Need A New Sound Card Because Onboard Sucks

[moccor]

So I have a ASRock Extreme 6 and even though it lists its specs that seems like the sound is all awesome and special, it is not. I even bought their X-FI MB3 software in hopes of it allowing me to play games and videos with 5.1-7.1ch sound, but that was not the case. It really only made the sound nicer/clearer. And those DTS codecs specifically say they aren't supported by onboard audio. I have a ASUS Xonar DS, but its kinda being a pain in the *** and I remembered it being a pain in the past too. So I am in need of a card that will just work. I searched around Google and despite some people not approving Creative cards, I kinda don't really like my ASUS card and haven't even used it for a long time. The Creative Sound Blaster Z cards seem to be highly recommended though. And I don't mind spending about 80 because I am gonna get them to refund my 30$ for the software and I'm gonna try and sell this Xonar DS for 30. I thought about the Xonar DX and many recommend it, but I highly dislike the whole turning the 3.5mmport into digital, it just seems iffy to me and I think it caused problems for my setup.

Edit: Another reason I and thinking against the ASUS cards is because after a year of using my Xonar DS, it stopped working overnight for what seemed to be no reason, as my temps are always nice and low and I don't even leave my pc on over night.

 

[petteyg359]

Those Z cards might be decent as a digital output, but they lack any kind of DAC components. Good DAC needs capacitors and crap. I'd rather call those PCIe->SPDIF adapters than sound cards. Any card (including onboard) is going to be practically identical for digital output anyway, with the only difference being the range of supported Dolby/DTS codecs. If you've got money to burn, just buy a nice 7.1 receiver, and connect your onboard digital output to that. Will be much better quality than any internal sound card will get you.

 

[sobe]

As for the Creative ZxR (the one I have experience with), it has a good onboard DAC just like any dedicated sound card, but the issue comes into play..... It's amp sucks. The card sounded great in games, but for music I preferred my Xonar Phoebus. It also could not power, as it stated it could, my Beyer DT990 Prem 600ohm headphones.

With that being said, I don't think it is worth its price for not being able to power headphones it claims it can when the competing ASUS product can....

If you are a heavy gamer and use a good/decent set of headphones, I would recommend the ASUS Xonar Phoebus or Creative X-Fi Titanium HD (not the standard Titanium), both are great products for both games and music.

If you are more into music listening and don't really feel the need for that more in-depth sound in your games and really want to make your music shine, the ASUS Xonar Essence ST or STX I highly recommend.

 

[way2hota]

Yea I agree with petteyg359 if your going to be picky about the sound don't just try to make it work as you wont be satisfied that route. Like petteyg359 said you'll want to pick up a good receiver and you'll improve the sound for sure. I'm just saying this because it seems like with either on board or the asus card you have is not quite cutting it for you so might as well buy something that is going to last you a good long time and actually improve the experience.

 

[moccor]

Well the problem isn't the sound quality, the problem is the limitations placed on onboard audio for no reason at all. If you want to achieve 5.1-7.1ch sound with onboard, it must be digital. That's fine and all, but who will waste all that money on the cables for outdated technology and low quality sound? My receiver is about 10ft from my PC so those cables would be as expensive as a mid-range sound card haha. And I like the idea of just getting a new receiver. I'm all about trying to get the best for the money. I was looking at receivers and noticed that the few I checked, said nothing about encoding the audio, which I think is the problem right? Or is it the decoding part which is non-existent thus preventing 5.1 audio?

This is the receiver I currentlyuse - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GU2JS0 - Yamaha HTR-5935. I know its nothing special, I bought it cheap from a friend and it works good for me. I am not a audiophile either. So when I am using toslink from my PC to that receiver and run a game like Dead Space 3 which has a option to enable Dolby Digital in the settings, the Dolby Digital never reaches it. It stays in 2ch.

@sobe, I don't have any special headphones and I don't prefer them either, so the 600ohm thing would never be a problem for me. I mainly just use my earphones for listening to music and I switch to my TV and receiver for mostly single player games

Edit: So I remember messing with the settings for the Realtek digital output and I remember that when I tested Dolby Digital and DTS, they both worked. Those are under "encoded formats" so there is no reason Dead Space 3 shouldn't be working properly I'd think. If its set to output 5.1 then at the least it would be PCM 5.1 right?

 

[petteyg359]

Well the problem isn't the sound quality, the problem is the limitations placed on onboard audio for no reason at all. If you want to achieve 5.1-7.1ch sound with onboard, it must be digital.

What? It's got three 3.5mm analog output plugs. That's 6 channels, a.k.a. 5.1. If you want 8 channels, a.k.a 7.1, then you use the driver application to change "Line In" to an output jack.

My receiver is about 10ft from my PC so those cables would be as expensive as a mid-range sound card haha.

Amazon has varying lengths of optical cables for $0.50 to $1 per foot.

 

[sobe]

Well the problem isn't the sound quality, the problem is the limitations placed on onboard audio for no reason at all. If you want to achieve 5.1-7.1ch sound with onboard, it must be digital. That's fine and all, but who will waste all that money on the cables for outdated technology and low quality sound? My receiver is about 10ft from my PC so those cables would be as expensive as a mid-range sound card haha. And I like the idea of just getting a new receiver. I'm all about trying to get the best for the money. I was looking at receivers and noticed that the few I checked, said nothing about encoding the audio, which I think is the problem right? Or is it the decoding part which is non-existent thus preventing 5.1 audio?

This is the receiver I currentlyuse - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GU2JS0 - Yamaha HTR-5935. I know its nothing special, I bought it cheap from a friend and it works good for me. I am not a audiophile either. So when I am using toslink from my PC to that receiver and run a game like Dead Space 3 which has a option to enable Dolby Digital in the settings, the Dolby Digital never reaches it. It stays in 2ch.

@Sobe, I don't have any special headphones and I don't prefer them either, so the 600ohm thing would never be a problem for me. I mainly just use my earphones for listening to music and I switch to my TV and receiver for mostly single player games

Edit: So I remember messing with the settings for the Realtek digital output and I remember that when I tested Dolby Digital and DTS, they both worked. Those are under "encoded formats" so there is no reason Dead Space 3 shouldn't be working properly I'd think. If its set to output 5.1 then at the least it would be PCM 5.1 right?

Ooooh, you want to go with speakers for the setup, stick with a receiver then IMO, a sound card won't come close aside from some in-game details. Have you thought about another cheap ASUS card to run the receiver through? Just as a pass-through you don't need to spend more than $10 - $30, max.

 

[moccor]

What? It's got three 3.5mm analog output plugs. That's 6 channels, a.k.a. 5.1. If you want 8 channels, a.k.a 7.1, then you use the driver application to change "Line In" to an output jack.

I meant analog, not digital in the thing you quoted. It's easy to set up analog audio in Windows. But I'm not about to buy 3or4 10ft cables for a low quality and cluttered setup. I don't see why they just haven't worked out a way to allow encoding music/gaming audio through digital to allow for easy 5.1+ setup. The OS is like 100-200$ but I guess they can't spare the 5$ cost to add the rights to use DTS

Ooooh, you want to go with speakers for the setup, stick with a receiver then IMO, a sound card won't come close aside from some in-game details. Have you thought about another cheap ASUS card to run the receiver through? Just as a pass-through you don't need to spend more than $10 - $30, max.

Do you mean SPDIF from my motherboard, to a sound card and then toslink from the card to receiver? I use to have my ASUS card set up to pass audio through my GTX260 and that worked with 5.1ch Dolby Digital and DTS with movies + games. I tried it again recently and I am unsure of what is wrong. I haven't used the Xonar DS for about a year and it has been sitting in a ESD bag. There's many variables, either ASRock drivers suck, the SPDIF header on my mobo isn't working, Nvidia screwed over SPDIF-HDMI audio in newer driver releases (don't think this is it cuz I tried older drivers), maybe my SPDIF cable is faulty (it's such a simple cable, I really doubt that since the connections seem snug). Either way though, I tried running toslink from my Xonar DS and it just wasn't giving me 5.1ch sound. I remember in the past it took a bit to set it up as one of the three drivers worked best, but this has become such a pain and annoying.

Edit: I think I fixed my problem with the 'sound card'. I'm not a pro with this audio stuff but I think the Digital inputs on my receiver are different. I think the one input supports 5.1ch Stereo and the other must support 2ch only, but its 2ch with all 5 speakers. I am not gonna go through the manual looking to find better words, but the funny thing is that I got so lucky the first time I hooked this up then. Because I had my setup like this xonar ds>spdif to gpu>hdmi to lcd tv>toslink to receiver. And it worked and it worked good. I left that Toslink cable in place and I bought another. This one went from my ASRock mobo striaght to the receiver. That gave me the 2ch with 5 speakers. I just switched the toslink cables, and DTS 5ch stereo came right up. Now this raises the question if the onboard sound will work and be converted to 5ch DTS Stereo upon reaching my receiver. I wonder if its worth the bs of uninstalling and reinstalling and restarting a bunch of times yet again. I did this so much in the past few days lol

 

[moccor]

Gonna double post here, just so its more apparent that the problem is fixed. But now I tried what you recommended Sobe, to pass thru the audio through my sound card. It works, I am able to pass through the onboard sound and use the X-FI MB3 program and have that work with the Xonar in outputting 5.1ch DTS. But I hear a lot of noise like this. Not sure from what. I'm gonna play with this for a while, cuz if I can keep the 5.1ch DTS and the X-FI MB3, that would be awesome

 

[sobe]

Glad you got it fixed, but as far as running it through your sound card, is the sound card close to the video card as far as slots? The gpu may be causing interference.

 

[moccor]

Glad you got it fixed, but as far as running it through your sound card, is the sound card close to the video card as far as slots? The gpu may be causing interference.

Yes it is. Ugh lol. Funny thing is I got a HD7770 recently and was using it to do some tests with the onboard audio, hoping that sending the sound through HDMI to my TV and then to my receiver, that it would have gotten encoded into 5.1 somewhere, but it didn't happen. And since I modded my GTX260 to have 2x 80mm fans on it it was covering the other unused PCI slot. Now that it was opened, I figured why not just use it haha. Now I need to move it. I'll brb real quick and replay if the problem is fixed. I have a feeling it will be too.

Edit: Still sounds like there is noise/distortion. It was a very good guess though. I am pretty sure it is related to bass. Somewhere the bass is being changed and causing it to sound like noise. The reason I believe so is because the intro to Dead Space 3 is where I first noticed the static. But the intro in Resident Evil 6 after you press any button to continue at the main menu, there is a nice bass sound after that and it sounds like complete crap when using onboard + desecrate. But using just my Xonar, both sound nice. I am gonna try messing with the bass settings.

Edit2: Nevermind, removed the text here, the test I did was not done the same with the other tests resulting in it actually working (but without X-FI MB3 even though it as installed). It first requires THX TruStudio and then X-FI MB3 installed ontop. Even though X-FI MB3 does exactly the same as THX TruStudio, the THX software is required.

I think the only way for me to have both would be to just buy one of their cards lol. I'm just gonna buy http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102048 since its on sale. I figure I already spent 33% on their software, I mine as well get a refund, use the 25$ coupon I got for spending 300$ a month ago, and then sell this old card for about half price. Nonetheless this was a learning experience, I never would have though to use onboard+ discrete, despite it not fully working. Also am definitely getting a extended warranty, I don't like the look of a 1 year warranty. Especially when my ASUS went bad before a year or about a year

 

[moccor]

Well the sound card came in and I love it. Also gotta love getting next-day shipping when choosing free shipping (lasership ftw). Definitely better than my ASUS card, possibly due to the Sound Blaster Pro Studio. Simply worked for me first try after installing drivers, unlike some people that gave cards bad reviews due to drivers.