[Evshrug]

Motorwayne,
The O2 amp can't do anything with the digital signal in an optical connection. So, you should use an analogue output... With the TiHD, you can use either the hp jack or the RCA connections. Just make sure the TiHD is set for headphone surround processing.


Tsine,
I say get an Omni and the best headphone you can afford. From what I read, the K701 was revised to sound like the Q701, I do have the Q701 and that headphone is a strong value. I like SBX surround better than Dolby Headphone, it has less reverb and cave-like feeling, better detail and just seems to create a nice natural surround soundstage for me.

If you desire more, start saving up around $200 for a nice amp or DAC/amp combo (with optical input) that will give noticeable gains over the Omni (which already will be noticeably better than motherboard audio). For the K701, I suggest a solid-state Matrix M-Stage or tube hybrid Project Ember. If you want a DAC/Amp combo, the DAC is going to need an optical input, like some of the Audio GD products or the new Geek Pulse. At this point the Omni or any other soundcard would have most of it's major audio components bypassed to use the external gear, you're just using the "card" for processing the surround effect, and since all the Z line uses the same processing, seems clear to me to get a fair one that costs the least.

 

[benbenkr]

  This may well be a very silly question, but in Windows is this a right or wrong assumption?  Setting the 'Device' at 100% volume is clearly the way to go (ie with your Xonar, Creative or USB DAC).
 
My question is this: what of the application volume? If Internet Explorer, VLC, Youtube or WMP etc are at 50% say, but the Device volume is at 100%: will that degrade the audio to any noticeable degree (for a nerd)? IE: do you absolutely have to have both Device and Application volume at 100% for a perfect bitstream and solely controlled by the volume dial on your external Amp?
 
Thanks for any replies. Sometimes difficult to find out stuff by doing a search here.

 
In theory, yes.
 
But in reality, unless you're a cat I don't think you'd be able to tell a difference. Any difference is placebo, I'm not kidding. This goes to anyone else that says they hear a difference in this situation.

 

[tsine]

Motorwayne,
The O2 amp can't do anything with the digital signal in an optical connection. So, you should use an analogue output... With the TiHD, you can use either the hp jack or the RCA connections. Just make sure the TiHD is set for headphone surround processing.


Tsine,
I say get an Omni and the best headphone you can afford. From what I read, the K701 was revised to sound like the Q701, I do have the Q701 and that headphone is a strong value. I like SBX surround better than Dolby Headphone, it has less reverb and cave-like feeling, better detail and just seems to create a nice natural surround soundstage for me.

If you desire more, start saving up around $200 for a nice amp or DAC/amp combo (with optical input) that will give noticeable gains over the Omni (which already will be noticeably better than motherboard audio). For the K701, I suggest a solid-state Matrix M-Stage or tube hybrid Project Ember. If you want a DAC/Amp combo, the DAC is going to need an optical input, like some of the Audio GD products or the new Geek Pulse. At this point the Omni or any other soundcard would have most of it's major audio components bypassed to use the external gear, you're just using the "card" for processing the surround effect, and since all the Z line uses the same processing, seems clear to me to get a fair one that costs the least.

Thanks for your time . I am not using on board audio . I currently using a DGX asus which is mediocre .

 

[kalston]

  I have a gaming pc and i am playing bf4 most of the time .So i would like to pair my akg k701 with a good sound card with build in headphone amp OR a sound card + external amp OR external sound card +external amp . One of these three if something is better that the other.
 
 
I would like good music playback but first i would like to have the best positioning audio when playing bf4 .
 
I dont like mess 3d sound with unspecific positions of tanks and helicopter and also loss of any footsteps .

BF4 already has a built in headphones mode that works perfectly! 
 
There's two audio options just make sure you select "headphones" and "surround" (yes even with standard stereo headphones, for some reason when you use "headphones" + "stereo" it results in horrible channel separation, no crossfeed at all... bad audio positioning as a result and fatiguing after a while, Dice did something wrong there, even though all is fine in BF3) Ofc then you need to set your speakers setup to stereo in Windows and audio drivers and disable Dolby Headphones, GX2.5 or anything like that. 
 
And the Asus Xonar DGX is a very good card by the way. 

 

[tsine]

  BF4 already has a built in headphones mode that works perfectly! 
 
There's two audio options just make sure you select "headphones" and "surround" (yes even with standard stereo headphones, for some reason when you use "headphones" + "stereo" it results in horrible channel separation, no crossfeed at all... bad audio positioning as a result and fatiguing after a while, Dice did something wrong there, even though all is fine in BF3) Ofc then you need to set your speakers setup to stereo in Windows and audio drivers and disable Dolby Headphones, GX2.5 or anything like that. 
 
And the Asus Xonar DGX is a very good card by the way. 

Yes the dgx is not so good low snr very noize at 64 ohm amp and not the perfect sounder aout there . But i will give it a try . I set me card to stereo and windows to stereo and BF4 set to HI-FI and Surround and i will report my resaults here .

 

[kalston]

  Yes the dgx is not so good low snr very noize at 64 ohm amp and not the perfect sounder aout there . But i will give it a try . I set me card to stereo and windows to stereo and BF4 set to HI-FI and Surround and i will report my resaults here .

Headphones and surround, not hi-fi and surround. 

 

[tsine]

Ok first i set my windοws and dgx settings to stereo 
 
i tried surround +hi-fi 
 
Then tried surround+headphone
 
then surround+war types
 
then surround + home cinema 
 
Nothing was impressive to a degreee that we can say "whao".
 
surround+headphones its still better that dolby headphone ...we can say near enough to Razer 7.1 but not what i was expecting .I will give it a little more testing over the next days to see 

 

[genclaymore]

Did you config your windows control panel sound controll to 5.1 as well asus xonar sound card to 5.1 in the speakers setting including games, if you don't do this, Dolby headphone wont sound right.

 

[Murder Mike]

  Did you config your windows control panel sound controll to 5.1 as well asus xonar sound card to 5.1 in the speakers setting including games, if you don't do this, Dolby headphone wont sound right.

Exactly. Make sure you're doing this tsine. Dolby Headphone isn't perfect, but it should provide better results than Razer Surround. 

 

[MrEleventy]

Sure hope that I get my SB X-Fi Surround 5.1 soon, Razer Surround is acting oddly and I'm not liking it. Was listening to Spotify and after a few minutes, volume levels drastically dropped while it's still maxed in the windows mixer. Had no idea what was happening. Killing Razer Surround fixes it but when I started it back up to game, it no longer lists my onboard as an audio source. Definitely glad I didn't pay for it. :mad:

 

[motorwayne]

  Titanium HD's RCA jacks to the input on the O2 amp.
So an RCA (red/white) to 3.5mm cable is what you need.
The Ti-HD's RCA output is the better analog audio signal to feed into external headphone amplifier.
The Ti-HD can send CMSS-3D headphone surround sound thru the RCA output.

 
 
Thanks mate, perfectly clear explanation Man I love this card, I had the ZX-R before this and I reckon the X-Fi CMSS-3D is superior.
 
motorwayne

 

[motorwayne]

Actually, while I'm on it..what's are peoples thoughts on best the drivers for the X-Fi HD?
 
I have tried the PAX drivers (problematic to get them to install correctly on the 2014 version) and the latest drivers via Creative..what about Daniel_K, does he still have or every had one for the HD? 
Who has experience with this stuff and can give good advice?
 
Cheers
 
motorwayne

 

[tsine]

  Exactly. Make sure you're doing this tsine. Dolby Headphone isn't perfect, but it should provide better results than Razer Surround. 

Yes i did that but the surround is very open so you still cant get the surround sound correct 
 
Dolby headphone gives you better sound but worst positioning audio 

 

[genclaymore]

Not for me, when config like how i mention it does a good job with positioning audio some times even a great job like it did for the K702 I had in the past when I used DH mode 1 config the way I mention. I found that different headphones work different with dolby headphone and the different modes settings. Where Mode 2 didn't work well on K702, Like it did on the DT880 pro-250 or like Mode 3 which I use for DT880 premium 600's.  But Mode 1 is Ref so it doesn't add any echo which why AKG K702 worked so well on mode 1 then it did Mode 2. In the end it had very good positional audio but for me it depended on the headphone.
 
I used to use Razer surround, it did not do a good job in postional audio for me, even after i set it up towards my ears. the Rear was hard to tell and the directions didn't sound all right, also razer surround had sound stating issues where it would static and make a mess of the sound. That was a major reason why i stop using the razer software and got a cheap used DGX and went for Dolby headphone which worked very good on my end.

 

[tsine]

So to be more clear . I have to set windows to 5.1 (Not 7.1 ) and only enable dolby headphone (not 7.1 virtual surround sound above ?).
 
Something else ASIO 24 bit with latency 1ms can effect surround sound ?