Help With Sound Card Choice Please.

[LAN_deRf_HA]

What ever you do do not under any circumstance buy a Recon 3D. It abandons any form of offloading game audio and has practically no analog circuitry. Useless for headphones/analog speaker setups. It's geared towards digital use but if you're going that route you might as well use the optical on your board or HDMI on your card to hook up to a receiver.

I would not value the Recon 3D above $30. It's price and "newness" create a false sense of value that it just doesn't live up to. Frankly I think everyone should be screaming "don't buy this" in every corner of the net.

As for Forte vs the HD I made this jump myself. It's a mixed bag. The Forte has more headphone power, expect to find yourself raising the volume a few notches. The HD has better drivers to a degree (the control panel at least has been overhauled to be more responsive) but the Forte has a radically better installation process. They bundle every element of the drivers into one package and let you do a custom install to pick out the like 4 things worth installing. With my HD I have to go in and uninstall the junk manually. The HD also seems to have effective EMI shielding.

 

[Dent1]

All of the measurements of on-board sound cards I have seen lately are straight up horrible.

That is blanket comment. It depends on which chipset you end up with. Some chipsets are decent can be found on independent soundcards. Although I would admit I've had very few decent onboards. The audio produced on today's ATI video cards ares however very good and almost rival my old X-Fi Forte in quality.

i prefer my auzentech X-fi for gaming that is why i think my only other option could be the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD or just maybe the Asus ROG Xonar Phoebus 7.1 if it doesnt sound like the asus essence stx.

X-Fi Titanium HD is a downgrade. It's a lower midrange card, whereas your Forte is a high end card.

 

[Frederik S]

That is blanket comment. It depends on which chipset you end up with. Some chipsets are decent can be found on independent soundcards. Although I would admit I've had very few decent onboards. The audio produced on today's ATI video cards ares however very good and almost rival my old X-Fi Forte in quality.

Auzentech X-Fi Forte
X-Fi Titanium HD is a downgrade. It's a lower midrange card, whereas your Forte is a high end

There is no analogue audio coming out of a ATI video card it is just plain digital. And yes digital via HDMI is usually less jitter prone than toslink and coax so it will sound better in most cases.

Analogue out from a motherboard is just plain bad except for a few that excel above average. The higher end motherboard integrated cards still have a long way to go to being as good as a dedicated well engineered sound card.

 

[fireblade77]

So what you're saying is its either stick with my X-Fi Forte or the asus essence stx or the new Asus ROG Xonar Phoebus 7.1 for the best sound cards and being as ive already had a go with the asus essence stx and didnt like it that probably means i wont like the new asus.

 

[BumbleBee]

So what you're saying is its either stick with my X-Fi Forte or the asus essence stx or the new Asus ROG Xonar Phoebus 7.1 for the best sound cards and being as ive already had a go with the asus essence stx and didnt like it that probably means i wont like the new asus.

is your goal to get virtual surround in a headphone that doesn't sound bad to your ears?

 

[Dent1]

So what you're saying is its either stick with my X-Fi Forte .

Bingo!

 

[Frederik S]

Yes.

 

[fireblade77]

is your goal to get virtual surround in a headphone that doesn't sound bad to your ears?

yes

 

[BumbleBee]

if you buy a 5.1/7.1 headset you will downgrade your music experience and still might get the reverb your trying to avoid. if CMSS-3D and Dolby headphone don't do it then it's probably not for you. it's really hard to do surround sound in a headphone. if you want a better image you should use your speakers more.

 

[fireblade77]

1st off i cant use my speakers more as the wife would not be happy at the volume i would have to have them to be able to get close to the sound i hear in my headset.
2nd i think u cant beat a headset for sound when playing games its much clearer and i can hear more sounds than with my speakers. i know my speakers are not the best u can buy but they are pretty good for pc speakers. maybe if i plugged my pc into my amp and speakers down stairs it would be better but thats thousands of pounds worth and im not spending that
dont get me wrong the surround sound im getting now is pretty good, i just wanted to make sure im not losing out if there was something better out there.

 

[Dent1]

1st off i cant use my speakers more as the wife would not be happy at the volume i would have to have them to be able to get close to the sound i hear in my headset.
2nd i think u cant beat a headset for sound when playing games its much clearer and i can hear more sounds than with my speakers. i know my speakers are not the best u can buy but they are pretty good for pc speakers. maybe if i plugged my pc into my amp and speakers down stairs it would be better but thats thousands of pounds worth and im not spending that
dont get me wrong the surround sound im getting now is pretty good, i just wanted to make sure im not losing out if there was something better out there.

I think it was big mistake trading your X-Fi Forte for the Asus Xonar Essence STX. If you've still got the Forte put it back in and return the Xonar.

Random question, you have the Z5500 speakers, do you utilise the SPDIF output and the Dolby Digital Live real time encoding feature. Using that feature would give you the most realistic experience in games like BF3 where there are already five audio channels.

 

[fireblade77]

I think it was big mistake trading your X-Fi Forte for the Asus Xonar Essence STX. If you've still got the Forte put it back in and return the Xonar.

Random question, you have the Z5500 speakers, do you utilise the SPDIF output and the Dolby Digital Live real time encoding feature. Using that feature would give you the most realistic experience in games like BF3 where there are already five audio channels.

i sent the asus card back under 7 day selling regs so ywes i have the auzentech back in.
niw onto ur next question
probably not utilising the dolby digital live real time encoding so please tell me what cable i need and where in the settings do i use this

it is 11:48am now i will be going out and come back in about 2 hrs so ur help will be great. many thx

 

[Dent1]

i sent the asus card back under 7 day selling regs so ywes i have the auzentech back in.
niw onto ur next question
probably not utilising the dolby digital live real time encoding so please tell me what cable i need and where in the settings do i use this

it is 11:48am now i will be going out and come back in about 2 hrs so ur help will be great. many thx

If you've still got the box, it would have came with a shitty transparent fibre cable.

http://i889.photobucket.com/albums/ac92/redone632/IMG_0055.jpg


You need a digital coaxial or fibre cable. Quality is the same, but I rather coaxial as the cable is more durable.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2M-Metre-...ion_Audio_Cables_Adapters&hash=item43aa03ce44


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3M-Digita...ion_Audio_Cables_Adapters&hash=item53ed14b2c7

You can use the Dolby Digital Live real time encoder in conjuction with CMSS (it will upmix to Dolby Prologic IIx when less than 5 channel audio is detected)


Or

You can use DTS Connect real time encoder in conjunction with DTS: NEO Movie (it will upmixes to DTS Neo when less than 5 channels are detected)

Upmixing to Dolby Digital Live or DTS, I found games had more channel seperation. BF Bad company 2 which has more than 5 channels as well as other games which natively had 5 channels had better audio seperation. i.e. I could hear effects from the left, right, below and above more clearly. To a lesser extent audio from regular videos on YouTube sounded better too.

Give it a try and report back.

 

[BumbleBee]

using Digital will bypass the DAC on the sound card..

 

[fireblade77]

ah yes sorry i was using the fibre optics cable and i had it set to dts connect so i was using it right. thx anyway.