[Bones13]

My Headroom Desktop unit arrived the end of this week. I am still not sure how much they tip Fed EX to get their stuff in our hands so fast. I have the DAC installed in the unit and use 650s.

I have been playing around with the set up options available for this unit to run from my computer (AMD64 4400+ with 2 gig) and and XFi.

1) Decided against the onboard optical out from the motherboard (only 48khz out)
2) I tried the USB connection, got sound, but could not kernal stream thru this, Foobar2K would just not function in this mode. Directsound worked fine.

3) Current option is the coax digital out on my soundblaster - set it to 44.1 in the xfi setup, and it kernal streams well to the DAC in my unit.

Question I have is : how much is the sound card resampling with my music? Does this creative labs board actually put coax out at 24bit? I listen to a mix of FLAC and uber ripped MP3s (as I re-rip to FLAC) Is the digital out in this scenario fairly clean? I enabled bitperfect, which turns off all the 'enhancements' offered by the card.

Also, am I bypassing the kmixer yet? I do think that I can still hear some of the computer made sounds.

I could not seem to get asio4all to work on Foobar2K (v0.8.3) I put the dll in the components folder, but the exe part kept failing as I tried to run asio infoobar. Some message to the effect that the exe would not run. The windows configuration part ran fine.

Do I need to work harder to get ASIO working, or is my coax setup thru the XFi pretty clean? I do not have audiophile ears (yet).

Anyone have suggestions for how to set it up "better"? I managed kernal streaming and 44.1khz. I am not sure that getting the AV710 and running optical would be surprizingly better. But I could move the XFi to another computer.

 

[Bones13]

I did finally manage to set up ASIO4all and foo_ASIO_output (the most recent one, dated today on the site).

After I finally figured out where to enable 32 bit forced output (which the ASIO4all seemed to require) I got sound across ASIO to my dac/amp unit. I was very dissappointed with the sound, it being harsh, with some distortion. The distortion had the sound of a tinny am radio. The sound is more "raw" as well, although cramped might describe it better. I went back and forth with the ASIO and KS options. KS via my coax is by far the better sound.

Next up I will try the ASIO with the USB, and totally bypass the XFi. No time to mess with that this afternoon, tomorrow perhaps.

 

[MikeW]

I use the X-Fi's coax out with good sucess. However I don't have any other transports to compare it to. Kernal Streaming will bypass kmixer, it does for me. I also notice beter quality in Audio Creation mode with the "RMAA 16/44" Defaults set, other then enabling digital out and setting it to headphones from speaker mode. Also make sure to mute your line in. I also tried asio with similiar results.

 

[Bones13]

Thanks for the tips. Will give them a try. The sound seems pretty good to me using this route. I probably will stick with it for the time being.