[RPGWiZaRD]

Quote:

people report xonar card doesnt have bass treble control
 
some people say the sound is flat

Bass / Treble control are for noobs. I prefer adjusting the whole frequency range myself as I get a lot better result that way, unfortunately a 10-band EQ isn't quite enough for my needs but it's better than nothing. I may sometimes in future even concider picking up some true hardware EQ from Behringer or something.
 
*Drools* http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/DEQ2496.aspx

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Bass / Treble control are for noobs. I prefer adjusting the whole frequency range myself as I get a lot better result that way, unfortunately a 10-band EQ isn't quite enough for my needs but it's better than nothing. I may sometimes in future even concider picking up some true hardware EQ from Behringer or something.

Haha, there it is
 
Don't play coy, what you really want is something like this:

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

*wets pants* That looks like something for me, "the more the marrier".
 
That being said, would be nice if they offered better configurability of soundcards, especially "audiophile"-class marketed soundcards. Like offer an "Advanced" mode in the drivers that would open more settings.

 

[Roller]

Hehe, I knew you would like to be all over that baby
 
Well, you are aware that X-Fi powered cards have DSP mode switching, changing the features available to you. Many people like to run X-Fi cards on Audio Creation Mode, while others prefer Entertainment Mode, even if this one might not yield the most accurate (read, bitperfect) sound. And then you have Game Mode, which is required to be enabled when you play games, as it enables full hardware acceleration, EAX 5, the works.

 

[tom2011]

people bought xonar cards after reading in forums
 
they see it flat (the sound)
 
and the pepole that recommend it is wrong
 
and x-fi is better

 

[NamelessPFG]

Quote:

Those images showed kX drivers' configuration windows, namely the Surrounder plugin, which is not setting the number of outputs to 5.1, but emulating it.
 
And just like all previous Creative soundcards, Windows own audio control panel is never to be used, only Creative control panels. It's on their documentation.
 
The options you speak of are on the cards control panels (both).

I'm not entirely certain of how the kX drivers work, but my impression is that he's trying to have the equivalent of 5.1 surround through headphones via HRTF, particularly in games.
 
While it's true that you want to use the Creative control panel with Creative-based sound cards, the issue here is that newer games tend to use APIs like XAudio2 that pre-mix the sound according to the Windows sound control panel settings. They'll dumb it down to stereo if the Windows setting isn't 5.1 or 7.1. They don't look at the Creative sound setting since game developers nowadays think everyone just uses onboard audio codecs and speaker setups. In my experience, this doesn't seem to hinder proper stereo playback from stereo sources at all if the Creative control panel is set to Headphones; stereo music tracks sound like they normally would out of headphones (right beside me instead of out in front), and the surround channels seem to be downmixed into stereo automatically regardless of whether CMSS-3D Headphone is on or off (although with it off, the imaging will be significantly different, as if side and rear left/right are coming from the same direction as front left/right). This applies regardless of which mode the X-Fi is currently in, so I generally leave the Windows control panel at 7.1 and don't touch it after that.
 
In short, the ideal setup is apparently 7.1 in the Windows sound control panel, but Headphones in the X-Fi control panel. This works because (at least on the X-Fi Prelude; I don't expect other X-Fi drivers to act differently) changing the X-Fi control panel's speaker/headphone configuration doesn't change the Windows sound settings.
 
If the Titanium HD provides those options, that's great! It may not output discrete 5.1 or 7.1, but at least it'll give CMSS-3D Headphone additional positioning information to work with in those newer games designed to cater only to speaker users sound-wise.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

I'm not entirely certain of how the kX drivers work, but my impression is that he's trying to have the equivalent of 5.1 surround through headphones via HRTF, particularly in games.
 
While it's true that you want to use the Creative control panel with Creative-based sound cards, the issue here is that newer games tend to use APIs like XAudio2 that pre-mix the sound according to the Windows sound control panel settings. They'll dumb it down to stereo if the Windows setting isn't 5.1 or 7.1. They don't look at the Creative sound setting since game developers nowadays think everyone just uses onboard audio codecs and speaker setups. In my experience, this doesn't seem to hinder proper stereo playback from stereo sources at all if the Creative control panel is set to Headphones; stereo music tracks sound like they normally would out of headphones (right beside me instead of out in front), and the surround channels seem to be downmixed into stereo automatically regardless of whether CMSS-3D Headphone is on or off (although with it off, the imaging will be significantly different, as if side and rear left/right are coming from the same direction as front left/right). This applies regardless of which mode the X-Fi is currently in, so I generally leave the Windows control panel at 7.1 and don't touch it after that.
 
In short, the ideal setup is apparently 7.1 in the Windows sound control panel, but Headphones in the X-Fi control panel. This works because (at least on the X-Fi Prelude; I don't expect other X-Fi drivers to act differently) changing the X-Fi control panel's speaker/headphone configuration doesn't change the Windows sound settings.
 
If the Titanium HD provides those options, that's great! It may not output discrete 5.1 or 7.1, but at least it'll give CMSS-3D Headphone additional positioning information to work with in those newer games designed to cater only to speaker users sound-wise.

It's most unfortunate how audio engines are being crippled and limited due to a popularization of $1 onboard audio chips

 
Well, the Titanium HD is indeed a stereo card, which will display several output formats, all being 2ch. CMSS3D can be of use for people who want a somewhat wider sound, but I was never particularly a fan of surround emulation solutions, at least current ones, be it CMSS3D, DH or anything that seems to be around.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well I love how accurate the positional sound is with my current Audigy 2 ZS / kX Audio driver. It's worked well for me with any game so far so it'll definitely be interesting in comparing it to the widely concidered to be the greatest soundcard for gaming in mind out there atm. I don't feel like I could get any more accurate positional sound than this really but I'm definitely not looking for worse either while improving the music playback SQ. Don't know about CMSS3D but didn't like Dolby Headphone for gaming but love it for music playback. Maybe if I was able to configure the dolby headphone width and such like I can with channel mixer in foobar2000 but not with the default settings. The main problem was that the distance to the sound was poorly defined while directions worked pretty good. Moving objects didn't result in a smooth transition in sound etc and the stereoimage width was too wide so that sounds that should appear in the middle were often slightly off-centered.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Well I love how accurate the positional sound is with my current Audigy 2 ZS / kX Audio driver. It's worked well for me with any game so far so it'll definitely be interesting in comparing it to the widely concidered to be the greatest soundcard for gaming in mind out there atm. I don't feel like I could get any more accurate positional sound than this really but I'm definitely not looking for worse either while improving the music playback SQ. Don't know about CMSS3D but didn't like Dolby Headphone for gaming but love it for music playback. Maybe if I was able to configure the dolby headphone width and such like I can with channel mixer in foobar2000 but not with the default settings.

Well, perhaps you'll like CMSS3D, perhaps not. It does have some adjustment, rather than just a switch. I have to admit I'm rather curious to see what kind of configuration combination you'll find, between CMSS3D, DH wrapper on foobar2000 + channel mixer, perhaps the card's own EQ, etc.
 
BTW, have you considered running both cards on your system?

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well at least when I first get the card and start comparing them, then I'll ofc have both Audigy 2 ZS + kX Audio and the Titanium HD as well as Realtek HD onboard drivers all installed at the same time so I can quickly switch around between them. Then I'll see whether I might have to use different cards for different tasks.

 

[Roller]

Let's just hope all cards play nicely with each other. Unfortunately, that's something rather hard to predict as there are far too many variables to take in account. If things don't run as smoothly as they should, Realtek will likely have to be disabled, and on worst case scenario, only one card will be able to be running at a single time. Let's hope it's not the case.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well there's no issues running Realtek onboard and the Audigy 2 ZS installed at the same time at least, I just keep disabling the Realtek output device whenever I don't use it just in case.

 

[Roller]

That's good. I'm just saying it as there are both systems that run perfectly multiple cards at once, just like there are some that require software or even hardware disabling.
 
Well, now I'll be curious about your thoughts on the card until you get it. :S

 

[tom2011]

buy Titanium pro and finish

 

[Roller]

Quote:

buy Titanium pro and finish

Seriously, get lost. You already proved that you don't know anything in order to give advices.