[FeralFox]

About a year ago, I bought the astro a40 2013 bundle of headset and mixamp, along with an asus xonar dx soundcard. The bundle was a good price at the time, and I thought the mixamp would be useful in future. However I am now planning on an upgrade to a pair of ath ad700's, and have a couple of questions. What settings should I use for my soundcard, and will the mixamp improve, or worsen my sound quality.
The reason that I am concerned that the mixamp may worsen sound, is that it is designed to be used with consoles, which at the time of release only support 5.1 sound under optical as the highest quality option. And the mixamp was designed to control eq settings, and upscale 5.1 virtual surround to 7.1 virtual channels. This leads me be concerned that the mixamp is processing all sound from the sound cards signal, and thus, the quality could be almost entirely dependent on the mixamp. Does anyone know if this upscaling would cause quality issues? I'm not really sure if I'm even on the right track of knowledge here, as I have very little experience, and I could be completely wrong with my suspicions.

 

[davidsh]

I see no reason to use the mixamp when you have the soundcard. Dunno, it might sound slightly better.

 

[FeralFox]

 The eq settings that the mixamp has, particularly the lower end boost function is nice in a pinch.