Soundcard for S/PDIF out

[kazaakas]

Quote:

Having an integrated headphone amp doesn't translate into higher sound quality, especially when considering the Essence STX headphone amp has a quite harsh signature.
 
I personally find that having separate gear allows for far better flexibility on my setups, mixing and matching exactly the gear I want rather than having components that I either don't use or that will alter the signature in a way that goes against my listening preferences.

 
I know, I know, what I ment was:
 
The STX is usually chosen over the Titanium HD, presumably (at least, i presume) because the persons reviewing it get a better listening experience because of using the STX's integrated amp and the Titanium HD doesn't have one.
For people like me who are interested in both of these cards but want to use an external amp it get very very confusing since the reviews on the STX are biased because the reviewers use its integrated amp. And I'm not intersted in that integrated amp anyway.
 
To put this another way:
"In terms of sound quality, the STX is without a doubt more populair than the Titanium HD when used without any other equipment directly plugged into the headphone"
"So, in terms of sound quality, when one wants to use an external amp anyway, it's unclear wether the STX would still be the preferrable choice since it's popularity is probably because people without external amps liked its listening experience better because they still got some kind of an amp because the internal amplifier"
 
-----
 
Anyway, if the Titanium HD supports surround virtualisation techs through RCA thats a big plus for competetive multiplayers first person shooter games for me.
Since I'll be using a headphone that can be described as a bit harsh/bright, the general warmer signature of the titanium HD would be better for a natural sound than the already harsh STX .
And since you guys are telling me the DAC on the Titanium is slightly better than the STX, my question of which would be better when using an external amp is pretty much already answered isn't it?

 

[Roller]

Quote:

 
I know, I know, what I ment was:
 
The STX is usually chosen over the Titanium HD, presumably (at least, i presume) because the persons reviewing it get a better listening experience because of using the STX's integrated amp and the Titanium HD doesn't have one.
For people like me who are interested in both of these cards but want to use an external amp it get very very confusing since the reviews on the STX are biased because the reviewers use its integrated amp. And I'm not intersted in that integrated amp anyway.
 
To put this another way:
"In terms of sound quality, the STX is without a doubt more populair than the Titanium HD when used without any other equipment directly plugged into the headphone"
"So, in terms of sound quality, when one wants to use an external amp anyway, it's unclear wether the STX would still be the preferrable choice since it's popularity is probably because people without external amps liked its listening experience better because they still got some kind of an amp because the internal amplifier"
 
-----
 
Anyway, if the Titanium HD supports surround virtualisation techs through RCA thats a big plus for competetive multiplayers first person shooter games for me.
Since I'll be using a headphone that can be described as a bit harsh/bright, the general warmer signature of the titanium HD would be better for a natural sound than the already harsh STX .
And since you guys are telling me the DAC on the Titanium is slightly better than the STX, my question of which would be better when using an external amp is pretty much already answered isn't it?

The thing is, there has been both previous bad experiences with Creative drivers, something that no longer happens for the most part, and mainly a lot of misguided FUD, and a lot of Head-Fiers eat that up.
 
And if you're not using hard to drive headphones, I don't believe you will notice any audible differences between the Titanium HD and the Essence STX, other than louder output. I already said it before, but the amp section of the Essence STX is nothing to call home about, and for bright/treble sensitive people, its amp is a bane.
 
Aside from allowing for surround virtualization techs, such as CMSS-3D, to go through the RCAs, the X-Fi algorithms also go through the RCAs, which is a huge plus for competitive gamers.
 
And you make a good point regarding your headphones signature, as it would indeed be a less than stellar pairing with an Essence STX. It should be noted that I find the Titanium HD DAC to be neutral with a touch of warmth rather than a fully warm DAC, which is what I usually aim for in terms of gear.
 
Honestly, I don't think you will go wrong at all by pairing your Q701 and Matrix M Stage with the Titanium HD. Just remember to change modes according to your audio usage, or use either the optional mode changer or the aftermarket alternative in order for you to obtain the best results. Do note that you won't get bad sound by using the wrong mode for the usage you're giving, but you will get ideal results when the correct mode for your usage is selected.
 
EDIT: If you have quite some money to spend, you can go all out and get an Onkyo SE-300PCIE, which is basically a supercharged Titanium HD, blowing both the regular Titanium HD and the Essence STX out of the water in terms of music, games and movies

 

[kazaakas]

Well dude, I've been using an XtremeMusic DAILY for over 5 years now, so I know the configuration panel like the back of my hand already!
 
 
That Onkyo card is getting a little too expensive at > $400 USD, at least for now.
I mean I'm already planning on getting a headphone and an amp of ~$250 each and a sound card of $150 which is already quite a sick sum of money, well, it at least for my comprehension it is.
 
To be honest I don't even see the hype of the onkyo card, well that would mainly be because I'm not familiar with so called "discrete" opamps.
They both offer the same virtualisation DSP's and Burr-Brown DAC's right?

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Well dude, I've been using an XtremeMusic DAILY for over 5 years now, so I know the configuration panel like the back of my hand already!
 
 
That Onkyo card is getting a little too expensive at > $400 USD, at least for now.
I mean I'm already planning on getting a headphone and an amp of ~$250 each and a sound card of $150 which is already quite a sick sum of money, well, it at least for my comprehension it is.
 
To be honest I don't even see the hype of the onkyo card, well that would mainly be because I'm not familiar with so called "discrete" opamps.
They both offer the same virtualisation DSP's and Burr-Brown DAC's right?

Yes, it has the same DAC and the X-Fi DSP chip, but surrounded by far higher parts on all the PCB. Onkyo is one of those brands that really knows their stuff when it comes to audio, and that can be seen by the SE-200 still holding up nicely up to this very same day. But of course that the price hike is quite a stretch, something to consider only if you really have extra money available for that kind of purchase.
 
EDIT: And sorry for mentioning the mode changing, I forgot you were running a XtremeMusic. It's just that many people forget about changing modes and then are surprised about some features being unavailable, bitmatched playback working differently, and things like that.

 

[kazaakas]

Quote:

Yes, it has the same DAC and the X-Fi DSP chip, but surrounded by far higher parts on all the PCB. Onkyo is one of those brands that really knows their stuff when it comes to audio, and that can be seen by the SE-200 still holding up nicely up to this very same day. But of course that the price hike is quite a stretch, something to consider only if you really have extra money available for that kind of purchase.
 
EDIT: And sorry for mentioning the mode changing, I forgot you were running a XtremeMusic. It's just that many people forget about changing modes and then are surprised about some features being unavailable, bitmatched playback working differently, and things like that.

Haha you don't have to apologize, you helped me out very well.
Well music DOES sound utterly terrible when cmss-3d headphone is left on from some gaming though XD
 
Well at first I was like, okay I want some better sound, I should get an essence stx. Then I was like, gah my HD555's kinda suck to use with such a card, so I should get some nice new headphones. And, well, you guessed it, then I concluded that I should get a nice external amp too if I want to do those new expensive headphones some justice. So I've really stretched my budget to the max already.
 
Besides, head-fi seems like a great place to sell used equipment for some little extra cash for upgrades anyway, so who knows I'd ever upgrade the soundcard
 
Next to that I'm also a bit of a price-quality-ratio man, I'm "attracted to" the Q701's and the M-Stage since both products mainly get reviewd like "You really have to spend over twice the money to get something audibly better than this." Besides these two products are widely regarded as having a good synergy.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Haha you don't have to apologize, you helped me out very well.
Well music DOES sound utterly terrible when cmss-3d headphone is left on from some gaming though XD
 
Well at first I was like, okay I want some better sound, I should get an essence stx. Then I was like, gah my HD555's kinda suck to use with such a card, so I should get some nice new headphones. And, well, you guessed it, then I concluded that I should get a nice external amp too if I want to do those new expensive headphones some justice. So I've really stretched my budget to the max already.
 
Besides, head-fi seems like a great place to sell used equipment for some little extra cash for upgrades anyway, so who knows I'd ever upgrade the soundcard
 
Next to that I'm also a bit of a price-quality-ratio man, I'm "attracted to" the Q701's and the M-Stage since both products mainly get reviewd like "You really have to spend over twice the money to get something audibly better than this." Besides these two products are widely regarded as having a good synergy.

 
So true, CMSS-3D (or DH, for that matter) sound awful with music, it's like the sound gets a dripping wet (or should I say dry?) coat of artificial tone over the sound
 
There are two reasons why you shouldn't get the Essence STX. First, its signature doesn't match your gear. Second, its gaming features are an afterthought of Asus. And a possible third (a definite third on my book) is having a less flexible setup in terms of future upgrade paths.

 

[kazaakas]

Quote:

 
So true, CMSS-3D (or DH, for that matter) sound awful with music, it's like the sound gets a dripping wet (or should I say dry?) coat of artificial tone over the sound
 
There are two reasons why you shouldn't get the Essence STX. First, its signature doesn't match your gear. Second, its gaming features are an afterthought of Asus. And a possible third (a definite third on my book) is having a less flexible setup in terms of future upgrade paths.

Yeah sure, no way I'm getting the STX now, I'm pretty convinced as I mentioned two posts ago. I was merely stating my way of thinking and the way I kept forgiving myself for increasing my budget
CMSS-3D makes anything sound like it's coming out of a tin can, but I can live with that when it gives me an unfair advantage in online FPS games
 

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Yeah sure, no way I'm getting the STX now, I'm pretty convinced as I mentioned two posts ago. I was merely stating my way of thinking and the way I kept forgiving myself for increasing my budget
CMSS-3D makes anything sound like it's coming out of a tin can, but I can live with that when it gives me an unfair advantage in online FPS games
 

There are some games that are obscenely detailed in terms of audio, if you have the right hardware. If only there was slightly less obsession over visual fidelity and a bit more over audio design and game immersion would increase significantly IMHO. But when there are both lazy developers and crossplatform requirements, things get harder which makes the future of game audio look rather bleak :S

 

[kazaakas]

That's so true, especially cross-platform developement make most games fall short of good audio.
 
The most sarcastic thing about that is a lot of consolegamers have decent HiFi sets next to the TV they're probably playing their games on.
 
Still in FPS multiplayer I take accurate positioning over quality any day, haha

 

[Roller]

Well, ideally we should aim for both accurate positioning along with sound quality, but most of the techs used so far often degrade pure sound quality in order to provide better positional cues. On the other hand, singleplayer games do benefit hugely from immersion, which can be had from pure sound quality, and positional cues can be tweaked to improve over stereo without coating it with an artificial tone.

 

[kazaakas]

I definately hope so, so far I haven't heard any technology that can "translate" speaker surround to binaural headphone audio that does not affect quality in a big way.
Some games have built-in mechanisms for headphone surround though, which sounds a bit better.
 
We can only hope on what the future brings us, I'm just praying its not another line-up of 7.1 gaming headsets which are nothing more than a regular gaming headset with a receiver with DH technology.....

 

[Roller]

There have been a few headsets in the past that were multi-driver, but due to poor implementation, they sounded bad, plain bad, and that's a shame because multi-driver implementation done correctly could give a truly new dimension to sound, but that seems to be a challenge yet to be overcome.
 
About binaural, I do use a component that converts stereo to binaural on my audio player, but that also comes at a cost, namely lower bass impact. But if you get something with hardware crossfeed, like the SPL Phonitor, that could very well provide you the imaging you seek.

 

[kazaakas]

Shiiit, the black Q701's used to be $295 on amazon and are now $265
 
I was planning on buying stuff after building a new pc in about a week or two and selling my old one, but it gets REALLLLY tempting to order the cans already now

 

[Roller]

Another victim of upgraditis...

 

[kazaakas]

GAAAAH they only ship the green version to my country
 
I'm pretty damn mad right now...
 
Just the ONLY version I don't like is my only option
 
EDIT: Yeah the great sound matters, but the green one just looks so... yeck
 
I mean I'm going to use it for a few years at least probably, don't want to be annoyed all the time I didn't get the black or white version...