[dwong]

You may want to check out HotAudio's stuff. His external USB dac HotUSB1 comes in at $59 shipped. Thread can be found here: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f5/hot...s-amps-242880/

 

[Firewall]

Quite honestly, I have an AudigySE, and it works. I would assume the Audigy 2 is a "better" version, Ive never had one or tried one.

And from a music AND gaming point of view, I like my Audigy. I bought a HT Omega Claro Halo, and really, there was maybe a 20 dollar difference in sound quality. Not 200. And Im running DT770 Pro 250 ohm'ers, and even with the amp on a the claro, it just didnt justify the price at all.

Now if your gonna go with a DAC, FWIR, you will notice a greater difference. Maybe Im just new to all this and cant hear the differences, or whatever reason, but I just wanted to post up and let you know my experiance. After that, I am looking at the possibility of a DAC, but I still havent read how they do with games.

Oh and Im with you, I dont use EAX or anything. Its fun once in a while, but for FPS's online, its not great. As well it makes vent sound... bad. So no 3D crap here.

Either way, good luck with your search!

 

[joe_cool]

"before I'll put up with Envy24's even harder to deal with drivers"

I think you are using your experience with AV-710 (a $20 card from a bargain manufacturer) to judge the VIA Envy controllers. There are cards available from first tier manufacturers that support their customers, but not for that price.

M-Audio, ESI, Audiotrak and others use these chips to great advantage.

 

[Nazo]

The chipset is the same and the drivers operate with the chipset. In the end they all work the same in this particular respect. It's the sound quality and other features that differ, not the drivers. For example, the M-Audio has a better amp section, better capacitors, and etc compared to the AV-710 as well as better recording capabilities and so on. However, it's still ultimately an Envy24 chipset as far as drivers are concerned and one still has to use these drivers regardless. You can't get around this just by having a different manufacturer of the actual hardware. Sure, they use better physical components and such, but how does this make the Envy24 drivers better? That's a software component and one which they didn't have enough control over obviously.

I might add that, at one point, I even flashed the card so that it would use drivers from one of the others in the hopes it would maybe work a bit better without really any useful results. In the end, as far as software and firmware are concerned, there isn't really much major difference between the cards. They use the same DAC and same chipset, which is all the software and firmware deal with in this particular respect. (Of course, the biggest problem with flashing is that it's VERY hard to find firmware for anything but the Prodigy, but the Prodigy is only good for bit-perfect SPDIF.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firewall /img/forum/go_quote.gif Quite honestly, I have an AudigySE, and it works. I would assume the Audigy 2 is a "better" version, Ive never had one or tried one.

The Audigy 2 is not (it's just an Audigy with a 2 on the end. However, the Audigy 2 ZS is supposed to be better. Well, I can't say for certain just where it would be (especially since I'm not sure exactly what the "SE" is -- though usually SE is tacked on to lower end products in the computer hardware world) in comparison, but at least the actual chipset and such are supposed to be better (mostly just stuff like the card accepting both 24/96 and 48/24 without resampling as opposed to just 24/48 however. Creative does most of their "improvements" in software rather than hardware and you can unlock a LOT of features with modified drivers. In the end they are selling barely different hardware as whole new cards every couple of years or so and using software to control just what that hardware can do.) Overall I'm highly dissatisfied with its sound however. Even the cheap Chaintech AV-710 sounds considerably better. I'm not very good at describing sound, so the best I could tell you is that the bass was horrible (in particular there was too much, but I think it struck me as being a bit muddy or something as well) and the highs were rolled off pretty badly. This is without equalization btw (which shouldn't be required just to get the hardware to output an at least somewhat even curve.) I found the AV-710 to be better in every aspect including audio detail and that's just the cheapest lowest end solution with that particular DAC. As has already been discussed, there were some other cards based on the same basic design roughly with the same DAC and such that can do even better than the AV-710. Heck, my Alien sounds far better by comparison and I'm not even quite satisfied that the opamp I'm using in the amp connected to it is quite right for these headphones.

Overall, it strikes me that the Audigy series seems to be designed more for ordinary people that fancy themselves to be somewhat into audio and largely into gaming (I feel like it's more focused on gaming than anything else especially) than people who really listen seriously to music on high end equipment. It gives you more of that thumpy bass quality that such people tend to enjoy.

You might want to see if you can track down something cheap like an AV-710 or borrow something and see if you don't like the sound better compared to the Audigy. If you spot an AV-710 it should be dirt cheap after all, so it's not too hard to at least try it.



Anyway, due to the nature of the sort of amp I'm going to have to get, I've pretty much given up on this. I'm probably going to go ahead and just get one of those USB DACs with a built-in headphone amp (atm I'm kind of leaning towards the iBasso D3.) In the end I'd just end up spending too much this way and overall would be worse off. I really was hoping that I could upgrade this Audigy 2 ZS Platinum to something a little better overall, but in the end it looks like this just isn't realistic enough given my budget and need to spend my money as well as I can.

 

[Sancho86]

I ran a creative2 for gaming and a RME Digi96 for playback and it worked flawlessly, the Digi's are pretty inexpensive these days as well.

 

[patricklang]

Wow, good timing. I've been testing a variety of cards on Vista X64 since before beta shipped, and now I'm testing them on Win7 as well. I have most of the cards on this thread.

E-Mu 0404 PCI - best sound quality (unmodded) that I have had in a PCI card when it works. Bass is well controlled, nice clear treble. It's a little better than the Audiophile 2496, and noticably cleaner than the Revolution 7.1.

Vista X64 - directsound streams occasionally get corrupted. The worse offender for me is Left 4 Dead. Usually within 10-30 minutes, it will output garbage for a few seconds, sometimes up to a few minutes. There's a dumb bug that causes the required PatchMixDSP application to crash if you connect through remote desktop or Windows Home Server. I reported it in 2007 through their driver beta forums, and it's still not fixed.

Win7 beta - Vista drivers install, but the audio corruption is much more frequent and happens every time I try to play an MP3 with Windows Media Player. Same patchmix issue.

M-Audio Audiophile 2496 - Not bad sound quality, and a steal since you can get them used for well under $100. However - it took M-Audio from 2006 to 2008 to release a driver for this, and its not stable. I haven't been able to A-B it with the E-mu 0404 since I haven't had it long, and ran into the issues below.

Vista (x86/x64) - avoid. There are bugs in the driver that cause bluescreens when the system enters sleep mode. Multiple reports on the forums and M-Audio has stated that they "don't support sleep mode"
Delta 192 Audiophile Vista SP1 resume failure - The Official M-Audio User Forums

Win7 beta - same problems continue

M-Audio Revolution 7.1 - This was my first good sound card. Loved it on XP, but the E-mu 0404 PCI was slightly better and gave me better I/O. Drivers for Vista x64 are available in beta on M-Audio forums.

Vista - avoid. The same sleep issue with the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 affects all of their Envy24-based boards (Delta 44, 66, 1010, 410, 1010lt, Audiophile 2496, Audiophile 192, Revolution 5.1, Revolution 7.1)

Chaintech AV710 - Better than onboard. The rear channel was almost as good as the revolution 7.1's quality. Drivers don't support ASIO by default, so you will need to install ASIO4ALL. J.River Media Center, the Chaintech AV710, and ASIO4ALL was a good combo on XP.

Vista - the last time I checked (2008), drivers did not support all card features. It only worked at 16/48, and had issues with digital output. Not sure if it was ever fixed. Unfortunately, I gave this card away to an XP media center user, so I can't retest.

Asus Xonar D1 - This is en-route between CA and WA right now. My hope is that it's rock stable, and based on reviews, it's supposed to be pretty solid. We'll see how it compares to the above.

 

[Nazo]

Ah, I gave up and bought an external DAC + amp and spent more than I really wanted to. In the end I decided on the iBasso D2. I don't have Vista anyway though.

 

[scytheavatar]

You had wasted your money, you should have bought the Xonar Essence STX instead. I used to own the D2 Boa, and ever since I got the STX I can't stand how the Boa sounds. The Boa has good transparency but sounds really bright and dry compared to the STX.

 

[Nazo]

I don't understand. How did I waste my money because you don't like the D2?

 

[scytheavatar]

The Xonar Essence's sound is just flat out better than the D2's. By a huge margin. Unless portability is important for you I think the Xonar Essence would have been the better buy.

 

[Nazo]

Oh. It's BETTER. Would you say it's 104 filangies better, or even as much as 216? Because if it's less than 50 filangies, it isn't really a waste of money.

Sound is a subjective thing. That's what I'm trying to say here. You like that one better, but, this doesn't necessarily mean that I would like it better. Besides, it's a little rude to pop in AFTER the thread has been running for a long time and after the thread starter has researched heavily, chosen, and bought what they were looking for, then telling them "you wasted your money." Actually, I'm leaning a little more towards a lot rude.

 

[scytheavatar]

You can still pick up the Xonar Essence. Then you can decide for yourself if it sounds better.

 

[Nazo]

With who's money?

 

[scytheavatar]

Of course in the distant future, when you feel like upgrading.

 

[Nazo]

Well, after some time, it seems like I'm back to this thread. I do like my D3, but it is admittedly a bit harsh. I think upsampling DACs probably aren't the best choice for the Denon headphones. One thing of note, I finally broke down and decided to try the SCPH-1001 Playstation even though I had my doubts about it. I must say that I do very much like its sound. It lacks any extra harshness beyond what's in the audio to begin with IMO and I would swear that it has a lot more detail. Most importantly though, it seems to get along better with my music whether this is more warmth or what I'm not sure. One of my favorite artists has a voice that can kind of blend a bit with the music at times and isn't very clear, but on the PSX I'm able to her voice with a FAR greater clarity. In one song it's something of a night and day difference even. I might add that this is with the D3 as my headphone amp, so the amp is the same in both cases obviously.

From what I understand, it seems a lot of this may have to do with the DAC. It's an AKM and definitely not an oversampling type. (If I read this correctly, I think its model number is AKM809AVM or maybe AKM309AVM -- there's a checkmark in the way on the board I'm looking at since I can't unhook and open up the one I'm using atm.) I really would love to have something that sounds more like that on my PC (though even a MP3 player or something like that would still help.) Dealing with the PSX for my music really isn't exactly very convenient by far. I listen to a lot of individual songs rather than whole albums, so I'm having to burn a lot of mix CDs and just can't get things like I want them. Are there maybe any soundcards or "external DACs" which might have more this sort of sound that won't end up costing an arm and a leg? As you may guess, I already have a headphone amp that is satisfactory to me right now, so it's ok if it can't drive headphones (maybe even preferable.) Unfortunately, I'd have to say my budget is even worse now (though, of course, used is always an option.) Any thoughts?