Asus Xonar DGX "tinny" echo w/ Sennheiser PC 350 Special Edition

[Oxlton]

Yesterday I received my brand new Asus Xonar DGX Sound Card from Amazon. I decided to pair this sound card up with the new headphones that I also just bought, Sennheiser PC 350 Special Edition, due to a huge sale ($80) on Prime Day. Over the weekend, I tried the headphones out with my on-board audio chip and they sounded good, the microphone sounded good, but I felt like I could do more to actually drive these headphones. When my Xonar DGX came in the mail I instantly installed it, installed all the drivers, and connected the headphones to the sound card directly and I was surprised to hear the headphones were very "tinny" and had quite the echo on all sounds. I tried messing around with the Asus Sound Studio settings but nothing got rid of the "tinny" sound. Has anyone had similar problems to this? or does anyone know a solution? Some recommendations that I found over the internet suggest to burn-in the headphones, driver problem, on-board audio problem, or possibly a faulty sound card or pair of cans.

PC Specs:
Mobo: ASUS Z97-PRO(Wi-Fi ac)/USB 3.1 LGA 1150
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K
GPU: Evga GTX 660
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
Sound Card: Asus Xonar DGX
SSD: SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 250GB
HDD: WD Black 1TB

Thanks for your help.

 

[liquidzoo]

Did you disable the onboard sound card in the bios?

 

[Oxlton]

Did you disable the onboard sound card in the bios?

No I did not. Would I have to disable the Realtek HD audio through the device manager as well?
 
On the side note though, I do use speakers sometimes too, those are connected to motherboard, would disabling onboard sound prevent me from using my desk speakers when I wanted to? or could I just plug them into another port on the DGX?

 

[liquidzoo]

No I did not. Would I have to disable the Realtek HD audio through the device manager as well?

On the side note though, I do use speakers sometimes too, those are connected to motherboard, would disabling onboard sound prevent me from using my desk speakers when I wanted to? or could I just plug them into another port on the DGX?

Disabling the card in the bios would prevent it from showing up in the device manager at all, so that wouldn't matter.

Yes it would prevent the speakers from working through the onboard card.

Are you using the front headphone connector or the one on the card itself? If it's the front, try the one(s) on the card.

 

[Oxlton]

Disabling the card in the bios would prevent it from showing up in the device manager at all, so that wouldn't matter.

Yes it would prevent the speakers from working through the onboard card.

Are you using the front headphone connector or the one on the card itself? If it's the front, try the one(s) on the card.

Ok that makes sense. I will try that when I get a chance and most likely just do a clean reinstall of the drivers just to be sure. I am currently using the connectors on the card itself, I didn't even bother connecting my front panel to the card. Having the speakers connected to the DGX isn't a huge deal either, I can just switch ports when I really wanted to use the speakers. I will update though once I get a chance to disable my onboard sound and test them out again. Thanks for your help.

 

[Oxlton]

Just an update for those wanting an answer. I did disable my onboard audio but I was still having problems. I then uninstalled my Xonar DG drivers and software and installed unified drivers from http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/ that fixed all my problems. Audio is great as of now, weird to think that Asus put out unstable drivers and custom made drivers work better than what is intended.