Soundcard Advice

[Gunner Night]

Currently I have Turtle Beach PX5 that I use with my console.

http://www.turtlebeach.com/product-...GibXgGoSaOZGt08IJpOj4V0R87MEdLrpOfiQfiKbw_wcB

Down the road Ill likely get a new headset but for now Id just like something i can use with my PX5. What im in search for is a card with DDL and optical out. Ive found 1 Asus and 3-4 Creative cards all seem good but was looking for others and any review of the ones im looking at currently to decide what to go with.

Im looking at the Asus Xonar Dx, Creative Sound Blaster Z/Zx, Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D, and Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional. Currently my top 2 choices are Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D, and Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional.



Any advice is welcome, Thanks

 

[KingPing]

Don't but any of the Recon3Ds, the Zs are better, they have the features of the Recon3Ds and better sound quality.

For competitve FPS go for any of the SB Zs, or if not available any of the Recon3Ds
For sound quality go for Zx, or Xonar DX.

I'm confused, how would you connect the PX5 to the sound card?

 

[Gunner Night]

Don't but any of the Recon3Ds, the Zs are better, they have the features of the Recon3Ds and better sound quality.

For competitve FPS go for any of the SB Zs, or if not available any of the Recon3Ds
For sound quality go for Zx, or Xonar DX.

I'm confused, how would you connect the PX5 to the sound card?

Thanks I think im going to go with the Z. The headset doesn't directly hook up with the sound card. Id be hooking up the wireless transmitter to the sound card through optical, only thing im unsure about is if i want to set the transmitter to stereo bypass so it doesnt do any post processing and will only play whatever is being transmitted by the sound card's processing, or keep it in dolby digital mode and keep the headset's processing at flat so it doesn't alter anything encoded by the sound card and keep it purely as a decoder.

 

[KingPing]

If you are going to connect the headset through optical, buy the cheaper Zs or Recon3D, since you won't be using the analog output of the sound card it's sound quality components doesn't matter. I'm not sure if the sound cards (Zs, 3D or Xonar DX) features works when connected through optical or if it acts merely as a pass through device and doesn't do anything at all execpt encode to DD/DTS (Xonar DX only encodes to DD), the Titanium HD i have does alter the sound based on the settings i use and then encodes to DD or DTS.

 

[RCoon]

Don't buy an Asus sound card, their drivers are old, haven't been updated, and are generally bloody terrible. I've owned two Asus Xonar D2X and don't recommend them to anybody.

Asus have pretty much refused to address all the issues with their drivers, and have ignored their sound card customers for years.

 

[THE_EGG]

Don't buy an Asus sound card, their drivers are old, haven't been updated, and are generally bloody terrible. I've owned two Asus Xonar D2X and don't recommend them to anybody.

Asus have pretty much refused to address all the issues with their drivers, and have ignored their sound card customers for years.

I agree now actually. I used to be an Asus sound card fanboy but my ST would BSOD my computer in certain games. If I was lucky the game devs would have a patch that would fix it, otherwise I'd have to use on-board sound. My U1 has been pretty solid, I have to admit. Although the drivers are old, nothing seems to go bad with it.

 

[RCoon]

I agree now actually. I used to be an Asus sound card fanboy but my ST would BSOD my computer in certain games. If I was lucky the game devs would have a patch that would fix it, otherwise I'd have to use on-board sound. My U1 has been pretty solid, I have to admit. Although the drivers are old, nothing seems to go bad with it.

I have to admit the sound quality that comes from the card is good - when it works properly. Just yesterday I had to reinstall the BrainBits custom drivers for my D2X because the Mic In port suddenly decided to stop working.

 

[RejZoR]

If you're a gamer, stay away from ASUS crap. I had the jolly expensive Essence STX and while sound quality as such was great, but 3D positioning, BSOD's, non fucntional DirectSound3D emulator, countless audio anomalies in games and outdated drivers made me sell the thing and return to good old Creative. While they don't release many driver udpates, i found them very problem free. I never had any problems with any Creative soundcard and i've had plenty of them from basic SB 128 and Audigy 4 Value up to Xtreme Music and Forte and now the SB Z. 3D positioning is just sublime, no problems, nice interface and it just works. WIth SB Z being so much more affordable than old X-Fi's, it's really a no brainer. It might not accelerate as many things as X-Fi did since the chip is like 10 times smaller, but it seems to perform really well.