digital or analogue through headphones?

The output from the system must be analog, at least to connect any speaker known to man. How you create this analog signal is dependent on your equipment.

The options you're seeing relate to processing effects and other settings - you want the digital audio settings to match whatever you're playing back (most music is 16-bit 44.1khz, DVDs are usually 16-bit 48khz, and so on). The DSP effects are entirely up to you. Games will not change the settings in that window, they will likely introduce their own processing/features as needed though, and assume that you've got your speaker system set-up properly. 

The Harman/Kardon unit could be put between the X-Meridian and headphones, and act as an amplifier; your choice. Depending on your headphones, it may be an improvement, it may not. It would also work to drive some speakers. 

I'm not entirely familiar with C-Media-based cards like yours (X-Fi user here, and it doesn't help that the popular Asus Xonar line has a different control panel from the Auzentech and HT Omega offerings), but I can try and clear up some things:

-At some point in the chain, you HAVE to convert the digital sound signal to analog. Currently, this is done on the X-Meridian itself, though you can use its S/PDIF output to stream the digital data to an external DAC later on if desired.

-DSP effects can be confusing. For instance, with Creative cards, there are these EAX room modes that add reverb and other effects to any sound played through the system. You generally want these off, especially if you're playing games that have their own EAX presets for that sort of effect in the game environment, otherwise you end up with way too much reverberation.

-I see a Dolby Headphone button. That is a special DSP effect, a binaural surround filter. Very useful for 3D games, when you want to tell apart front and rear just like left and right using nothing more than a pair of competent stereo headphones. It should have three modes: DH1, DH2, and DH3, with DH2 and DH3 introducing increased amounts of reverb. The most popular mode seems to be DH2, enough to where external DAC/DSPs like the Astro Mixamp and Turtle Beach Ear Force DSS only use DH2. I suppose it's because the reverb is a distance cue that gives DH1 less of a sense of distance, while DH3 introduces far too much.

Setting it at 192k will have the card (or software) re-sampling everything to 192k; this may introduce noise (it depends on how accurate or inaccurate the SRC engine is) - generally this is "not good." I'd leave at 44.1khz if anything. That said, there are some soundcards that absolutely force SRC (Audigy 1 is an example of this) due to how the DSP engine works; usually the hardware that requires this also provides SRC with a very low noise floor (X-Fi is an example of this). I also agree with the Dolby Headphone suggestion in games. 

The A900s shouldn't be impossibly hard to drive for the Meridian, they're something around 40 ohms and don't have any insane impedance swings, and they're fairly efficient. You could try them with the receiver if you want to, but aside from being able to get louder, I doubt you'll notice much. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by XenatR 

thanks for your help! so you think how i have it currently is optimal, apart from changing the khz according to the source? would it be bad to simply set it to 192 and leave it at that?

 

i have audio technica ath-a900s btw