EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

[dbee]

Hey all , was involved in a thread a while back and the question of interference arose between my board and sound card . I thought it was negligible at the time but is beginning to annoy me and have noticed some in game sound is reduced on certain effects. When i switch from 2 channel speakers to 5.1 or 7.1 , it gets reduced .

Anyways, i believe it was Wazza who asked about it before. Can anybody give some suggestions on eliminating this ? I have done a few searches and haven't found anything very useful.

As always, any suggestions are greatly appreciated . Thanks !

[wazza300]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

i think its when it tries to emulate creative eax sound i think from what ive read you have to disable it

[dbee]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

cool wazza, thanks for the input. Just cant seem to find the option to disable within the Xonar interface.

[dbee]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

Did some more looking around and noticed that most others will recommend disabling within the game options, im looking to disable this altogether within windows . Found a few threads with users just bashing each other thus no resolution.

[Psycho101]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

I've found from time to time that a Graphics Card will interfere with a sound card. It can cause things like high pitched whine when the GPU is loaded.

One step I've taken in the past that lessens the interference (YMMV) is to cut a sheet of thick card the same size or larger than a graphics card, wrap the card in 3-4 layers of thick aluminium foil and place it between the GPU and sound card. Be careful that it dowsn't touch any components on the board though.

The only other alternative is to get a card that has more passive shielding. Only the Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe and the Essence have adequate shielding. The DS has none. From the description of the Essence: "Perfectly shielded, EMI-free.".

[dbee]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

Sweet answer Psycho . In that case, i can deal with the slight hissing within the backround . It is only really audible when im not doing anything and the volume is 20 % or higher. Thanks bro !

[Judge-dredd]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

take it out and put a real creative card in there you are causeing Contamination to your Gigabyte board with that ASUS

[dbee]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

nonsense ! Asus does make excellent parts, i have always used Asus notebooks, plus i had only paid $30 plus shipping on the Xonar, couldn't pass that up

You would have reasonable argument if Gigabyte made soundcards lol . I just never heard much good on creative's cards besides the expensive ones .

I'm very happy with it either way.

[dbee]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

Thanks for rubbing that Creative Champion in my face by the way ! Just looked it up on newegg and i must say, it truly does look impressive especially with the drive bay unit. Reviewed just about the same as my Xonar however. If i had a speakers supporting TOSLINK , i would likely give it a go but find the card unnecessary unless i had a set to use it.

How does it sound by the way and what speakers are you banging?

[Psycho101]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

I'd take the Xonar Essence over anything Creative has to offer. My last Creative card was an AWE64, which was fine. In recent years Creative's mainstream (ie not rip off priced) cards have ranged from poor to average. Italso took them an absolute age to "get their finger out" and release a decent PCIe card in the Titanium Fatal1ty Pro.

It's difficult to judge a card just by on-paper specs. The sound quality is very much dependant on the quality of components used, specific electrolyte mix in the caps, how well the card is shielded (especially important on the analogue inputs and outputs), quality of the headphone pre-amp (if present), power delivery circuitry and the way it handles hardware accelerated audio outputs, primarily for gaming (needs low CPU usage) but also for home theatre use (Dolby Digital 7.1, DTS etc).

Having used both a Creative Fatal1ty (the model I mentioned above) and a Xonar Essence, for me, the Xonar had a much richer, warmer sound that was extremely pleasing to the ear. Treble never gives that tinny strained sound that makes my ears wigg out. The fact that it also supports a full size 6.3mm headphone jack is a big plus. This lets me use my GRADO SR 80I headphones without p155ing about with an adapter.

If you want a card for the sole purpose of gaming then the Creative may have a slight edge on the hardware acceleration front with slightly more accurate reproduction, but if you're an audiophile or simply listen to a lot of CD/WAV, Monkey Audio or high bitrate .ogg files then IMO the Xonar makes a much better choice compared to the Creative's slightly over processed and cold "digital sounding" output. With a good quality set of headphones you can really hear the difference. Depending on your speaker setup you may be better off with the cheaper of the two cards, whatever is cheapest at the time. Without excellent speakers you won't be able to appreciate the benefit of the Xonars warm, rich output.

I'm not particularly an Asus fan when it comes to motherboards but they do make excellent graphics cards and the Xonar range are all excellent. The D2X has been improved upon over the DX, and includes EMI shielding, making it a great value card.

[wazza300]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

Hey all , was involved in a thread a while back and the question of interference arose between my board and sound card . I thought it was negligible at the time but is beginning to annoy me and have noticed some in game sound is reduced on certain effects. When i switch from 2 channel speakers to 5.1 or 7.1 , it gets reduced .

Anyways, i believe it was Wazza who asked about it before. Can anybody give some suggestions on eliminating this ? I have done a few searches and haven't found anything very useful.

As always, any suggestions are greatly appreciated . Thanks !

can you still access windows 7 playback devices from taskbar? look in there when i played left4dead it kept lowering the sound so i looked on the sounds options when you right click the speaker on the taskbar and
disabled spdif and in communications click do nothing,now i get 100% sound in left4dead

[dbee]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

My opinion, the Xonar DX and Klipsch are a well made match. cost effective quality . nuff said.

When the time comes , assuming the Xonar holds up to the beating i intend on giving it, i will move to a home theater speaker setup with one of the higher end Xonar's, if not the Creative.

[Psycho101]

[Judge-dredd]

Re: EX58 UD3R and Asus Xonar interference

dbee hope you no i was picking with that said i thought about getting one at one time myself

but i have allwayed had creative card so i stuck with them
the Creative X-Fi Elite Pro is probly the best card there is i used it for many years now

but its draw back for me is its PCI when upgrading to the X58 motherboard i had to make changes

if gigabyte would have left them bottom slot a PCI i would have been ok instead its a PICE 8
but they had to put the PCI in the middle so those of us that use SLI had to make changes

I have to have a good sound card with suround sound
Creative GigaWorks S750 7.1