I don't think Dolby Home theater V4 was used as a replacement fro Dolby headphone. DHT4 is actually separate from the cards drivers. However, the Phoebus driver itself also has Xear surround for headphones which is similar to Dolby headphone.
I wish they had of added opamp sockets though. I am building a a few opamps bridges for friends cards so we can test them out with new opamps.
I don't think Dolby Home theater V4 was used as a replacement fro Dolby headphone. DHT4 is actually separate from the cards drivers. However, the Phoebus driver itself also has Xear surround for headphones which is similar to Dolby headphone.
I was under the impression that Xear3D was the generic C-Media driver equivalent of what Asus calls DS3DGX, which is a DirectSound3D-to-OpenAL wrapper like ALchemy. Most non-Asus C-Media chipset cards from Auzentech and HT Omega had Dolby Headphone as well.
I can't say for certain without having a C-Media card to test with, though.
I've never tried out Dolby Headphone, but I've read from other forums that indeed Xear Surround should be the equivalent of Dolby Headphone. In any case I find Xear Surround option horrible. You get a better surround effect just using the Surround Virtualizer option in the DHT4. Another thing is that, if you do choose to use Xear Surround then DHT4 is automatically disabled and you lose your EQ customizations etc. (and Xear Surround is consequently disabled whenever you re-enable DHT4)
All in all, I've generally found the Phoebus driver bland and unecessary and always resorted to DHT4. You have no beneficial options whatsoever apart from obviously tuning the gain, volume and sample rates. Unless you're into that mind-numbling environment effects and XearSingFX which changes the pitch and echo.
However, this is only for the headphone area. I've read somewhere that you have Flex Bass and some other "nifty" tools for speaker systems, but it will be some time before I try that out since I don't currently own a pair of speakers.
Warning: I typed this with my brain floating in air. So sorry in advance for logic errors.
Dolby Headphone(and even CMSS-3d) always had this "way" with the sound. Subtly changing the tone negatively. It was less pronounced with dolby headphone thus sounding more natural in true surround material. I went out on a whim and bought this card as my new mobo has no PCI slots, only PCI-E.
First thing I noticed with Dolby HT4, without enhancements you don't even notice its on when using surround material. The spatial cues are there but there is no immediately noticeable artifacts that throw themselves out.
If I leave the same settings on for 2.0 music.... the image is almost 100% in front of me. Some might like this, but I rather hear my music raw. Quality with music is superb though, there is nothing really "bad" with the sound. Its just positioned differently.
I am not a fan of equalizing but the dolby intelligent presets actually sound quite nice. There is no dip in quality, and can easily raise enjoyment of content. Something I wouldn't use often but I can see it easily wow'ing people.
Haven't messed with anything else. Xear sucks, there is a noticeable dip in quality.
The control box is really a star though, those of you who own a mixamp know sometimes the sound gets static or distorts when you nudge to volume knob. Not so with the ROG controller which actually uses the digital volume control built into windows. I would suggest setting output to 24-bit~
In terms of drivers, it just works for me. Have not had any issues, but I also know many issues are game related. So I may just be lucky!
I never really played with these high end cards, but even in normal mode it was surprisingly good. Black as black background, excellent separation and clarity. I could easily say this is only slightly under my bifrost in quality, something that most gamers and normal people would not give a darn about.
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