[krisno]

Well - i used the AKG K 701 phones when i listened to the X-can v3 connected to the cheap sony dvd player also... so its computer as source that is a major problem. But maybe this new workstation solves it. I was using laptop at the time... no matter what I did; it did not compare to the musicality and good sound(even way superior bass) on the cheap sony dvd player.

 

[mojave]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hellenic vanagon /img/forum/go_quote.gif Please, is it known for the volume control of the ST, if it reduces the resolution, so it must be at maximum position always? Because the green part on ASUS control, suggests that it keeps lower the distortion when we use the left part? So which is the optimum point? Thank you.

In the mixer tab there are volume level sliders. According to the manual, these should be at 100 for the full scale volume level. The default is 76.

The volume control knob's colors have nothing to do with distortion. If you have an external volume control, then this should be at max level. If you don't have an external volume control, then use it for whatever volume level you desire.

 

[hellenic vanagon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojave /img/forum/go_quote.gif In the mixer tab there are volume level sliders. According to the manual, these should be at 100 for the full scale volume level. The default is 76. The volume control knob's colors have nothing to do with distortion. If you have an external volume control, then this should be at max level. If you don't have an external volume control, then use it for whatever volume level you desire.

Thank you very much!

Any comment about resolution and if there is a decrease, decreasing the volume?

 

[phusg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krisno /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well - i used the AKG K 701 phones when i listened to the X-can v3 connected to the cheap sony dvd player also... so its computer as source that is a major problem.

That's a non-sequiteur IMHO, assuming the Sony DVD player has a warm, dark low-detail type character. The only way to reach the conclusion you are making is to audition your PC with a darker more 'system friendly' pair of headphones. Too many pluses make a minus, as I recently found out with my system.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojave /img/forum/go_quote.gif In the mixer tab there are volume level sliders. According to the manual, these should be at 100 for the full scale volume level. The default is 76. The volume control knob's colors have nothing to do with distortion. If you have an external volume control, then this should be at max level. If you don't have an external volume control, then use it for whatever volume level you desire.

Leave those sliders at the default 76% or you will get massive limiting & the sound becomes very disconcerting to listen to. This card has a built in limitor to prevent clipping providing of coarse that the signal is not already clipped in the recording with many pop recordings do have a lot of already. While the limitor does pretty much eliminate clipping a signal that is not already clipped its action is the fast clamp slower release kind & that is what makes the sound hard to lisen to.

The volume knob is ok to use providing you set windows sound properties for speakers to 24 bit audio. there will be no reduction of audio quality at any normal listening volume. By the time the signal start to truncate the volume will be so low as not to be a practical listening volume anyway.

 

[hellenic vanagon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium /img/forum/go_quote.gif Leave those sliders at the default 76% or you will get massive compression & the sound becomes very disconcerting to listen to. This card has a built in compressor to prevent clipping providing of coarse that the signal is not already clipped in the recording with many pop recordings do have a lot of already. The volume knob is ok to use providing you set windows sound properties for speakers to 24 bit audio. there will be no reduction of audio quality at any normal listening volume. By the time the signal start to truncate the volume will be so low as not to be a practical listening volume anyway.

1)Very intresting! The sliders to 76% ! Is this reffered to manual, (because mine doesn't say anything), or it is set by default when you reset the system?

2)Does anybody knows how the volume control works? Is there any digital degradation of the signal when we lowering it?


Now something else! Is there any case of mulfumction of the card in 16/44, because look what this RMAA test sugests:

The measurements:

44 kHz/16 bits:Frequency response (from 40 cycles per second of tons of 15 kHz), railways+0.02, -0.13Very good
Noise level, railways (A)-95.2Excellent
Dynamic rank, railways (A)95.6Excellent
THD, %0.016Good
THD + Noise, railways (A)-32.5Very poor
IMD + Noise, %0.0047Excellent
Stereo CROSS talc, railways-95.1Excellent
IMD RK 10 kHz, %0.0050Excellent
General performanceExcellent


Here:

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate... measurements:

And if so, using the play & pause and having both volume controls, (asus & amplifier), in maximum, there must be a noise from the speakers? Is this a way to check if this bad measurement in THD+NOISE is active for our ST's?

 

[mojave]

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium /img/forum/go_quote.gif Leave those sliders at the default 76% or you will get massive limiting & the sound becomes very disconcerting to listen to. This card has a built in limitor to prevent clipping providing of coarse that the signal is not already clipped in the recording with many pop recordings do have a lot of already. While the limitor does pretty much eliminate clipping a signal that is not already clipped its action is the fast clamp slower release kind & that is what makes the sound hard to lisen to. The volume knob is ok to use providing you set windows sound properties for speakers to 24 bit audio. there will be no reduction of audio quality at any normal listening volume. By the time the signal start to truncate the volume will be so low as not to be a practical listening volume anyway.

I was wondering this past weekend where the volume sliders should be. I couldn't find anything online so I checked the manual. The manual says, "Drag this slider down to decrease the volume. Drag it up to increase the volume. The tool-tip reveals the percentage number from 1 to 100 in terms of the full scale level." I understand from that statement that whenever it is lower than 100 the level is being attenuated. Is there a way to measure what the actual setting should be? It doesn't really make sense that they would set it at an arbitrary 76%, but they might have.

Last night I listened for an hour with the volume sliders at 100. There was more detail present and it seemed like the highs were clearer and slightly louder.

This statement was in Stereophile's recent review of the Essence ST/STX, but I couldn't quite correlate it to my slider settings of 0-100.
Quote:

The maximum output level from the line outputs was 2.16V; from the headphone jack, it depended on the setting chosen: 885mV (0dB, for headphones with impedances below 64 ohms), 3.52V (+12dB for headphones with impedances of 64–300 ohms), and 7.03V (+18dB for headphones with impedances of >300 ohms). Peculiarly, this maximum level remained the same if the Playback Level was increased to its maximum (12dB) in the Mixer panel of the Xonar Control Center. All that happened was that signals below the selected gain were amplified, but signals at or above it were unaffected; ie, with 12dB of gain selected, signals at or below –12dB were boosted by 12dB to 0dB; signals above –12dB were hard-limited to the same 0dB. The line output impedance was a moderately low 99 ohms at all frequencies; the headphone output impedance was 10.7 ohms at all frequencies and settings. All the outputs preserved absolute polarity; ie, were non-inverting.

 

[krisno]

phusg I think you nailed it

warm, dark low-detail type character..... but it was fuller, more organic, no matter what I tried on PC. ASIO or not. It just is never the same overall quality.

K

 

[hellenic vanagon]

Hello! My last post still is not apparent! Is there any reason for that?

 

[freestyler]

Some other differences i noticed from my previous xonar d1:

1) Sometimes i play cod4 and have music playing at the same time, both at high volumes.
Well, the gunfires in cod4 sounded "masked" by music. They drop in volume.
When there is silent in music like for example when it's changing songs, the game sounds are once again loud.
It's like as if the card can't handle playing both audio streams at high volumes.
With the ST, game sounds don't get affected at all. I can listen to loud music and the gun fires are still strong with no "sweat" at all from the sound card.

2) Even when the volume slider in windows was all the way down to zero (0) i could still hear, barely ofc, sound from what i have open (like music on foobar)
With ST, zero volume form windows mixer, means absolute silence.

3) d1: On very high volumes (ones you don't listen for more than one song) there is some "flickering" (don't know what word to use, english is not my native language).
Meaning the sound is not consistent. It's loud but not dynamic at the same time, instruments and vocals sometimes are loud and the next sec they sound weak.
On ST it seems not affected. But on d1's defense i didn't try to set the volume anywhere nearly enough of what the ST can offer in extra high gain.


Just wanted to add that.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojave /img/forum/go_quote.gif I was wondering this past weekend where the volume sliders should be. I couldn't find anything online so I checked the manual. The manual says, "Drag this slider down to decrease the volume. Drag it up to increase the volume. The tool-tip reveals the percentage number from 1 to 100 in terms of the full scale level." I understand from that statement that whenever it is lower than 100 the level is being attenuated. Is there a way to measure what the actual setting should be? It doesn't really make sense that they would set it at an arbitrary 76%, but they might have. Last night I listened for an hour with the volume sliders at 100. There was more detail present and it seemed like the highs were clearer and slightly louder. This statement was in Stereophile's recent review of the Essence ST/STX, but I couldn't quite correlate it to my slider settings of 0-100.

I tried it at 100%. I figured out how the limiter works by listening. When you ride the limiter the sound will be impressive until you find that the medium loud sounds get modulated by the by the drum beats. that is what this limiter does. So by running those two sliders past the 76% default value you squash the dynamics of the music. Recording studios do this also but with more sophisticater limters & compressors. When they do it the music still sounds clean without the pumping but gets tiring after a while due to the limited dynamics. Everything trying to be louder than everything else syndrome.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freestyler /img/forum/go_quote.gif 3) d1: On very high volumes (ones you don't listen for more than one song) there is some "flickering" (don't know what word to use, english is not my native language). Meaning the sound is not consistent. It's loud but not dynamic at the same time, instruments and vocals sometimes are loud and the next sec they sound weak.

That is the sound that the limiter does with these cards. All the Cmedia Oxygen cards will do this. Putting the 2 speaker mixer sliders above 76% will result in limiting on these cards. This is done to prevent damage due to clipping. It can still damage speakers due to the limited dynamics but there is less chance of burning out tweeters due to clipping which is usually blows first when subjected to excessive clipping.

 

[giedrys]

So long story short it's better to leave it at 76% permanently, right?

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by giedrys /img/forum/go_quote.gif So long story short it's better to leave it at 76% permanently, right?

correct!!

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hellenic vanagon /img/forum/go_quote.gif With my ST and a 300 W PSU, connected separetly, there is no hiss through speakers or headphone in any case, although with onboard's sound card, (Analogue Devices sound max cadenza), there was! Please, is it known for the volume control of the ST, if it reduces the resolution, so it must be at maximum position always? Because the green part on ASUS control, suggests that it keeps lower the distortion when we use the left part? So which is the optimum point? Thank you.

Your question actually has more than one answer for itI would not worry about reduced resolution at any resonable volume on this card. If widows audio control panel advanced setting is set to 24 bit/ any sample rate, you will not get any truncation of bit on C.D. quality files (16bit/44.1 sample rate) until you reach 48db down on the volume. Any truncation that occure below that volume will be below the noise floor of the DACs & opamps combined. I.E. not at all audible. Truncation begins at -144 db & noise floor is around -124 or -117 depending on which output you use. as you can see the truncation is more than 20db below the noise floor of these outputs!!

If you leave windows sound control setting at 16bit/ any sample rate then you will start to truncate data immediately hence a slight reduction in quality but even this with modern DACs is largely inaudible at any resonable volume & may only become audible on very wide dynamic music with lots of really quiet passages. Modern DACs show very little audible distortion with undithered music even at -80db. That shows how linear the newer DACs are. Older ones had very audible distortion at -60db even with dither in some cases due to thier own nonlinearity.

The speaker volume sliders in the driver control panel in the mixer button should be left at 76% for best sound as putting them up to 100% will result in limiting on most pop music & that sound is very diconcerting once you notice it.

My recommended settings are as follows

1.For C.D. quality music Setting the windows sound control panel advanced tab to 24 bit/44.1KHz sample rate, setting the Driver control panel main button page to any sample rate 48KHz or higher. Also in the driver Mixer button panel speaker control set these sliders to default which is 76%. With these setting you can get the best possable sound with out truncation at any reasonable volume using either the widows volume control or the drivers. Allowing the soundcard to upsample the signal reduces jitter as there is no clock for 44.1KHz & Xonar has a superb samplerate converter.

2. For 24 bit files set every thing the same as before except the sample rate in the windows sound control panel advanced tab set to whatever the sample rate is of the file & set the Xonar driver cotrol panel main button page sample rate to whatever the files sample rate is or higher.