[Jonasklam]

I can sell you a FiiO E5 if you want.

Sorry, I just had to add that
I am in the EU btw

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well I got the PA2V2 today and well my first impressions were good when I quickly tried on my parents comp because I just got summerholiday and will stay a while at their place this summer so hadn't setup my comp yet. My parents comp use crappy onboard Realtek sound. I noticed it had a warm sound signature and bass was slightly more powerful (I'd say this amp strengthens the bass by maybe 1.5 ~ 2dB and especially highs sounded more fullier than otherwise sounding very thin with the Sennheiser HD 212 Pro using the integrated sound card. Well later on when I tried with my own comp which is using a Creative Audigy card with my much beloved kX Audio driver setup I didn't get quite the impression as before. Honestly I had my doubts even before trying it because the volume were already much more than enough (I could easily damage my ears if not being careful with volume sliders probably as I have win 7 slider set to ~35% and kX Audio volume slider to usually 18 - 30 or so). Besides kX Audio drivers have in the past already made me sell ATH-M50 and DT 770 Pro as I couldn't get any worthy sound quality improvement even over the 3x cheaper 212 Pros and they sounded actually nearly the same when using the kX Audio drivers and tweaking the hardware DSP EQ a bit if necessary. I have compared with Realtek onboard sound as well and then I could hear a night and day difference between pretty much all the headphones but yes the ATH-M50 or Beyers still sounded worse than 212 Pros using Creative Audigy & kX Audio drivers even though comparing 212 Pros and ATH-M50s on the Realtek onboard soundcard the 212 Pros sounded especially crappy.

I've also got a AKG K 518 DJ set and comparing the two on the realtek onboard soundcard the AKG and the Senns are like the total opposite sounding in pretty much all categories. They were pretty much the same in terms of bass quantity though but AKGs have very tight and punchy bass vs Senns very deep and softer and perhaps slightly muddier "club-like" bass. Furthermore the Sennheiser HD 212 Pro has a very bright sound nature and quite thin sounding highs and mids (lacking details or warmth) while the AKG has a very dark sound nature with smooth and clear sounding mids that sound fullier and better. When I compare the same headphones on Creative Audigy card with kX Audio drivers installed, I can barely hear any difference! HD 212 Pros have a lot more fullier and warm sounding clear and smooth highs and mids and the AKG sound awfully a lot the same, the same thing I noticed with ATH-M50 despite the very dimishing results with Realtek onboard sound. The thing that differs the most with the kX Audio drivers would be bass quantity and soundstage. The AKGs have very poor soundstage even with kX Audio drivers despite using the pseudo surround sound system, the Sennheiser HD 212 Pros did a lot better in this regard. Now this is perhaps the only noteworthy point where ATH-M50 actually did slightly better but the difference was very small and not worthy the 3x higher cost over 212 Pros and besides the M50 lacked slightly in bass quantity for my tastes.

So now on to the real question, how did PA2V2 do when plugging it in to Creative Audigy card using kX Audio drivers? Well I'm not quite sure yet but I almost think it sounds worse with it. The bass becomes too punchy imo while the bass quantity is slightly further strengthened so it overpowers the rest of the frequency even more. I seem to get better result simply tweaking the 10-band EQ plugin for the drivers. The bass remains softer and is more separated from the rest of the frequency range so I can have both very powerful bass while still hearing other frequencies very well. I couldn't hear any improvement in mids and highs when using Audigy & kX drivers or anything else except the distorted sound if running the volume knob on the amp say less than 1/10 or so.

I have written earlier in the kX Audio drivers forum how it makes my 43€ headphones sound like 150€ ones and yea I still hold on to that opinion. I would appriciate if some1 on this forum could actually grab an Audigy 1, 2 or 4 card (Audigy 1 or Audigy 2 ZS is prolly the easiest one to find and I have both and there's very little difference between them with kX Audio drivers installed) and install kX Audio drivers and tell if it's my imagination or if they actually are this bloody good so it's not worth buying 3x expensier headphones or cheaper amps cuz you won't hear barely any difference from the already well sounding cheaper headphones.

 

[Blasto_Brandino]

I have the Audigy 2 ZS platinum pro, what are these drivers you speak of if you don't mind me asking..

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Official kX Project Site -- News You can read all about them there.

Here's a full compability list: kX Project -- FAQ (Frequently asked questions)

And check here for some screenies: kX Project -- Screenshots

They are 3rd party built from scratch and share nothing common with Creative's own. This isn't something like PaX modified drivers, it's just a few coders that have coded for years in their sparetime as Creative open sourced specs/drivers or whatever for the Audigy card series (hasn't happened for X-Fi cards yet so obviously there's no X-Fi support). They are so configurable, you can add whatever plugins you want as long as there's enough resources on the card, they all use hardware acceleration (takes up resources from the card itself so no extra CPU juice is wasted) and the performance is very good, in fact I might have even gained 1 - 2 fps here and there for pc games.

The best thing is the awesome sounding bass output which you can extend an almost unlimited amount with either Timbre or 10-band EQ that are default plugins included in the pack and it won't start distorting despite raised it by even 20dB or more! lol The other nice thing is the pseudo surround sound that works amazingly well even for a stereo setup by the Surrounder+ plugin when enabling "surround" setting. The surround sound or 3D positional sound is so accurate I can shoot zombies hiding behind trees or behind a wall based on which direction the noise comes from in L4D or I can listen to footsteps or weapon noise in other FPS games to know where the enemy is. The best is it works very nicely with almost any games, no need for EAX support, it works even for very old games that wasn't intended to have any surround sound! Another scary thing when listening to some live rock concerts for example, it's like you could tell where the singer, the bassist, the drummer etc stands in relative to the source recording! xD

For me an Audigy card combined with kX Audio drivers is a better option than X-Fi or auzentech card at least, can't comment on ASUS Sonar series as I haven't tried them yet but I'm so satisfied with kX Audio drivers I bought a backup Audigy 2 ZS and Audigy 1 card whenever this Audigy 1 from 2001 fails.

64bit and Windows 7 support was quite recently added (maybe some 6 - 7 months ago or whatever) so there might be a bit bugs under that scenario but that's mostly with 5.1 setups if configured wrong (default settings won't do) but it works nicely with headphones/stereo sound as I've been using Win 7 64bit and haven't had any probs at all, in fact the sound quality is slightly better in Win 7 compared to XP. Even crisper/clearer highs and bass sounds also a bit better. I recommend Wave 4/5 output for headphones.

 

[Blasto_Brandino]

Awesome, thank you very much!