obobskivich
Headphoneus Supremus
Agree with returning the card and getting a replacement. Just from reading the thread my thoughts are:
1) It may just be that this card has a higher noise-floor than whatever it replaced ("but it cost more!" - yep, so what?) coupled with higher gain, so that's what you get.
2) I honestly doubt the graphics card is at fault - coil noise is mechanical, not electrical. It's part of the same phenomena (magnetostriction) that allow this kind of thing to work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c52JQHVVqFM
3) Things aren't behaving as you expect/deserve for a brand new product - don't bother troubleshooting, return it, get a replacement or your money back. Personally I'm very unimpressed by the STRIX series, as they're just USB HDAs on a PCIe board with a bridge in-between. Now, the analog circuitry should be fine (and its plausible yours is just defective), but personally I'd rather have a PCI/PCIe based implementation if I'm giving up an expansion slot. You can get CM6632 based external boxes for less money too (even from Asus, like the U7). Also note: there's no point in having hardware-acceleration for this these days, its been deprecated for over a decade at this point, so a nice HDA/codec is more than sufficient. What you're ultimately paying for (apart from the hardware) is the driver package, and if all you're after is some sort of headphone simulacra, look at Razer Surround Pro, which is more or less hardware/device agnostic.
3A) If you go for replacement, and the replacement exhibits the same behavior, I'd be inclined to believe the problem is just the STRIX having a higher noise floor and not a single defective board. Especially if other soundcards installed in your system don't exhibit that problem (e.g. the D2 you mentioned).
1) It may just be that this card has a higher noise-floor than whatever it replaced ("but it cost more!" - yep, so what?) coupled with higher gain, so that's what you get.
2) I honestly doubt the graphics card is at fault - coil noise is mechanical, not electrical. It's part of the same phenomena (magnetostriction) that allow this kind of thing to work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c52JQHVVqFM
3) Things aren't behaving as you expect/deserve for a brand new product - don't bother troubleshooting, return it, get a replacement or your money back. Personally I'm very unimpressed by the STRIX series, as they're just USB HDAs on a PCIe board with a bridge in-between. Now, the analog circuitry should be fine (and its plausible yours is just defective), but personally I'd rather have a PCI/PCIe based implementation if I'm giving up an expansion slot. You can get CM6632 based external boxes for less money too (even from Asus, like the U7). Also note: there's no point in having hardware-acceleration for this these days, its been deprecated for over a decade at this point, so a nice HDA/codec is more than sufficient. What you're ultimately paying for (apart from the hardware) is the driver package, and if all you're after is some sort of headphone simulacra, look at Razer Surround Pro, which is more or less hardware/device agnostic.
3A) If you go for replacement, and the replacement exhibits the same behavior, I'd be inclined to believe the problem is just the STRIX having a higher noise floor and not a single defective board. Especially if other soundcards installed in your system don't exhibit that problem (e.g. the D2 you mentioned).
