[aos]

Actually Audigy has a setting in control panel where you can choose sampling rate of the digital out - 44, 48 or 96kHz. So unless the card resamples 44 to 48 and back to 44, it should work ok. I was surprised to find this setting in the panel as everyone was bitching about 48 being fixed.

 

[Corak]

Thanks everyone for the input.
I found a pretty good deal (for Europe) on the Audiophile 2496 with a 30 day money back gurantee. I can test it for 30 days and if I'm not totally content return it for a full refund.
I should get the card by the end of this week hopefully.

I will of course post my thoughts on the addition after some testing here.

I have no intention to upgrade my amp anytime soon. I just got my Creek OBH-11 last week. I could return it tomorrow (last day) for a full refund but I won't since it has done everything I hoped for.
I have bought the OBH-11 only with tons of research (same with the HD600 and the A2496) and it was well worth it.

I know there are better amps out there but the OBH-11 certainly had the best value out there.

 

[markjia]

You might also want to get the Art DI/O so that you can compare the digital ouput of the Audiophile 2496 and Audigy. If there is little noticable difference in your system, keep to DI/O and return the 2496. In the case the DI/O + 2496 is not any better than the 2496 alone, return the DI/O. The DI/O is less than the 2496 (at least here in north america), so if the DI/O + Audigy sounds better than the 2496 alone, then you might rather only use the DI/O and prevent any possible incompatibility or inconviences (and save some money).

 

[Corak]

Quote:

Originally posted by markjia You might also want to get the Art DI/O so that you can compare the digital ouput of the Audiophile 2496 and Audigy. If there is little noticable difference in your system, keep to DI/O and return the 2496. In the case the DI/O + 2496 is not any better than the 2496 alone, return the DI/O. The DI/O is less than the 2496 (at least here in north america), so if the DI/O + Audigy sounds better than the 2496 alone, then you might rather only use the DI/O and prevent any possible incompatibility or inconviences (and save some money).

This is an interesting suggestion indeed. I will try to get an Art DI/O within the 30 days return period. But it might be very hard to get the Art for a fair price in Europe and with return policy. I won't buy an external DAC without return policy that's for sure though. I will check tomorrow.

If I remember correctly you were the one who once stated that the difference Live! -> A2496 was far greater than A2496 -> A2496 + Art DI/O. It's a shame you sold your Live! before testing the DI/O with it.
But still the DI/O obviously improved upon the A2496 enough to justify the added cost for you.

I wonder how the OBH-14 compares to the ART DI/O. I can get this one for a fair price and it would be a nice match to the OBH-11.
I must admit I didn't research external DACs enough yet to know the best value.

I do doubt though that I will prefer the DI/O + Audigy over the A2496 given what I read so far. The digital signal of the Audigy is also pretty flawed. I personally never used the digital signal of the Audigy but if you check the avsforums you find tons of users who think the digial SP/DIF out of the Audigy is very bad compared to the A2496 / 410.

 

[markjia]

I still have the Live, but was not able to test the digital output since I did not have the adapter/cable required for this configuration.

Come to think of it, does your Audigy have the required coaxial rca jack required for the DI/O? If not, you would need an adapter before you could test it.

 

[Corak]

Quote:

Originally posted by markjia I still have the Live, but was not able to test the digital output since I did not have the adapter/cable required for this configuration. Come to think of it, does your Audigy have the required coaxial rca jack required for the DI/O? If not, you would need an adapter before you could test it.

So you also use both cards in your computer? This is the most exciting experiment for me. I cannot tolerate any system crashes and when I notice the added M-Audio causes any stability problems whatsoever I will need to find a different solution.

I have the simple Audigy version which doesn't come with any RCA jacks. Just 3.5mm stereo jacks.
Yeah I remember there were 2 options. A Hoontech one and a Creative one for more connection options whereas the latter one is probably more reliable.

So there is no way to plug a DAC into the 3.5mm SP/DIF digital out of the Audigy even with intermediate adapter cables?
I personally consider it a waste to add PRO plugs to a Creative card which does resampling in any case anyway.

I thought I could use the existing SP/DIF digital out on the Audigy to connect it to the Audiophile 2496 SP/DIF IN (in case I decide to keep it) so I won't have to change the cabling everytime I switch from the Audigy to the Audiophile and vice versa.

 

[Odie]

Quote:

Originally posted by Corak So there is no way to plug a DAC into the 3.5mm SP/DIF digital out of the Audigy even with intermediate adapter cables?

Actually there is. On the Audigy, the analog 3 port doubles as SPDIF/SB-DIN output. You can use a mini-jack to stereo RCA to use SPDIF. I believe SPDIF is on the left channel, I forget. However, since the port can also be used for SB's DIN format (proprietary connection to their junky speakers) the output voltage is WAY above the SPDIF spec and may damage your equipment.

 

[markjia]

I've removed the Live from my system and don't use both cards simultaniously. In terms of stability, I haven't noticed any problems with the Audiophile 2496. I'm using Win 2000, so the occasional crash (very seldom) is not unusual, but it has not gotten worse after installing the 2496.

 

[Corak]

Quote:

Originally posted by Odie Actually there is. On the Audigy, the analog 3 port doubles as SPDIF/SB-DIN output. You can use a mini-jack to stereo RCA to use SPDIF. I believe SPDIF is on the left channel, I forget. However, since the port can also be used for SB's DIN format (proprietary connection to their junky speakers) the output voltage is WAY above the SPDIF spec and may damage your equipment.

Thank you for stepping in! This is very important information.
I will now of course restrain from connecting the Audigy to the Audiophile 2496 using SP/DIF without some sort of Digital I/O card. I certainly don't want to damage my equipment.

The out of spec voltage of the SP/DIF has been confirmed here:
http://www.everwicked.com/forums/sho...ht=ac3%2Fspdif

I hope I can't hurt the OBH-11 headamp by plugging it into the front analoge line out of the Audigy as I currently do (using an adapter from dual RCA to stereo mini jack).

 

[Corak]

I knew about the great www.pcavtech.com for some time but I finally tested PCABX with interesting results.
To my ears I could discern the following.

PC-ABX v1.75 (16 tests each), WinXP
http://www.pcabx.com/training/index.htm

(tested with Creative Audigy <- Creek OBH-11 <- Sennheiser HD600)

The percentage-values are for "Probability You Were Guessing". Only values < 1% are acceptable. I did ran some tests multiple times until I reached a value sub 1%.

+-----------------+
| Tone Quality |
+----------------+
Very Easy- 0.05%
Easy- 0.05%
Harder- 0.05%
Difficult- 0.5%
Might be Impossible- guessed

+-------------+
| Loudness |
+-------------+
Very Easy- 0.05%
Easy- 0.05%
Harder- 0.05%
Difficult- guessed
Might be Impossible- n/a

+---------------------+
| Noise, Distortion |
+---------------------+
Very Easy- 0.05%
Easy- 0.5%
Harder- not good enough (5%)
Difficult- n/a
Might be Impossible- n/a

Here I really noticed how much noise / distortion the Audigy has by itself.
The reference example didn't sound flawless (like it should) at all.
This will be a good test I'll re-run when I get the Audiophile 2496.
I wonder how much the A2496 by itself will improve upon this test...

+------------+
| Distortion |
+------------+
Very Easy- 0.05%
Easy- guessed
Harder- n/a
Difficult- n/a
Might be Impossible- n/a

Same as above. Very very bad. Anyone with a A2496 ran these tests with good results? Would be interesting to know how different this testing goes with an external DAC attached to the A2496 and with non attached.

+--------------+
| Articulation |
+--------------+
Very Easy- 0.05%
Easy- 0.05%
Harder- 0.05%
Difficult- 0.05%
Might be Impossible- not good enough (25%)


I also compared different compression mechanisms:
castanets_060_lame386_128-h.wav vs. castanets-060.wav- 0.05%
castanets_060_lame383_256.wav vs. castanets-060.wav- guessed (100%)

Very nice tool. Highly recommend.
I don't understand however how I could possibly use this tool to e.g. compare an analoge sample of an Audigy with an analoge sample of an A2496 while using an Audigy. I guess you just can't.

 

[Logistics]

I know this is forum necromancy, but I have to chime in since I am still using pertinent hardware. I have changed my hardware setup many times to see how it affects my sound output. The first card I had, which gave me an amazing listening experience, was a Soundblaster Live! in which I changed the decoupling capacitors between the DSP and output OpAmps to films and the power caps on all incoming V+ traces to low-impedance Panasonics. (Note also, that I had modded other portions of whatever system I was using at the time as well--upgraded capacitors in the power supplies, on the motherboard, etc.) No joke, this was the best thing I had ever listened to in my PC for years, and missed it after I broke it trying to further mod it. Afterwards, I went with an Audigy, then Audigy 2, then X-Fi Music, and none of them had the amazing sound my modded Live! had.

Then I acquired the Delta 410. (The Delta 410 and Audiophile 2496 share the same 36-bit hardware.) And perhaps, it's a simple difference in hardware configurations between my PC and others, but there is zero way a person could think that the Delta 410 and any of Creatives cards could sound similar. Suddenly, I was back to the same amazing sound I had with the modded SbLive!. I am now, using the Delta 410 with a Schiit Modi 2 Uber and Magni 3 combo, and the sound is unbelievable with a pair of Sony MDR-V700's. Yes, those Sony's are clowned on by many, but I can tell you from years of experience that they are power-hungry headphones, and do not wake up and behave well until you feed them at least a few hundred milliwatts, and they have a potential to pull somewhere between 2,000mW-3,000mW using 24-Ohm impedance with the Magni 3. I often hear people chime in that with the rated sensitivity of the V700's that the listening levels should be deafening long before such power levels are reached, but I think they are misunderstanding the concept of power-handling and how it affects control of drivers, whether headphone drivers or traditional speakers.