums posts with guys claiming random numbers.

 

 

Just found that by experimenting in games that let me pick a number (Unreal Engine 3 and Dawn of War 2 for example). Anything higher than 64 would result in some awful noise during intense scenes while 64 and below was fine. With my Xonar even 128+ is crystal clear under all circumstances. But I don't think this matters at all for music (maybe for films in 5.1/7.1 ?)

All of this using analogue mind you, but now that I got far better headphones maybe I would notice more difference, who knows. In any case I don't see why some onboard chipsets couldn't possibly be good, like some people seem to think. There are good and cheap sound cards after all, why not accept the fact that sometimes onboard CAN be good or even great? 

I can't really be bothered turning mine back on and installing the not-so-great drivers anyway. And no, I don't have damaged ears (I'm rather lucky to have what I have in fact) and I don't live in a noisy environment, I also got an UPS (my country usually has "clean" power but frequent failures, sometimes just for a split second) and a high end PC case with good shielding and very quiet fans.