[hutt132]

Currently I am using an Asus Xonar Essence STX to feed my Schiit Modi Multibit via TOSLINK. I always see people talking about jitter and whether or not it actually makes a difference.

Do you believe the Schiit Eitr would make a slight improvement over the Xonar?

 

[PurpleAngel]

Did you disable the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS, when you installed the Essence STX?
Have you tried the Unified Xonar Drivers?
http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

Otherwise I would say to just keep using the Esseence STX, Toslinked to the Modi.

 

[mindbomb]

The xonar stx has a buffered spdif output and an unbuffered output. Buffered is if you go through the asus/cmedia driver panel and tick spdif out. Unbuffered is if you change the audio device to spdif passthrough device. The buffered one might have better jitter performance, while the unbuffered has lower latency. But idk, I think most people view jitter as the dac's responsibility. A high end dac should be able to provide good jitter performance with most sources.

 

[hutt132]

Did you disable the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS, when you installed the Essence STX?
Have you tried the Unified Xonar Drivers?
http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

Otherwise I would say to just keep using the Esseence STX, Toslinked to the Modi.

I disabled the on-board audio right away, and I'm also using the Unified Xonar Drivers.

The xonar stx has a buffered spdif output and an unbuffered output. Buffered is if you go through the asus/cmedia driver panel and tick spdif out. Unbuffered is if you change the audio device to spdif passthrough device. The buffered one might have better jitter performance, while the unbuffered has lower latency. But idk, I think most people view jitter as the dac's responsibility. A high end dac should be able to provide good jitter performance with most sources.

That's interesting. In the Xonar driver I have SPDIF Out checked with PCM. http://puu.sh/yNUMi/d4cc6f492e.jpg

 

[mindbomb]

That's interesting. In the Xonar driver I have SPDIF Out checked with PCM. http://puu.sh/yNUMi/d4cc6f492e.jpg

so as long as you don't output to the device called spdif passthrough, you should be good.

 

[PurpleAngel]

I disabled the on-board audio right away, and I'm also using the Unified Xonar Drivers.
That's interesting. In the Xonar driver I have SPDIF Out checked with PCM. http://puu.sh/yNUMi/d4cc6f492e.jpg

I believe Mindbomb is talking about in the the Windows > Control Panel > Sound ? Playback tab.
You could select "Essence STX Pass-thru", which keeps the sound card from gettings it's hook, into the sound stream, as it goes out the STX's optical port.
As the more normally used (and default setting?) setting would be "Speaker Essence STX".