[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freestyler /img/forum/go_quote.gif So my ST arrived 2 days ago. Boy, it has some power! Listening to shotgun fire's from movies will scare you off. I've got a problem. I've been reading from many people that the STX / ST are very quite cards yet i can hear much hissing from mine. (tested on some of the best recordings) I know my card is in a noisy environment between my PSU (good quality corsair hx620) and video card. On my pc case the PSU is positioned on the bottom. Plus some fans are making some noise so do you think that's the problem? I remember some songs the first hour i had installed the card, sounded like hissing mess.

Many recording are dithered. Dithering adds noise in order to linearize the lower bits of the signal so hissing in many recordings is normal. The hiss should however go away when you press pause. Some types of dither used use noise shaped hiss which produces a sharp increase in the high frquencies of the dither noise. Chesky records does this for example. By moving the noise up to the highend of the audio spectrum the noise is actually less audible to most people & hence you han hear even softer sounds in the midrange before being covered by noise.

 

[jalyst]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX /img/forum/go_quote.gif Many say there are no differences between digital output and others say you can hear a difference.

So he was basically saying the digi-out on one card is better than the digi-out on another?
But digital 's digital isn't it? ....

So long as there's sufficient bandwidth & the path isn't damaged/interfered with...
How exactly the output is implemented shouldn't matter, should it?

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jalyst /img/forum/go_quote.gif So he was basically saying the digi-out on one card is better than the digi-out on another? But digital 's digital isn't it? .... So long as there's sufficient bandwidth & the path isn't damaged/interfered with... How exactly the output is implemented shouldn't matter, should it?

Yes there can be significant diferences. Try hooking up the SPDIF cable from a C.D. drive that has it to the sound card then try the digital input through the PCI or PCI express slot. The sound can be hugely different. The PCI-PCI express being way more articulate the SPDIF.

 

[phusg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes there can be significant diferences. Try hooking up the SPDIF cable from a C.D. drive that has it to the sound card then try the digital input through the PCI or PCI express slot. The sound can be hugely different. The PCI-PCI express being way more articulate the SPDIF.

AFAIK the theoretical explantation for all these differences are various forms of jitter. The best explanation of this I've found (i.e. the only one that made sense to me) is here.

 

[giedrys]

How much real difference cheap vs. good power supply can make on ST in therms of sound quality?

 

[h4sy0u]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freestyler /img/forum/go_quote.gif So my ST arrived 2 days ago. Boy, it has some power! Listening to shotgun fire's from movies will scare you off. I've got a problem. I've been reading from many people that the STX / ST are very quite cards yet i can hear much hissing from mine. (tested on some of the best recordings) I know my card is in a noisy environment between my PSU (good quality corsair hx620) and video card. On my pc case the PSU is positioned on the bottom. Plus some fans are making some noise so do you think that's the problem? I remember some songs the first hour i had installed the card, sounded like hissing mess.

I can confirm this !!! Essence is really bad in terms of eliminating noise/EMI.
On Asus forum you can find enough people who reported these problems !

 

[Alexander01]

Another proof that EMI shields are just audio voodoo. The quality of the sound (clean sound,crispness,frequency response,soundstage, positional audio) is all about the audio processor in the soundcard. Only the clearness of the sound has to do with the card design (dedicated power input, filtering, DAC, opamps, board circuit etc). Not more then that.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alexander01 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Another proof that EMI shields are just audio voodoo. The quality of the sound (clean sound,crispness,frequency response,soundstage, positional audio) is all about the audio processor in the soundcard. Only the clearness of the sound has to do with the card design (dedicated power input, filtering, DAC, opamps, board circuit etc). Not more then that.

If you read his post he was complaining of noise within the recording which is in fact dither as he said it happens even in his best recordings. This indicates he is talking of noise within the recording. Dither noise is like tape hiss & is intentional in the recording to correct the nonlinearity of the 16 bit recording system that is used in the C.D. itself.

Other noises that may be attributed to the soundcard but are not due to the soundcard is ground loops which can make it sound like EMI is getting though when it is not. It is due to the polluted ground. The card itself without ground loops is extremely quiet.

 

[krisno]

He has got it wrong... the low noisefloor shows up noise even in the best recordings. That is what he is hearing. I can't even hear any noise from my Via onboard sound using AKG K 701 ...

 

[ROBSCIX]

When I tested the ST it was dead silent. If your heairng some type of noise it must be from another source such as PSU noise, bus noise or possibly floating inputs.

 

[freestyler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you read his post he was complaining of noise within the recording which is in fact dither as he said it happens even in his best recordings. This indicates he is talking of noise within the recording. Dither noise is like tape hiss & is intentional in the recording to correct the nonlinearity of the 16 bit recording system that is used in the C.D. itself. Other noises that may be attributed to the soundcard but are not due to the soundcard is ground loops which can make it sound like EMI is getting though when it is not. It is due to the polluted ground. The card itself without ground loops is extremely quiet.

Indeed i was talking about noise only when music is playing. When nothing is playing it's silent.

Some records i test include 44.1 khz flac files like Dire Straits - Brothers in arms, Nirvana & Eric Clapton MTV unplugged's etc.
Funny thing is that i can barely listen the hissing from my low end headset sennheiser pc160.
I know it's there but i have to try to hear it, while with senns hd650 it's apparent (on higher volumes mostly).
I haven't done much tests yet with different sample rates from the drivers or foobar re-samplers but i think i have more hissing on 96 khz rather than 48khz. That's why i'm using the latter.
Also i haven't used the line out yet.

So all this make me believe that what i hear can be infact be dither.
Listened to some 24 bit 96 khz files earlier on evening (sample rates that supposedly the card doesn't do any resample) and it seemed quiter to me.

My settings are 24bit 44.1 khz on windows for the device, 48khz on drivers and 24 bit output on foobar. Anything wrong?

p.s: For example on beatles remasters that came out some months ago like on White album the hissing is very audible. My friend with beyer ad700's on his xonar dx complained about the same thing.
I guess this is because of the poor original recordings and the remaster effort?

Also the more i listen to the card the more i like it. (was a little disappointed the first day). Could be that i'm getting used to it, placebo or maybe some of the components needed some burn-in.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freestyler /img/forum/go_quote.gif Indeed i was talking about noise only when music is playing. When nothing is playing it's silent. Some records i test include 44.1 khz flac files like Dire Straits - Brothers in arms, Nirvana & Eric Clapton MTV unplugged's etc. Funny thing is that i can barely listen the hissing from my low end headset sennheiser pc160. I know it's there but i have to try to hear it, while with senns hd650 it's apparent (on higher volumes mostly). I haven't done much tests yet with different sample rates from the drivers or foobar re-samplers but i think i have more hissing on 96 khz rather than 48khz. That's why i'm using the latter. Also i haven't used the line out yet. So all this make me believe that what i hear can be infact be dither. Listened to some 24 bit 96 khz files earlier on evening (sample rates that supposedly the card doesn't do any resample) and it seemed quiter to me. My settings are 24bit 44.1 khz on windows for the device, 48khz on drivers and 24 bit output on foobar. Anything wrong? p.s: For example on beatles remasters that came out some months ago like on White album the hissing is very audible. My friend with beyer ad700's on his xonar dx complained about the same thing. I guess this is because of the poor original recordings and the remaster effort? Also the more i listen to the card the more i like it. (was a little disappointed the first day). Could be that i'm getting used to it, placebo or maybe some of the components needed some burn-in.

Looks like proper settings to me. These are the ones I've been recommending actually. Anything 48KHz & above in the drivers. If 48KHz sounds best to you then use it by all means. On 24 bit 96KHz recordings set the windows sound properties to 24 bit 96Khz & the sound card drivers to 96KHz to get zero resampling.

Also on older analog based recording you can hear tape his as well in fact the really early CD's were mostly made from analog tapes & some had quite horendous hiss. Dither was not needed with these early CD's as the tape noise served to dither the recording. That is why the early CD's made from analog tapes sounded better than the early digital recorings. Early digital recordings were not dithered. They had horendous distortion at low volume levels.

 

[gurubhai]

Yup! the STX is dead silent. IMO, it is one thing where Xonar STX is actually a cut above its competition. Asus got the noise elimination circuitry right.

 

[krisno]

What you are hearing is the bitter end of 'hifi audio'. The noise floor is so high that you hear everything, and you will notice that alot of recordings have alot of noise.

With my X-DAC V3, 132db noise floor(124 xonar ST) - I could no longer play Miles Davis. All I heard was hissing... noise from the recording.

That is one of the reasons I orderd the Xonar D1 and not Essence...

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krisno /img/forum/go_quote.gif What you are hearing is the bitter end of 'hifi audio'. The noise floor is so high that you hear everything, and you will notice that alot of recordings have alot of noise. With my X-DAC V3, 132db noise floor(124 xonar ST) - I could no longer play Miles Davis. All I heard was hissing... noise from the recording. That is one of the reasons I orderd the Xonar D1 and not Essence...

You mean the noise floor is so low actually as those are minus numbers relative to max output.