Ether Flow and Soundblaster ZxR
Mar 4, 2018 at 11:58 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 12

capnstabn

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Today I am using Ether Flows solely on my PC for music and gaming with the Soundblaster ZxR. MrSpeakers Ether Flow recommends you drive them at 200mW at 32ohms, and I reached out to creative to see if I should be operating at normal or high gain. Creative came back to me and recommended operating at normal gain, but I am having to keep my volume at 70%+. Should I buy an amp or give high gain a try? And what would be the best bang for the buck amp to pair with the ZxR? I do 80% gaming with 20% music.
 
Mar 4, 2018 at 12:52 PM Post #2 of 12
I do not think you will have any issues with setting the SB-ZxR's gain to a higher then normal setting, when the Ether Flows are plugged into it.
I'm going to guess(?) the Ether Flow are somewhat power hungry and need a good bit of power to drive them.
 
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Mar 4, 2018 at 2:17 PM Post #4 of 12
Gave it a try and it was marginally louder. I think I am going to need an amp.
Did you try setting the SB-ZxR to it's highest gain?

The best way to connect an external headphone amplifier to the SB-ZxR is to the Front speaker jack(s) on the SB-ZxR card.
The SB-ZxR can not send it's SBX Headphone surround sound thru the Front Speaker jack.
 
Mar 4, 2018 at 4:06 PM Post #6 of 12
Thanks for the help! So I do like the SBX surround functions so I may just run TOSLINK to a Schiit Modi2->Magni 3.
If you do go with an external DAC, connected to the sound cards optical output port, you can replace the SB-ZxR with a cheaper SB-Z (OEM)
As the SB-Z, SB-Zx, SB-ZxR all use the same DSP chip and software, for the SBX Headphone surround sound function.
 
Mar 4, 2018 at 10:11 PM Post #7 of 12
If you do go with an external DAC, connected to the sound cards optical output port, you can replace the SB-ZxR with a cheaper SB-Z (OEM)
As the SB-Z, SB-Zx, SB-ZxR all use the same DSP chip and software, for the SBX Headphone surround sound function.

Ya might be a good idea but the used market on sound cards seems to suck. The ZxR does have input options though I may use. ACM will be worthless though.
 
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Mar 4, 2018 at 10:30 PM Post #8 of 12
Actually I just got my old X-Fi Titanium HD out of the closet and it does have mini toslink in and out. May just get a mini toslink to toslink and send it to the modi/magni stack. This might actually just blow the ZxR setup out of the water all around due to getting hardware CMSS-3D back.
 
Mar 4, 2018 at 11:03 PM Post #9 of 12
Actually I just got my old X-Fi Titanium HD out of the closet and it does have mini toslink in and out. May just get a mini toslink to toslink and send it to the modi/magni stack. This might actually just blow the ZxR setup out of the water all around due to getting hardware CMSS-3D back.
I'm going to make a guess(?), that unless your playing a lot of older FPS games, the Titanium-HD will not offer any benefit, over the SB-ZxR.
And chances are Creative spend more on driver support for cards they are currently selling and not spending as much on cards they no longer sell or make a profit on (Titanium-HD).
I would assume(?) that the newer sound cards come with software that has switched over some of the processing workload, from the card's DSP chip, to the main CPU (it's what I would do if making and selling sound cards).
But maybe also post any questions on Creative stuff on this Creative forum.
http://forums.creative.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6
 
Mar 5, 2018 at 9:20 AM Post #10 of 12
I'm going to make a guess(?), that unless your playing a lot of older FPS games, the Titanium-HD will not offer any benefit, over the SB-ZxR.
And chances are Creative spend more on driver support for cards they are currently selling and not spending as much on cards they no longer sell or make a profit on (Titanium-HD).
I would assume(?) that the newer sound cards come with software that has switched over some of the processing workload, from the card's DSP chip, to the main CPU (it's what I would do if making and selling sound cards).
But maybe also post any questions on Creative stuff on this Creative forum.
http://forums.creative.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6

Between the two I didn't notice much sound quality difference, but I did like some of the conveniences of the ZxR. However one issue is the ZxR is so picky about which outputs you can do SBX Surround on. So if I go back to my initial issue of needing an amp, I have to add a dac. After looking at the Titanium X-FI HD I can add CMSS-3D headphone on RCA and cut the need for a dac. However the Titanium HDs have pretty damn good resale at the moment.
 
Mar 5, 2018 at 10:00 PM Post #11 of 12
Mar 6, 2018 at 4:56 PM Post #12 of 12
My two cents.
Sell off the Titanium-HD and SB-ZxR, buy a used SB-Z (OEM is fine).
Get an Audio-GD NFB-11.28 DAC/amp ($330 + shipping)
http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/Headphoneamp/NFN1128/NFB1128EN.htm
So SB-Z > optical > NFB-11.28.

So I have a Magni 3 coming in this week and I may just give the HD/Magni some testing this weekend. If I feel the sound quality has degraded or CMSS isn't as much to my liking as SBX I may give your recommendation a shot. Is the NFB-11.28 a pretty good DAC/AMP combo for the money?
 

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