[germanium]

Has anyone else noticedthat the Xonar Essence STX seems to have stellar playback but not so stellar recording capabilities? While it can record at high sample rates & may output 24 bit audio code the real resolution of the ADC seems to be nothing more than 16 bit.

If you use softly recorded music & reduce the volume more the ADC become severely distorted & then deaf at a volume that coinsides perfectly with the point that 16 bit looses it. This in it self is not so bad except the sound at normal volumes is also compromised in that it looses some of its sense of space & becomes somewhat congested like onboard audio but not quite that bad.

This has been my experience with this card in recording.Has anyone else noticed this??

 

[germanium]

Correction; it must be my recording software that isn't connecting with the hardware to tell it it needs 24 bit resolution as RMMA readings are absolutely stellar. Better than the X-Fi Elite Pro. Almost 119db dynamic range though the ADC. That is only 1.5db from the max for this ADC so it looks like I need to come up with different recording software that connects directly to the hardware of the soundcard to control bit depth.

Anyone have suggestions for recording software that does indeed correctly control the ADC on this card??

 

[leeperry]

tried to RMAA your card? because there's been maaaaaaany reports of line-in dying on this card...fotios said the design was faulty, lacking some overload protection that would basically kill the ADC:

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- Recommended Input Clamping Circuit to ASUS Xonar R&D Team

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- Protect the Line In of your Xonar from overloading

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif tried to RMAA your card? because there's been maaaaaaany reports of line-in dying on this card...fotios said the design was faulty, lacking some overload protection that would basically kill the ADC: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- Recommended Input Clamping Circuit to ASUS Xonar R&D Team ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- Protect the Line In of your Xonar from overloading

You need to go and read all the information again.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium /img/forum/go_quote.gif Correction; it must be my recording software that isn't connecting with the hardware to tell it it needs 24 bit resolution as RMMA readings are absolutely stellar. Better than the X-Fi Elite Pro. Almost 119db dynamic range though the ADC. That is only 1.5db from the max for this ADC so it looks like I need to come up with different recording software that connects directly to the hardware of the soundcard to control bit depth. Anyone have suggestions for recording software that does indeed correctly control the ADC on this card??

Yes the recording section for this card is quite good based on my testing.
What software are you using now?

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes the recording section for this card is quite good based on my testing. What software are you using now?

I was using Audacity before when I was testing it but now using Cubase. Audacity doesn't seem to support asio or ks but Cubase does support asio & works with Asioforall with extremely low latency (64sample buffer size with latency compensation of 32 samples both in & out & can probably go lower here).

 

[ROBSCIX]

Are you getting proper 24 bit recording using Cubase?

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX /img/forum/go_quote.gif Are you getting proper 24 bit recording using Cubase?

Mistake it was Cakewalk Sonar LE It actually was not working with asio properly at all. Oh well back to the drawing board

 

[germanium]

Finally got Cakewalk Sonar working with good recording quality but still won't do live monitoring but does play back the resulting file very well now. Had to disable the hardware buffer in Asioforall but at least it works now even with 24bit/96 & 192KHz files. Maybe that is because I'm using the stereo mastering setup.

 

[germanium]

By the way, the comments that I made in anouther thread about there being 100% distortion above 50KHz at the 192KHz sample rate does not apply to the Xonar Essense STX card but does to the Xonar D2/PM card. The STX card maintains low distortion up to very near 90KHz.

Seeing as how the 2 cards use the same ADCs the difference must be in the AV100 as opposed to the AV200 proccessor. The AV100 being the better proccessor in this case though the added feature set may make the AV200 better in other regards for the D2/PM card though sacrifices the ultimate in recording performance.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif tried to RMAA your card? because there's been maaaaaaany reports of line-in dying on this card...fotios said the design was faulty, lacking some overload protection that would basically kill the ADC: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- Recommended Input Clamping Circuit to ASUS Xonar R&D Team ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- Protect the Line In of your Xonar from overloading

Read those postes a long time ago. It is safe to feed the output from the RCA jacks to the Line-In but not the headphone jack at anything other than the lowest gain setting but that may not work for RMMA testing as the lowest gain setting is 6db softer than the RCA jack outputs. You would have to boost the balance sliders up 6db above default & that would cause limiting & distortion in the output on the louder tests.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium /img/forum/go_quote.gif Read those postes a long time ago. It is safe to feed the output from the RCA jacks to the Line-In but not the headphone jack at anything other than the lowest gain setting but that may not work for RMMA testing as the lowest gain setting is 6db softer than the RCA jack outputs. You would have to boost the balance sliders up 6db above default & that would cause limiting & distortion in the output on the louder tests.

This entire subject was explained to him awhile back.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium /img/forum/go_quote.gif Finally got Cakewalk Sonar working with good recording quality but still won't do live monitoring but does play back the resulting file very well now. Had to disable the hardware buffer in Asioforall but at least it works now even with 24bit/96 & 192KHz files. Maybe that is because I'm using the stereo mastering setup.

ASIOforall, have you tried the native ASIO drivers?

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX /img/forum/go_quote.gif ASIOforall, have you tried the native ASIO drivers?

Yes, they didn't work

 

[germanium]

Sonar still only recording in 16 bit then padding to 24 bit darn