Hello people, I'm gonna get a pair of Superlux HD 681 EVO very soon, maybe tonight, but i want a sound card to pair it with. People generally advice to get the ASUS Xonar DGX that I have found at 30€ (lowest price) but someone advices the ESI Prodigy X-Fi NRG for just 10€ more. Now, I know there is quite a bit of gain regarding the ESI compared to the DGX, but my main issues are two. First, the ESI (which I would like to buy) is older than the DGX and I aim to keep my sound card for a while (say, two years) and I'm not sure if the ESI, being the older one, will still hold up against new technologies. Also, I know the ESI has CMSS 3D surround (as it features a creative chip) which is awesome for positional audio, unlike the Dolby Headphone the Xonar features. But I don't play a lot of online shooters so I don't have to hear footsteps or stuff like that, so cmss 3d might seem a bit useless, the problem is that Dolby Headphone feels like you're in a closed environment, even though I read that this thing works out with open headphones, and the superlux are semi open (don't know how much audio they leak though). I want clarity and distinction between different sounds and noises from my sound card, (I do care about positional audio but not as much as a pro battlefield gamer): will the cmss3d give me this or does Dolby headphone do a better job at it?
Last but not least, the driver support for the ESI seems a bit dead (last update in 2010) unlike the DGX, so maybe when I'll switch to Windows 10 (using 7 ATM) the sound card won't be compatible anymore and again, I am to keep it for a while. What do you think?

The ESI Prodigy X-Fi NRG is listed as coming with EAX 4.0, do you know old a sound card (with a Creative chip) would have to be to not even support EAX 5.0 (fairly old)
Creative Labs has their newer Sound Blaster Audigy Fx ($34.99), which has much newer driver support, like SBX & EAX 5.0.
Personally I would prefer the Xonar DG or DGX
 
What about your motherboard's on-board audio (built in sound card)?
What is the make and model of your motherboard?

purpleangel said:

The ESI Prodigy X-Fi NRG is listed as coming with EAX 4.0, do you know old a sound card (with a Creative chip) would have to be to not even support EAX 5.0 (fairly old)
Creative Labs has their newer Sound Blaster Audigy Fx ($34.99), which has much newer driver support, like SBX & EAX 5.0.
Personally I would prefer the Xonar DG or DGX

What about your motherboard's on-board audio (built in sound card)?
What is the make and model of your motherboard?

Click to expand...

Hey, my mobo is a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P but i am 100% sure I wanna change card. So, the audigy fx is a nice card, but let's take the xonar out (I don't like Dolby headphone). I don't care about the card being old and not supporting EAX 5 (which very few games support) also considering you can use the official X-Fi creative drivers, I just want to know which one will sound better overall. Between cmss3d (ESI) and SBX (audigyfx) I think I prefer sbx because that slight tin can effect from cmss3d is gone and ultra accurate positional audio is not my top priority. SBX seems better overall BTW (after all, it's what the sound blaster Z uses). What do you think?

Up

bytex said:

Hey, my mobo is a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P but i am 100% sure I wanna change card. So, the audigy fx is a nice card, but let's take the xonar out (I don't like Dolby headphone). I don't care about the card being old and not supporting EAX 5 (which very few games support) also considering you can use the official X-Fi creative drivers, I just want to know which one will sound better overall. Between cmss3d (ESI) and SBX (AudigyFx) I think I prefer SBX because that slight tin can effect from cmss3d is gone and ultra accurate positional audio is not my top priority. SBX seems better overall BTW (after all, it's what the sound blaster Z uses). What do you think?

Click to expand...

 
I just found out the Audigy FX uses the Realtek ALC898 audio processor (not a creative chip) which also functions as the cards DAC (Digital to Analog Converter)
Where as the ESI Prodigy X-Fi NRG uses a AKM4358 DAC chip.
So the ESI Prodigy X-Fi NRG might offer the slightly better audio quality (music wise)
But the ESI Prodigy X-Fi NRG audio processor uses an older version of X-Fi (the older Audigy, pre-Titanium), so the last drive update for it's chip-set was over 4 year ago.
Newer X-Fi stuff has drivers that are less then a year old (like X-Fi Titanium series).
The SB-Z uses an audio processor that is at least two generations newer the what the ESI Prodigy uses.
So my vote is still for the Audigy Fx.