genclaymore
Headphoneus Supremus
There's no headphone amp's with optical in, Only RCA. You would need to get a external dac amp if you want optical inputs, to plug your sound card into.
So I'm itching to try out CMSS-3D Headphone and am trying to find a used X-Fi Titanium PCIe (70SB088000004) in/to Canada for less than $100 which is turning out much harder than I thought. Are there any other PCIe bus Creative cards that do the same CMSS-3D Headphone downmix to stereo and digital passthrough to SPDIF? In particular, do the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty PCIe cards (70SB088600007 and 70SB088600002) do the same thing? I'm currently running Dolby Headphone via onboard SPDIF > Audioengine D1 > Schiit Asgard 2 > K702.65, so all I want is the soundcard for the CMSS-3D HP processing.
Did Creative ever make what is essentially a USB version of the X-Fi Titanium with the down-mixing and passthrough via SPDIF? I think I read an earlier post from NamelessPFG that stated that the X-Fi Go! USB (SB1100) did NOT downmix and passthrough CMSS-3D HP via SPDIF.
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 SB1090 (non-pro) SPDIF out: TOSLINK
I'm not sure if this is still available online and this is a good option as well.
There is a post before about this and can't find it.
Driver question for Titanium HD owners. Is the new drivers (released Feb 10, 2014) worth updating to or not?
Driver question for Titanium HD owners. Is the new drivers (released Feb 10, 2014) worth updating to or not?
But there's a very grey area to soundcard vs external amp/DACs. Is soundcard surround sound feature really a marketing stunt or is it necessary?
Thanks and sorry in advance, if someone had already addressed this. Been having trouble finding someone with both expertise to give precise advise.
You can get a Asus Xonar STX used for $139 off amazon which would be another good choice if it's still there.