[Roller]

Quote:

Yes but I was considering getting an external DAC of my own and using the optical-outs.
 

I see. Still, you do want to have the features mentioned previously, as if they're present, they will be used, and it does gets passed along optical, unlike some things that were said on another similar thread.

 

[Scytus]

Quote:

I see. Still, you do want to have the features mentioned previously, as if they're present, they will be used, and it does gets passed along optical, unlike some things that were said on another similar thread.

I'm a bit confused, so the features do still get sent out through the optical correct? (cause I've always been under that assumption).
 
I'm honestly now leaning towards the Titanium HD btw, you're to blame

 

[Roller]

Quote:

I'm a bit confused, so the features do still get sent out through the optical correct? (cause I've always been under that assumption).
 
I'm honestly now leaning towards the Titanium HD btw, you're to blame

Well, I've read around here that some people were saying said features didn't go through optical, when in fact they do, so there's no need to concern yourself over that.
 
I still say that the set up you're envisioning sounds quite good, and might very well give you both great performance on all three areas, as well as upgrade flexibility.
 
And I wouldn't recommend a product I didn't think was a solid performer

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Quote:

Like I said before, try to forget DH, CMSS3D, etc, they make sound less natural and bring little to no benefits on gaming, and none to music, with perhaps slight improvements on movies, which I'm still not convinced at all. I should note that even on movies, the only area I find it possible to have any use for such features, I find that watching a whole movie makes for a very fatiguing experience, while if you just enable one low intensity reverb setting, you get increased sense of space while avoiding the exhausting DH/CMSS3D effect.

Well now you're just speaking for yourself again. I couldn't listen to music without my Dolby Headphone foobar2000 config these days. If anything it makes it sound much more natural to me like I was listening to live performances rather than studio recordings where I can picture whereabouts the singer and other band members is standing in relation to me, like I'd be in the same physical room! It's a night and day improvement to me but this is a lot thanks to being able to tweak the "channels" in channel mixer plugin, without it I certainly wouldn't think Dolby Headphone would sound equally good. Would be nice if there was the same possibility for games...
 
But so far I think the kX Audio's surround implementation plugin and Dolby Headphone still does the best job for a software "5.1" / surround virtualization technique, I'd rather have Dolby Headphone than CMSS-3D at least. I've also tried out that SRSlab or whatever it was called while it was not bad at all when it came to surround sound virtualization it had more impact on SQ than Dolby Headphone. Scytus brought up a good point there with software based solutions like these. They affect any game's sound in some way without needing support from the game itself while many other solutions require certain support for it. This is something I appriciate with kX Audio drivers, it does its own virtual 3D processing to ANY game, while it may not always bring as great result as OpenAL for example in some games at least you can use it with all games which is an important fact to me besides that it being very little impact on SQ.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Well now you're just speaking for yourself again. I couldn't listen to music without my Dolby Headphone foobar2000 config these days. If anything it makes it sound much more natural to me like I was listening to live performances rather than studio recordings where I can picture whereabouts the singer and other band members is standing in relation to me, like I'd be in the same physical room! It's a night and day improvement to me but this is a lot thanks to being able to tweak the "channels" in channel mixer plugin, without it I certainly wouldn't think Dolby Headphone would sound equally good. Would be nice if there was the same possibility for games...
 
But so far I think the kX Audio's surround implementation plugin and Dolby Headphone still does the best job for a software "5.1" / surround virtualization technique, I'd rather have Dolby Headphone than CMSS-3D at least. I've also tried out that SRSlab or whatever it was called while it was not bad at all when it came to surround sound virtualization it had more impact on SQ than Dolby Headphone. Scytus brought up a good point there with software based solutions like these. They affect any game's sound in some way without needing support from the game itself while many other solutions require certain support for it. This is something I appriciate with kX Audio drivers, it does its own virtual 3D processing to ANY game, while it may not always bring as great result as OpenAL for example in some games at least you can use it with all games which is an important fact to me besides that it being very little impact on SQ.

Actually, every single person that shared his opinion on what DH does to sound clearly stated that it made sound less natural, so it's just a matter of how bad the SQ change is, which for some people is small and for others, like me, is huge. And like I already agreed on the foobar2000 DH wrapper thread, tweaking the config helps things a bit, but all sound unnatural, fake sense of expansion, which is definitely not to my taste, but then again, you like CMSS3D/DH/etc and I don't, so that could explain it.
 
Wow, so kX drivers do exactly the same as CMSS3D and DH?? Now I'm impressed *rolleyes* The way you said it made it sound like neither CMSS3D nor DH apply to every single audio source on a computer, but that's ok. Of course that each feature has a different implementation, which is good that your second hand card can do it a tad better than both CMSS3D and DH, again due to the direct hardware interfacing. So, what new card allows for the same hardware interaction? Oh, that's right, there is none. Because I don't think most of any people around here will get a, for all intents and purposes, hardware locked output format card that even by getting it at the same low price you got, won't convince anyone who cares even the slightest about SQ and flexibility. Also, at this time and age, all those new cards are probably getting rather close to end of their life as well.
 
Basically, it's a shame you have to live with surround virtualization techs, a bane I'm happily aware and away from.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

And btw you can get 24bit/96kHz output using WaveHQ on Audigy 2 ZS but it won't at this point support plugins/effects (the author has said to at least try fix that) but heh that's no different than using "Hi Fi" mode on ASUS cards for example which many use for music playback anyway and it does sound pretty good I must admit, there's an audible difference using this output device but it would be nice to be able to use it with plugins too.
 
But I'm done arguing with you, your posts are filled with so much negative energy it's only annoying to continue to talk to some1 who continously believes his preferences are the right ones.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

And btw you can get 24bit/96kHz output using WaveHQ on Audigy 2 ZS but it won't at this point support plugins/effects (the author has said to at least try fix that) but heh that's no different than using "Hi Fi" mode on ASUS cards for example which many use for music playback anyway and it does sound pretty good I must admit, there's an audible difference using this output device but it would be nice to be able to use it with plugins too.

Still locked to the sampling rate, there is unnecessary and SQ degrading converting going on, specially since it's a hardware limitation.
 
Basically, it's like when people want to use bit-perfect audio with plugins, it defeats the purpose of bit-perfect in the first place.

 

[Scytus]

Quote:

And btw you can get 24bit/96kHz output using WaveHQ on Audigy 2 ZS but it won't at this point support plugins/effects (the author has said to at least try fix that) but heh that's no different than using "Hi Fi" mode on ASUS cards for example which many use for music playback anyway and it does sound pretty good I must admit, there's an audible difference using this output device but it would be nice to be able to use it with plugins too.
 
But I'm done arguing with you, your posts are filled with so much negative energy it's only annoying to continue to talk to some1 who continously believes his preferences are the right ones.

Aw come on RPG, people always disagree on head-fi, whether it be because of preference of other factors. I think the factor here is hardware, and my assumption is the reason you enjoy Dolby Headphone more than most is because while the sound signature of the XB500 appeals to you it has essentially, from my experience, no soundstage. It's also an extremely colored can so DH may somewhat even affect the SQ for the better.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Yes people disagrees on head-fi over things but Roller seems to have hard time to even accept other people's prefers or opinions, like he's convinced it's either due to my "weird" settings or my hearing isn't good enough to hear what's "good quality" and not etc or he may think I'm a kX Audio driver fanboy just having to defend this Audigy 2 ZS/kX Audio driver no matter what like I'd be lying to myself only to defend it. Sorry but that's not it, I simply go with what I hear, I had loved to get more satisfaction from Titanium HD card but it just wasn't possible, I got a bit better results in some games but at the same time the results were even worse in others so that's not a trade-off I'm willing to take.
 
I don't think about DH that XB500 would be a particular reason why I'd prefer DH as I also like how it sounds like with any of my headphones. You see XB500 in my experience has quite good soundstage, yes it's very up-close/in-your-face presentation but the positioning is always very clear and doesn't sound closed in which is probably thanks to the big bass vents at the back, it sounds very airy but I agree it's not very big compared to some other options but still a lot bigger soundstage than say M50. Depth is good, width wise it's a little less great. I've also EQ'd out the frequency response balance change DH adds as great as possible so when I A/B stock foobar2000 settings vs the DH headphone setting in music the change is very very small in frequency balance and I'm only left with bigger but especially more immersive soundstage due to the enhanced positioning. It really sounds like you're not even using headphones when listening as the sounds appear to come more "free" from the positions they should if it was a live act and this is how I like it to sound like, "out-of-head" experience or picturing yourself being there live or imaging having a sound source that isn't limited to outputting sounds from a certain position as you hear it, the more different "spots" I can hear the sounds coming from the better to me, I don't like listening to traditional stereo sound, I like to be center of the music with music surrounding me. I also used 5.1 speakers in the past but moved to headphones for listening privacy and since I'm such a nightowl I'd disturb people nearby.

 

[Roller]

RPGWiZaRD, from the moment you go solely by subjective appreciation, the fact that your Audigy 2 ZS has a hideous hardware resampler is oblivious to you. The same goes for your DH wrapper configuration on foobar2000, raising EQ values to unreasonable values, setting hardware configurations that cause issues and end up giving sub-par results, just to name a few.
 
On the DH wrapper for foobar2000, all your configurations suffer from the same issue that's inherent to DH, which is fake and artificial sound, no matter how much you tweak settings. What you want is very good, but DH isn't the tool to do that. Out of head experience isn't worth it if what's out of the head is hollow and artificial, but to each his own.
 
But overall, it's a good thing you don't play games, which is why you don't need to worry much about having a flexible and high quality gaming card.
 
Subjective listening is what's of due note here, which will make even the lowest hardware acceptable given enough time to burn the brain in.
 
EDIT: kX drivers by themselves are very good, the hardware they work on isn't. It's simple.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

That you think it sounds artificial and hollow is a subjective opinion, not a fact, don't treat it as such.
 
So I'm not a gamer? Excuse me, I helped two different warfare clans in UT3 to the very top on Clanbase ladder as well as an american based ladder later on we joined just for the lulz. At one point I was ranked #2 in the whole world in the player ranking created by Epic Games and I've now later on constantly been between position 200 ~ 1000. In 90%+ of the cases I'm on top of the scorelist in any gamemode. I play ofc a lot of other games too but this is just an example as I love fast paced scifi shooters. I also use 120Hz LCD as I refused to go to 60Hz LCDs back in the days and used a CRT monitor all the way into 2010. My performance while gaming is affected by lots of small things, how tired I am, how clean/dirty the mousepad may be that cause uneven friction and a ping change of 10~15ms may be enough to notice a change in my hit ratio etc to mention a few. Yes sure for a non-gamer I'm sure such small factors matter a lot.
 
EDIT: I've never said the hardware on an Audigy 2 ZS is great but I've said the kX Audio drivers make them sound pretty good as it's not only the hardware but also the drivers that affect the end result and quite a lot too it seems. You can have excellent hardware but a poor driver implementation may bottleneck heavily or you can have worse hardware that perform nicely thanks to great driver implementation. I didn't believe much into drivers could cause such huge difference until I tried kX Audio drivers the first time.

 

[Roller]

I'd like to see a single person that doesn't think DH wrappers make sound feel artificial and anything but natural.
 
So, you got your ruler out, so good for you, measure away. Read the subtext. That doesn't make up for the fact that you base yourself solely on subjectivity, which alied with the laughable resampler your Audigy 2 ZS has, makes for irrelevant factual opinions from you. But don't worry, your Audigy 2 ZS with kX drivers will never faulter you.
 
EDIT: Just read your edit and I have to agree, it's both the hardware and software combined that make up for good performance. So basically you're complaining about having great hardware with software implementation that isn't at the same level, which is perfectly fine. But claiming a horribly flawed hardware can sound as good as great hardware with good software, that's hilarious. The next thing you're going to say is that your Realtek onboard audio chip with modded drivers sounds as good as a real soundcard?

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

I don't care what you think about the Audigy 2 ZS or DH etc but you could be a bit less rude, it bugs the crap out of me. It's not good for the community, I've seen it happen before in your case.
 
Here I've explained my point of view to my very best but you're continuing to post bunch of rude things about my point of view.

 

[Roller]

Rude? You're praising your Audigy 2 ZS and kX drivers like they're the best invention since sliced bread, when it's so far from it that its embarassing. About DH, I've already stated that it's unnatural sounding, but if you're into it, that's your business, neither me nor anyone has the right to tell others what they should like.
 
EDIT: So now you decided to call me rude. Very mature. I've stated very clearly pros and cons of each situation, and you got all offended because your hardware is severely lacking. Deal with it.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Of course there's a limit where no matter how great the driver part is it won't matter if the hardware isn't up to par. But I don't hear such a great difference between Titanium HD and Audigy 2 ZS / kX Audio drivers at least.