[Arlekiin]

Hello,

I have read a lot of articles etc and now want to confirm what I have come to belive.

Here goes, Windows Vista does not support Hardware accelerated audio so in a sense most of my Xonar D2 goes into waste.

Windows 7 is built on Vista and should also be crippled and not support hardware acceleration?

Fortunately Asus Xonar's support Open AL engine.

So since nor Vista or 7 has hardware acceleration Id be better off using my PC's optical out and external DAC? If not better of then at least its an idea.

Without hardware acceleration EAX is out of the window?

How do 16bit or 24bit hardware relate to having or not having hardware acceleration? (if one can hear the difference is not the issue here).

Thank you and help me out if you can |

 

[MaZa]

While Vista and 7 do not support hardware acceleration natively because they scrapped Directsound3D from DX10, both Asus and Creative have softwares that convert Directsound3D commands to OpenAL, meaning you get your hardware acceleration and EAX and such back to old games. And new games either support OpenAL natively or they have their built-in software sound engine to make 3D sound effects (like Half Life 2) which wont use your soundcards hardware at all no matter what OS you use.

Creative Alchemy does the DS3D conversion for Creative cards. I dont know what program Asus uses but I heard its better than Creatives because it is fully automatic unlike Creatives where you have to enable it manually for each game you have installed, perhaps even alter some settings if its not supported on fly.


And external DAC is meaningless here. You can still use your soundcards hardware features and use external DAC. I have my Elite Pro setted that way. Soundcard does all the DSP effects and accelerations and such for games, only DAC conversion is done externally in higher quality than soundcards built-in DAC converter.

 

[Arlekiin]

Ok thank you.

So I read that Xonar D2 has pretty good DAC, how does better DAC improve your soundquality? I mean does it become more clear, full better resolution etc.
There is a simpler way to ask what I want to know. Do you feel having DAC between your X-Fi and Little dot 3 improve your sound-quality noticeably?

I do not have an amp yet but as I drive HD 595's and Xonars are quite strong its not a must ( I plan to get a nice tube though).

 

[MaZa]

Yes. External DAC bests DAC solutions of internal soundcards easily. The DAC circuit in soundcards is often quite small and simple, and not to mention they are in very electrically noisy enviroment, inside your computer case that is. You might want to ask more dedicated information about DACs in out Dedicated Source Components subforum of Headfi. Thats where all the DAC related discussion happen.