[Fegefeuer]

CMSS-3D treble can be horrible with a few headphones. I wish we'd get a proper OpenAL implementation for Z cards. 

 

[dyrdevil]

Hi Everyone,
 
posting here in the hope that I can gain some knowledge from you all.
 
My goal: Good quality sound, also able to use virtual surround for gaming.
My limitations:  limited pcie slots in computer.
 
The ideal: sbz card for sbx surround, optical out to external dac/amp.  However, I'm trying to figure out an alternative without using a pcie/internal card.
 
Option 1: use a creative external usb card with sbx surround and optical in/out and send that to dac/amp.
Option 2: use XFI3 MB software and use mobo optical out to dac/amp.
Option 3: use alternative software like razer surround.
Option 4: use my new Soundblaster x7.
 
I'll try to keep this as short as possible:
 
The new X7 sounds great.  Some shortcomings in its functionality have me nervous, and I'd prefer to get the great sound processing for my games somewhere else and be free to experiment with other dac/amps.
 
Will an external usb creative card like the digital music premuim HD or the XFI 3MB software give me the same quality of DSP as the X7 is?  I've got the XFI MB software but I can't get the 5.1 or 7.1 options to show up in my windows control panel.  (just showing stereo... likely due to a driver problem with the asus gryphon z87 board I'm using - so I'm unsure the MB software suite is working correctly.
 
 
 
Any ideas are welcome!

 

[SpiderNhan]

You should try Razer Surround. It's actually pretty good.

 

[wsfrazier]

Wanted to bump this with a question I had. I am about to play an order for an external dac/amp with headphones. It will be used for 90% gaming, but I am trying to decide if I should get an SBZ for virtual surround. Or just play games in high quality stereo.
 
If I would just to use a dac/amp setup and 2.0 stereo only, do any games ever have their own HRTF audio for headphones? I noticed some games give you an option to choose surround or headphones. I am curious if the game sees your selecting headphones, does it use it's own virtual surround?
 
Or does every games audio fall under one of the API's mentioned in the OP?

 

[genclaymore]

Razer Surround is another option and its free and works with external dac's. You can use that instead of buying a sound blaster Z and put that money else where.

 

[rudyae86]

Quick Question and maybe get a good detailed answer lol.
 
I bought an Asus Xonar DG, just because I really wanted to test out Dolby Headphone and it was cheap too (16 bucks after rebate).
 
Anyways, I was wondering, what does the Mixer tab do? I saw a youtube video saying that you should drop it to about 50 percent so the peaks dont go over 0dB. What is he really talking about? Says that if the peaks go over 0dB, you will get distortion and more if it goes up to 20+dB.
 
Not sure what he says is true or correct.
 
Thank you
 
I know what clipping is but how will I know when it will happen or how can i set up the mixer in the Asus Xonar control panel? I did crank it up to 100 and noticed some clipping thus i turned it down again. But Im not sure if the default 76% is good enough or should I lower it?

 

[rudyae86]

  Quick Question and maybe get a good detailed answer lol.
 
I bought an Asus Xonar DG, just because I really wanted to test out Dolby Headphone and it was cheap too (16 bucks after rebate).
 
Anyways, I was wondering, what does the Mixer tab do? I saw a youtube video saying that you should drop it to about 50 percent so the peaks dont go over 0dB. What is he really talking about? Says that if the peaks go over 0dB, you will get distortion and more if it goes up to 20+dB.
 
Not sure what he says is true or correct.
 
Thank you
 
I know what clipping is but how will I know when it will happen or how can i set up the mixer in the Asus Xonar control panel? I did crank it up to 100 and noticed some clipping thus i turned it down again. But Im not sure if the default 76% is good enough or should I lower it?

Anyone? Im trying to keep this away from MLEs thread.

 

[rudyae86]

What do you guys think about this new sound card PowerColor is releasing?
 
http://www.techpowerup.com/213055/powercolor-devil-hdx-sound-card-detailed.html
 
I thought they only focused on Graphic Cards but guess they are trying to get at Audio as well...

 

[NamelessPFG]

Wanted to bump this with a question I had. I am about to play an order for an external dac/amp with headphones. It will be used for 90% gaming, but I am trying to decide if I should get an SBZ for virtual surround. Or just play games in high quality stereo.
 
If I would just to use a dac/amp setup and 2.0 stereo only, do any games ever have their own HRTF audio for headphones? I noticed some games give you an option to choose surround or headphones. I am curious if the game sees your selecting headphones, does it use it's own virtual surround?
 
Or does every games audio fall under one of the API's mentioned in the OP?

 
This question largely boils down to the games in question and how their audio is implemented.
 
The reason most of us pursue sound cards with the proper DSP effects (and external sound processors like the Mixamp on the console gaming side of things) in the first place is that most games are NOT designed with HRTF surround in mind. Everything sounds so flat and one-dimensional on a pure stereo DAC like the ODAC in most cases.
 
I could even say that for older DirectSound3D/OpenAL-era games, the developers probably weren't thinking of headphone use specifically when implementing 3D audio in their games. It's more of a fortunate accident that it's possible to get good headphone surround out of those games due to how those APIs work.
 
But even in a software-mixed game that pipes its audio out through predetermined speaker channel buffers or whatever, if the developer actually puts some effort into their software mixing routines, they could easily enable HRTF audio for everyone. The problem there is that things like Battlefield 3 Enhanced Stereo Mode are the EXCEPTION, not the norm.
 
The good news is that we may not have to put up with substandard headphone audio for much longer and not have to buy a sound card to ensure it sounds good, since Oculus VR now has an Audio SDK that provides software-mixed HRTF audio that integrates with FMOD, Wwise and Unity (among other things), all free of charge AFAIK. It's quite a stark contrast to something like AstoundSound, which has an expensive licensing fee attached and requires an AMD card with the TrueAudio DSP to really get the most out of.
 
This will benefit everyone who games on headphones, regardless of whether or not a VR headset is actually being used, though the head-tracking aids in positioning. There's a reason Beyerdynamic and Smyth Research actually bothered to implement head-tracking in their surround processors, after all.
 
Speaking of which, the Audio SDK documentation is a very good read. I encourage everyone here to read it, even those of you who aren't planning to actually develop games, because it goes in depth with a lot of the theory behind spatialized sound and the challenges with actually implementing it in-game. 
 
The bad news is that developers still have to care enough to actually implement it, and going by the aforementioned audio SDK documentation, the high-quality spatialization mode is computationally expensive, especially on mobile devices.
 
You would think that we'd be past the days of CPU performance being the main bottleneck since the era of Half-Life 1 and Aureal A3D (go look up the reviews/benchmarks and you'll find just how much of a performance hit you took to enable A3D in the first place), but we could still benefit from audio DSPs dedicated to this stuff...
 

Quick Question and maybe get a good detailed answer lol.
 
I bought an Asus Xonar DG, just because I really wanted to test out Dolby Headphone and it was cheap too (16 bucks after rebate).
 
Anyways, I was wondering, what does the Mixer tab do? I saw a youtube video saying that you should drop it to about 50 percent so the peaks dont go over 0dB. What is he really talking about? Says that if the peaks go over 0dB, you will get distortion and more if it goes up to 20+dB.
 
Not sure what he says is true or correct.
 
Thank you
 
I know what clipping is but how will I know when it will happen or how can i set up the mixer in the Asus Xonar control panel? I did crank it up to 100 and noticed some clipping thus i turned it down again. But Im not sure if the default 76% is good enough or should I lower it?

 
I say that you go by your ears on this one, especially since you already know what clipping sounds like and thus know what to listen for.
 
It's just common advice for equalizer use to never adjust upward due to the risk of clipping, but at least with my X-Fi cards, I've noticed that setting the main volume below 100% gives me a fair amount of upward headroom as well. Perhaps it's the same on other sound cards as well, where you have more room above 0db on the EQ that won't clip the lower your master volume is set.
 
Quote:

What do you guys think about this new sound card PowerColor is releasing?
 
http://www.techpowerup.com/213055/powercolor-devil-hdx-sound-card-detailed.html
 
I thought they only focused on Graphic Cards but guess they are trying to get at Audio as well...

 
Wasn't expecting this announcement myself, but it sounds like they're going with the typical C-Media Xear3D mixing for spatialization, no Dolby Headphone licensing or anything like that.
 
At least C-Media's still making new sound card chipsets, since this one's sporting a CMI8888 compared to the CMI8788 that powered a lot of Asus Xonar, HT Omega and Auzentech cards.

 

[YT-MrEleven1181]

Hello everyone.

I'm basically looking for some advice on a good audiophile sound setup for PC. I'm just about to build my 1st gaming PC and don't know how the sound setups work, I've always been a console gamer in the past.

My current setup for console is astro mixamp pro as my DAC then schiit vali for my tube amp then Akg q701 for my headphones. So I'm looking for a good sound setup for PC now.

I also want to switch from Dolby surround sound to sbx true surround sound so looking at sound blaster products. Can I get a few opinions from use guys please ?

Games I'll be playing are cs go arma3 battlefield and maybe some cod also ordered a msi gaming 5 mobo but not sure if the audio on that will be very good.

 

[rudyae86]

Hello everyone.

I'm basically looking for some advice on a good audiophile sound setup for PC. I'm just about to build my 1st gaming PC and don't know how the sound setups work, I've always been a console gamer in the past.

My current setup for console is astro mixamp pro as my DAC then schiit vali for my tube amp then Akg q701 for my headphones. So I'm looking for a good sound setup for PC now.

I also want to switch from Dolby surround sound to sbx true surround sound so looking at sound blaster products. Can I get a few opinions from use guys please ?

Games I'll be playing are cs go arma3 battlefield and maybe some cod also ordered a msi gaming 5 mobo but not sure if the audio on that will be very good.

Sound Blaster Z. Probably the best and cheapest option out there for PC unless you want to go Sound Blaster X7 and ditch the Astro Mix amp all together. X7 can be used both for consoles and PC.
 
As for your motherboard, it seems to have better quality components than a regular motherboard but the Sound Blaster Cinema 2 seems to be more software oriented than hardware but not sure to be honest. It could work but the quality wont be the same as a Sound Blaster Z.
 
Also, whats your budget?

 

[YT-MrEleven1181]

Sound Blaster Z. Probably the best and cheapest option out there for PC unless you want to go Sound Blaster X7 and ditch the Astro Mix amp all together. X7 can be used both for consoles and PC.

As for your motherboard, it seems to have better quality components than a regular motherboard but the Sound Blaster Cinema 2 seems to be more software oriented than hardware but not sure to be honest. It could work but the quality wont be the same as a Sound Blaster Z.

Also, whats your budget?

Budget was £1500 for everything but I'm at £1950 already lol so don't want to buy an x7 unless it's way better than a sbz. So best option is sbz > schiit vali > q701 ? That would be ideal since I already have the vali and q701s

 

[rudyae86]

Budget was £1500 for everything but I'm at £1950 already lol so don't want to buy an x7 unless it's way better than a sbz. So best option is sbz > schiit vali > q701 ? That would be ideal since I already have the vali and q701s

well the X7 is better than the SB Z in terms of quality of sound, not by a huge margin but a more noticeable margin.
 
But you should be good with an SB Z and Vali though I should say that in this case, I wouldnt recommend double amping. You should buy an optical Modi so you can send the SB X signal through the SB Z optical out into the Modi Optical in, which then is connected to the Vali and your headphones. By doing this, you will get a better and cleaner sound while still getting the SB X surround through your headphones

 

[YT-MrEleven1181]

well the X7 is better than the SB Z in terms of quality of sound, not by a huge margin but a more noticeable margin.

But you should be good with an SB Z and Vali though I should say that in this case, I wouldnt recommend double amping. You should buy an optical Modi so you can send the SB X signal through the SB Z optical out into the Modi Optical in, which then is connected to the Vali and your headphones. By doing this, you will get a better and cleaner sound while still getting the SB X surround through your headphones

Ok I think I get it so sbz >modi optical> schiit vali>q701 and I'm all set ?
Also if I was to go with the x7 is that all I would need or would I still need the sbz ?

 

[Evshrug]

Ok I think I get it so sbz >modi optical> schiit vali>q701 and I'm all set ?
Also if I was to go with the x7 is that all I would need or would I still need the sbz ?

SB Z or SB Omni should be practically the same at optical output, so I'd say whichever is cheaper.

The DACs built into those aren't bad, so I'd disagree with Rudy and say connecting the Vali to the headphone outs should be fine/better than the Mixamp setup you already use. You could always start SB>Vali>Q701 to start off with and buy an optical DAC later if you want, see if you can hear a difference. The DAC in the Optical Modi (1st gen) and Omni sound extremely similar through headphones.

The X7 basically serves as Sound Processor, DAC, and Amp, so you wouldn't need the Vali at all in that setup (unless you wanted to for flavor). That said, the X7 also has a ton of inputs, so you could feasibly use it instead of the Mixamp with your console too. You choose! It was on Massdrop for a week at $300, not sure if the drop ended yesterday...