Asus to add new soundcard to current lineup

[FreedomEclipse]

Otherwise known as the Asus Xonar Xense (named by a 5y/o if you ask me)

the card itself is more 'dedicated' to gaming then its predecessors in the Xonar range.

read more about it here...

[Between my Hands]<---------->[/Between My Hands]

-----

Personal thoughts....

It looks like a waterd down STX, it still has almost the same spec & features as the STX but cheaper.

but Xonar's claim to gaming fame is a little premature. & to put it bluntly....heres a new card to the line up that Asus wont offer any present/future driver support for other then what comes on the installation CD.

the drivers could use some real tweaking. & for starters they need to tweak the Xear3d D3DGX engine to work better with games in general & also sound positioning when gaming with surround sound headphones/speakers.

its a real pitty as Xonar cards are genuinely very good & even more so since the decline of EAX

 

[SabreWulf69]

looks quite cool and EAX 5.0 support for those that want it too

 

[Mussels]

Xear3D is C-media tech, and this has EAX 5.0 so i'm assuming its X-fi based. so your comments there arent really relevant to the new card, assuming that it is an x-fi chip.

 

[roast]

Nice card. I'd be interested in seeing performance reviews though. Might even pick one up myself...

As for the looks, it looks like they designed the shroud around a soup spoon.

 

[SabreWulf69]

"Processor /Interface

Audio Processor ASUS AV100 (CMI8788) (Max. 192 KHz/24bit)"

"Driver features

Dolby: Dolby® Digital Live, Dolby® Headphone, Dolby® Virtual Speaker, Dolby® Pro-Logic II
GX 2.5: Enable latest EAX 5.0 gaming audio"

 

[Mussels]

so how did they talk creative into EAX 5.0 without an x-fi?

 

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

"Sennheiser PC350 Xense Edition Headphones

These Gaming headphones are bundled with the new Xense and both components have been tuned to produce the best audio from both."

Um.. so this sound card is already close to $200 USD for sure. Based on features and the competition. So they bundle them with Senn PC350s which also retail for $200 USD. Anyone want to take a guess at the final MSRP for this package? I say $450 USD.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

"Processor /Interface

Audio Processor ASUS AV100 (CMI8788) (Max. 192 KHz/24bit)"

"Driver features

Dolby: Dolby® Digital Live, Dolby® Headphone, Dolby® Virtual Speaker, Dolby® Pro-Logic II
GX 2.5: Enable latest EAX 5.0 gaming audio"

yeah - the STX uses the AV100 chip too.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

so how did they talk creative into EAX 5.0 without an x-fi?

because its emulated EAX, not 'true' EAX therefore they dont have to pay for EAX license. man, where have you been since the Xonars were released?? get your head outta dat bukket.

the D3DGX thing acts like a wrapper simlar to creatives alchemy. but there are some serious teething issues with it since XF-i's are hardware driven DSP's & Xonars are software. hence enabling EAX or hardware acceleration for audio under certain games might cause some serious glitching, bugging, Crashing & in some serious cases even BSODs.


Asus's 'EAX 5.0' claim is still nowhere near as good as true 5.0

 

[SabreWulf69]

A step in the right direction though I guess Be so much easier if licenses were available for sale though, do Creative fear so much the competition that all they have to depend on nowadays is just EAX alone, I hope not, I love friendly competition as long as it's fair

 

[FreedomEclipse]

A step in the right direction though I guess Be so much easier if licenses were available for sale though

they are. manufacturers can buy licences to build EAX 5.0 cards or add it to games, but the problem here is that Creative charge a lot for a license so not many studios/manufacturers/designers want to go through the creative EAX route. throw in another few factors like M$ removal of direct sound in windows 7 & the fact that there are fewer & fewer games that are being made with EAX. EAX is being slowly phased out in favour of OpenAL. but OpenAL itself needs a little work. but creative (who own OpenAL) arent doing anything with it so. the project is pretty much dead in the water because Creative arent moving the ball forward.

its hard to explain really but to put it shortly. Creative are in a position to do a lot of good, but they wont because they are still locked up with other brands about EAX support - which leaves the audio market in deadlock because Creative is still pretty critical to the mix at this point in time unless someone steps up & writes a complete new platform that supports openAL & EAX confidently enough that there is no problems between software & hardware that will replace the direct sound wrapper or someone in creative decides enough is enough & gets the ball rolling on openAL again.

 

[RejZoR]

so how did they talk creative into EAX 5.0 without an x-fi?

They didn't. That label is misleading. It should say like this:

GX 2.5: Tries to enable latest EAX 5.0 gaming audio"

It may try to emulate EAX 5.0 but the result is just not the same. Just like EAX 2.0 wasn't the same on AC97 cards even though it was "open" standard and everyone were using it. ASUS is using C-Media as exclusive supplier of chips so no X-Fi for them. The same reason why Auzentech stopped producing and discontinued all C-Media based cards. Because ASUS wanted them all. So they went with X-Fi instead.

Xense doesn't seem to stand out in any particular way except by the fact it has headphones bundled with the soundcard. Not sure about Dolby Headphone support on Essence STX though.
But specs wise it looks more like X-Fi Xtreme Music range than Essence STX...

As for the OpenAL/EAX situation, it's unfortunately very similar to CUDA/PhysX situation. EAX 5.0 in every game and every soundcard is what my wish. That would set the gaming sound to a proper level. But until that happens, the situation won't change much. Makes you wonder sometimes but that's how it is.

 

[erocker]

Separate headphone jack connected to high quality opamps is win. Hopefully the price won't be ridiculous.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I just want to know why it comes with a spoon.

Edit*
No really, they finally make their control panel more visually appealing but now make the card look like some cheap matrix reference instead of the usual nice as hell brushed metal look.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I just wish their driver team would split from the fucking hurdy gurdy of mobo/GPU bios's & dedicate even just 1 man to work on their soundcards. even just 1 man would do a lot of good. Because i think their stance on the issue is - so long as windows picks it up & you can listen to your music/games through it. theres no need to bother lifting a finger or even thinking about fixing the issues that plague it.

either that or the code is in such a mess that no-one else wants to unravel & correct it. who knows.

 

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

Separate headphone jack connected to high quality opamps is win. Hopefully the price won't be ridiculous.

My card has the same and it is win. As for pricing.. :shadedshu

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Im still hung up on what to ditch my STX for... its either stick with Asus or go back to creative, because there are no re/e-tailers that stock Auzentech or HT Omega cards.

Auzentechs UK distribution is still very very poor. HT omega hasnt even set foot here yet.

there are no good options. - If i move back to creative, id pick up another titanium card. Id lose a lot of audo quality & Id probably suffer from the odd driver issue. and as an added bonus, i get EAX back.

if i stick with Asus i suffer from non existant driver support & teething issues with games that the driver team cant be arsed to fix which can cause a lot of hassle, audio positioning in surroundsound still isnt quite 100% but that asside i get the best audio quality/clarity in my movies & music that my ears have ever heard. even the 'premium' soundsystem in my dads car sounds shit compared to the STX

the D2X is said to be the best balance between audio fidelity & gaming. however it still suffers from poor driver support & D3DGX 2.0 which doesnt support EAX 5.0

 

[SabreWulf69]

Heard of some people actually using 2 cards, X-Fi for gaming and STX for Music and Movies, is rather irritating. STX is a great choice for HTPC's all round though Was thinking of personally having 3 PC's myself, a Media PC, a Gaming PC and a File Server, having the HTPC with STX, Gaming with X-Fi and Server with Onboard and everything all interconnected, with my HTPC connected directly to my amp, using Wireless to the network, with the other noisier PC's located in different rooms.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Heard of some people actually using 2 cards, X-Fi for gaming and STX for Music and Movies, is rather irritating. STX is a great choice for HTPC's all round though Was thinking of personally having 3 PC's myself, a Media PC, a Gaming PC and a File Server, having the HTPC with STX, Gaming with X-Fi and Server with Onboard and everything all interconnected, with my HTPC connected directly to my amp, using Wireless to the network, with the other noisier PC's located in different rooms.

yeah, thats the only real option. but id need to spend a lot more money to just to build a system for my Audio/music needs, but ive given it a lot of thought.

im 100% sure that if Asus gave Xonar drivers even a small glimps of attention. alot of the issues can be sorted out to make Xonar totally superb for gaming EAX or no EAX. but lucky for me i suppose, I dont have that many games that use EAX anymore. the one i really main play (guildwars ) that utilises EAX doesnt like D3DGX at all & I had to download a hacked version of creative alchemy to make the game run with less crashing. but it still crashes

 

[RejZoR]

Also, if you look somewhat closely, you'll see that ASUS doesn't even offer any section in tech support for soundcards. They just aren't listed. You can ask on their forums but they are user 2 user, so you probably won't solve much either. Where with Creative, i did solve the problem via tech support. It was about bad slowdown if EAX was used in FEAR Combat. In next driver release for Xtreme Music, this was fixed.

 

[SabreWulf69]

yeah, thats the only real option. but id need to spend a lot more money to just to build a system for my Audio/music needs, but ive given it a lot of thought.

im 100% sure that if Asus gave Xonar drivers even a small glimps of attention. alot of the issues can be sorted out to make Xonar totally superb for gaming EAX or no EAX. but lucky for me i suppose, I dont have that many games that use EAX anymore. the one i really main play (guildwars ) that utilises EAX doesnt like D3DGX at all & I had to download a hacked version of creative alchemy to make the game run with less crashing. but it still crashes

Was that the Creative ALchemy Universal? I had to use that too at one stage I believe...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

yep. Alchemy Universal. still doesnt stop my crashing though

 

[SabreWulf69]

Sounds obvious but have you tried this?? --> http://connect.creativelabs.com/alc...ID=0x012002002777EF627E9A314B8E181038B290215D

 

[Frederik S]

My card has the same and it is win. As for pricing.. :shadedshu

I do not see why that should have any influence whatsoever on pricing, except for the fact that it is bling bling, and they have to install / make room for DIP8 sockets in the amplification stage of the design. A quality DIP8 socket costs a whooping $2 when you buy 10 at the time.

I hope it will not be too pricey, I say hope because ASUS has a habit of charging big bucks for all features with some form of geeky bling value ...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Sounds obvious but have you tried this?? --> http://connect.creativelabs.com/alc...ID=0x012002002777EF627E9A314B8E181038B290215D

I run it with admin rights as default - still crashes.