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Sound Setup Questions (Using the Equipment I Have)

post #1 of 3
9/20/12 at 9:45am
Thread Starter 

I am not too knowledgeable about sound but I do appreciate good sound quality and want to ensure I have as good of a listening experience as I can get with my current equipment. I have:

 

- Creative X-fi Titanium HD soundcard (Using latest Creative drivers)

- Audio Technica ATH-A700 headphones (plugged into the headphone port of the above soundcard)

 

I run Windows 7 (x64) and use Foobar2000 to play a variety of music. I also do a lot of gaming (particularly Guild Wars 2) I have some questions about getting the best sound experience while I listen to music and game. I will explain to the best of my ability how I currently perform these two tasks.

 

Listening to Music

 

- Audio Control Panel set to Entertainment Mode and Headphones

- Crystalizer and Speaker set to 50%

- Foobar2000 using default settings

 

I installed an ASIO plugin (foo_out_asio) and set the output device in Foobar to Creative ASIO. I understand using ASIO would prevent THX features like Crystalizer from working so I turned these effects off and did a comparison. Playing audio in ASIO output mode does seem to make the audio a bit cleaner. My questions are:

 

1) Should I be using ASIO in Foobar? (I heard my sound card has ASIO already built in) or go back to the default output and re-enable the THX features? (I understand THX features can cause distortion but for the majority of music, it provides a good improvement I find) or even use WASAPI?

 

2) What buffer settings should i use within Foobar? (Set to 510ms at the moment)

 

3) Anything I am missing out? or that you recommend?

 

Gaming

 

- Audio Control Panel set to Game Mode and Headphones

- Crystalizer and Speaker set to 50%.

- CMSS 3D on

- Dolby Digital Live set to on

 

4) What is Dolby Digital Live? Can I benefit from this using headphones? or is this only for speakers/hi-fi systems?

 

I heard you can use Dolby Digital Live with headphones if you set the sound profile in Windows 7 to 5.1 surround, while keeping it set to headphones in the Audio Control Panel. This is suppose to emulate 5.1 sound (and doing the 5.1 sound test within Windows confirms this as I hear all 5 channels)

 

5) How are these settings? What settings do you use for gaming?

 

Apologises for the newbie questions!


Edited by deadman_uk - 9/20/12 at 10:39am
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post #2 of 3
9/22/12 at 2:30pm
Thread Starter 

Anyone??

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post #3 of 3
9/22/12 at 11:37pm
Quote:

 

1) Should I be using ASIO in Foobar? (I heard my sound card has ASIO already built in) or go back to the default output and re-enable the THX features? (I understand THX features can cause distortion but for the majority of music, it provides a good improvement I find) or even use WASAPI?

 

2) What buffer settings should i use within Foobar? (Set to 510ms at the moment)

 

1) If using ASIO in foobar works without causing any issues, then by all means use it!

ASIO is a kind of protocol that allows audio data to be passed between hardware and software. In this case foobar is your software and your X-fi is the hardware. IYour sound card supports it, but that doesn't mean it is going to be used - unless specified in foobar.

 

2) 510ms should be fine. I'm on 500ms and never had any issues.

 

Can't help you with your gaming questions as this is something I don't do.

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