[SaLX]

@Germanium.. post up a guide please with photos. Your mods sound extraordinary, and I'm sure we'd all love to see how you achieved it. Many thanks.

 

[germanium]

  @Geranium.. post up a guide please with photos. Your mods sound extraordinary, and I'm sure we'd all love to see how you achieved it. Many thanks.

this next week end I'll try to do this

 

[Evshrug]

Not much you can do with that as it is very small& some of my mods take a fair amount of room, a full expansion slot above the ZXR card is used for the metalized film capacitors as they are definitely not small by any stretch of the imagination. I suspect you usb soundcard is bus powered & has only one power supply rail for the analog out & as such can not even be direct coupled as you need 2 power supply rails going to the opamps in order to direct couple. Otherwise you would have at least 1volt if not 2.5 volts at the output. This voltage would cause problems for any amp that does not have an input capacitor.

I've seen some mods done to the Indeed and Bravo amps that add similar components. I would not mind using my Recon3D USB "unshelled" if it sounded capable... honestly I think this one performs lower than my first one.

Pretty sure some USB ports can use 2.5 volts... like an iPad charger, and my Gigabyte motherboard is advertised as having more juice on hand.

It may not be possible... but I'm confident it could at least be made better.

 

[germanium]

I've seen some mods done to the Indeed and Bravo amps that add similar components. I would not mind using my Recon3D USB "unshelled" if it sounded capable... honestly I think this one performs lower than my first one.

Pretty sure some USB ports can use 2.5 volts... like an iPad charger, and my Gigabyte motherboard is advertised as having more juice on hand.

It may not be possible... but I'm confident it could at least be made better.

The 2.5 volts D.C. I'm talking of would likely damage any direct coupled amp not to mention any headphone connected to the output. I do not have your unit to be able to look over the circuit & right now can't afford to go buy one just to do that.

 

[Fegefeuer]

Select stereo speakers from Creative CP, then select 5.1 speakers from Windows CP and tick SBX. If you want to use SBX speaker HRTF that is. If SBX stays on in OpenAL games like Mirror's Edge, it means that you are using Generic Software (which 99% sure is the case unless you have manually edited the config file).

 
No, everything's perfect with setting up the Creative card's ID under device, ALAUDIO etc...just not in Borderlands 2. 

 

[Evshrug]

The 2.5 volts D.C. I'm talking of would likely damage any direct coupled amp not to mention any headphone connected to the output. I do not have your unit to be able to look over the circuit & right now can't afford to go buy one just to do that.

You might be right
Still, as I said it's kind of a redundant/spare device right now, I wouldn't mind mailing it to you if you were curious about enhancing a device that can do virtual surround for PCs AND consoles...

 

[maxpoz]

hello
i've a new suondblaster zx and syberia v2
 
I should be set it for call of duty.
which is the optimal setting?
 
tnx

 

[Anarion]

There is no optimal solution that works for everyone. You have to do it yourself. Basically if you use the headphone out, I'd start with disabling every SBX Pro Studio feature and then enable Surround and adjust the slider until you are happy with the surround sound (though 67% is usually quite good compromise and also default setting). Crystalizer and other things are really personal, you have to test those out yourself. Crystalizer is essentially v-shaped equaliser.

No, everything's perfect with setting up the Creative card's ID under device, ALAUDIO etc...just not in Borderlands 2.

You have made this change under
[WinDrv.WindowsClient]
AudioDeviceClass=ALAudio.ALAudioDevice
?

For those that do not know, you need to change this too:
[ALAudio.ALAudioDevice]
MaxChannels=128
CommonAudioPoolSize=0
MinCompressedDurationGame=5
MinCompressedDurationEditor=4
LowPassFilterResonance=0.9
UseEffectsProcessing=True
DeviceName=Sennheiser HD 595 (Sound Blaster Z)

If you don't have the ALCapsViewer it's still easy to figure out the correct device name.

Sennheiser HD 595 (Sound Blaster Z)

However, this only applies to Z series cards. Non-Host base X-Fi cards have rather meaningless device name.

 

[Radical_53]

Set Windows to 5.1, leave the card at its default of 67% for surround. All the other SBX effects are more or less a matter of taste, normally I keep them disabled.

 

[maxpoz]

how do I set 5.1 in win7? sorry for nabbs

 

[NCSUZoSo]

I'm also interested in seeing germanium's guide.

 

[NamelessPFG]

1Sale - Sound Blaster Z, $54.99 shipped
 
Why didn't anyone mention this earlier? It's going to expire in a little over three hours, or to be more precise, 12:00am EST.
 
I have to resist the urge...still quite a bit of money to spend just to review something and probably resell it later...

 

[ihaveworms]

How many of you guys use the surround effect in the sound blaster control panel? I have tried it out a few times and I just found that makes the audio sound weird to me.

 

[chicolom]

  How many of you guys use the surround effect in the sound blaster control panel? I have tried it out a few times and I just found that makes the audio sound weird to me.

 
SBX Pro is sort of the whole reason for buying it.  It won't sound good for stereo, only 5.1 sources like games where it provides virtual surround via HRTF processing.

 

[Evshrug]

How many of you guys use the surround effect in the sound blaster control panel? I have tried it out a few times and I just found that makes the audio sound weird to me.

SBX Pro is sort of the whole reason for buying it.  It won't sound good for stereo, only 5.1 sources like games where it provides virtual surround via HRTF processing.

To clarify... no, I don't use the surround feature while listening to music (because I don't like extra processing on stereo audio), but I DO use surround while gaming.