Quote:
Originally Posted by
estreeter 
And one, in particular, has been intent on defending the STX regardless of the facts put forward by others. End of the day, if the STX or any other card does the job, STICK WITH IT - if not, look at an external amp. Simple.
I've done many comparisons with other equipment as well as recording & playback comparisons & have found the sound to in fact be accurate. Accurate however is not nessesarily pleasant in all cases. Many recordings have excessive high frequency boost built into them from the recording studios due to engineers who have damaged thier hearing to the point that they boost the hell out of the high frequenies just to hear them at all. this is true of much of the pop & rock recordings but not true of most classical recordings. The recordings that sound harsh on the STX sound harsh on other devices as well. Since it sounds the same on other devices it must therefore be accurate in its presentation. I would rather have something that is accurate than something that sugar coats everything. I found that devices that sugar coat everthing do so at the expense of other positive attributes that the music has.
Given that I have through experimentation deterined that the sound is in fact accurate (with the mods I have done to the line out) & rigerously compared the sound of this to the built in head amp & to other devices that were stock but had the same sound signature (that is very open sounding & without the conjestion of low qualty digital) & found the sound to be in most cases so close to each other as to be almost identical, exception being that the soundcard actually erased the last bit of conjestion that was occasionally present in the other devices.
Does that mean the card is perfect? No!!
The problem areas that people seem so concerned about are mostly technical ones the people truely cannot even hear in 99.9 percent of the cases. Only in the case of high sensitivty low impedance phones will you hear any noise at all & once the music starts it is a non issue. Yes there is dynamic range loss with the low impedance setting but is it really an issue that affects the sound in most cases ? No.
Most people I see complaining about this card are complaining about what this card actually does right which is reveal everything both good & bad. Also complaining about technical limitations that in 99.9% of cases don't matter at all, Even I'm guilty of that to a degree & I have revealed limitations about this card that no body else has discussed such as the bit loss with the lower impedance settings & even that I admit is really reaching as unless you have phones with better than 115 db @ 1mW your not going to hear this limitation at all.
