I'm looking to get rid of my Creative Titanium HD due to the SPDIF Out (optical) to my Asus Xonar Essence One is not working properly. During short bursts of audio I notice clipping and part of the audio (the middle portion) is simply gone. I have tried to get rid of the problem but I'm not able to. And now we have Windows 10 right around the corner and my Titanium HD is not working with Windows 10 at all and Creative have said they won't provide any drivers for my card until October at the earliest so I guess it's time to look around for some ways to just get rid of it completely.
The only reason why I have kept using my Titanium HD after getting myself the Asus Essence One has been positional audio and virtual surround. I have enjoyed CMSS:3D immensely, even though it's uses have been reduced greatly the past few years as barely any games relay on OpenAL or EAX any more and most games tend to have their own virtual surround for headphone users included within their game engine as so adding another layer (CMSS:3D, SBX Pro, THX True Audio, Dolby Headphones or whatnot) on-top of the in-game one tends to cause more issues than anything else. But for games with ****ty headphone virtualisation in-game, and especially game without any at all the addition of CMSS:3D has been golden for my Sennheiser HD 650 while gaming.
I do notice that Creative have started to sell their own software suit directly to end-users; http://software.store.creative.com/p/software/sound-blaster-x-fi-mb3. But they don't have any list of supported audio cards and solutions and from what I have read it seems to only support Realtek on-board cards so it should not work with my Xonar Essence One. I also notice reports of the software being unstable with Windows 8.1 which doesn't sound promising in-terms of Windows 10 support.
Are there any other solutions that should work with my Essence One over USB? From what I can tell the Razer Surround solution is supposed to be "universal"? Is it worth grabbing? Or should I try to get used to my Essence One being stereo only, without any support for any kind of virtualisation solutions whatsoever and start relaying strictly on in-game solutions for now on? Are these solutions worth it any more?
The only reason why I have kept using my Titanium HD after getting myself the Asus Essence One has been positional audio and virtual surround. I have enjoyed CMSS:3D immensely, even though it's uses have been reduced greatly the past few years as barely any games relay on OpenAL or EAX any more and most games tend to have their own virtual surround for headphone users included within their game engine as so adding another layer (CMSS:3D, SBX Pro, THX True Audio, Dolby Headphones or whatnot) on-top of the in-game one tends to cause more issues than anything else. But for games with ****ty headphone virtualisation in-game, and especially game without any at all the addition of CMSS:3D has been golden for my Sennheiser HD 650 while gaming.
I do notice that Creative have started to sell their own software suit directly to end-users; http://software.store.creative.com/p/software/sound-blaster-x-fi-mb3. But they don't have any list of supported audio cards and solutions and from what I have read it seems to only support Realtek on-board cards so it should not work with my Xonar Essence One. I also notice reports of the software being unstable with Windows 8.1 which doesn't sound promising in-terms of Windows 10 support.
Are there any other solutions that should work with my Essence One over USB? From what I can tell the Razer Surround solution is supposed to be "universal"? Is it worth grabbing? Or should I try to get used to my Essence One being stereo only, without any support for any kind of virtualisation solutions whatsoever and start relaying strictly on in-game solutions for now on? Are these solutions worth it any more?
