Xonar Essence ST Coming Soon

foobar2k, default output. I'm not using others because they all have playback problems.

 

Are you using the latest drivers for your OS?

 

Does this ST comes with the H6 DAC board? EDIT: OK dumb question, I've read at Head-Fi thread and already know the answer :wanker:

I'm thinking of buying STX but its better to wait I guess, my gf gets mad when she see the card price because its more than Crosshair II I bought month ago, she already heard my gear, and even I say its very good but I keen on buying/trying different card/DAC

I worried that it might be not much improvement when buying this card, the specs is amazing though but I really want to hear how this Burr Brown DAC sounds like. I've ordered some opamp for my current DAC but it seems like I ordered the WRONG one, should have read properly and got the number right, instead of buying single I have bought dual opamp, but that seems like a sign that I need to bought this card :infinity:

 

I have been using the ST Deluxe for about 4 months now and it is a very good soundcard.

 

Yea, after reading your reviews and the thread at lowyat.net forum I'm really tempted to get the card, I don't mind which one, the ST or the STX, I know it will be a decent upgrade. I been testing my PCM58DAC just now, all I say is I'm not really satisfied with it anymore, its because the sound is very focused in the middle, I like to have wide open sounding despite the mod I carried to the DAC, change opamp, using Sanyo OS-CON and bypass output caps

I'm really disappointed living in my country, its hard to get decent card, and the price is letting me down too :bang:

 

GX thingie crashes or BSOD's in like 80%.
CS:S crashed, UT3 also, Painkiller Gold BSOD'ed. If you're quality freak, it's good. But if you like games. Well, then you have to either buy X-Fi or just accept that nothing will ever work with EAX. Sigh

 

None of those Games it crashed on me. Only game where I had it crashed was Matrix online(dont bother me any way as it shutting down) and Koei games(dont have any eax any way in there engine, its a engine problem). I have UT3, CS:S and played Painkiller with it. I also played a bunch of other games with GX on other then the few I mention and they didnt crash.

It just like alchemy/Real3dback some games just dont like any thing like it to be used with the game.It be the game that have problems with it and not GX/DSGX.

But in UT3 case did you edit UT3engine ini and change the Device audio from general software to DeviceName= which puts it in hardware mode. This what I did with all games that used unreal engine 3 and they doesnt crash for me with DSGX/GX.

 

I edited your post. Please remember we get younger users in here also. Keep the X-rated types of comments to a minimum please.

On topic, Try Velbac. This would allow you to use a hardware card for gaming effects yet pass the audio (digitally) to the STX for output.
Make sure your using the latest version of the drivers and your Direct X is also updated.

 

Any idea what's the difefrence between no selected modes and Hi-Fi ? Hi-Fi is suppose to disable all the DSP effects, but i can't really notice any difference between not using any mode or Hi-Fi.

 

Yes, the Hi-fi mode just disables any reverb or eq etc.. I basically leave those presets alone...

 

And what if you have reverbs and EQ disabled all the time anyway? Any difference then? Or is Hi-Fi just a quick way to disable all DSP effects if you use any of them?
Just wondering what Hi-Fi really does.

 

..just disables everything. Say if you wanted to do a RMAA test. Hit Hi-FI and it turns everything off. Does that make sense?

 

Yeah. Thx for explaining stuff about Essence. I'll probably have some questions. But for now i can't stop listening to FLAC encoded My Immortal and Hello from Evanescence.
That piano is making my skin crawl with Essence

 

Yeah, I love that band. You may consider swapping out the opamps for some LME49720HA's. They are TO-99 chips so you need adapters. They are very,very nice with these cards.

 

I never seen soundcard uses external power before, what does it powers? The DSP? The DAC? Its understood if the PCIe uses external power since it needs to powers the PCIe bridge (like in Xonar D2X) but what about the PCI version?

 

On the ST,STX only logic signal s are taken from the bus interface.
The cards have a molex connector allowing them to connect up straight to the PSU like a HDD or optical drive. This would keep the power cleaner as it is not running through a bunch of tracings on the board before it reaches the card.
Both cards have high quality clean-up seciton also using audio grade OS-CON capacitors for final power filtering.

Hope this helps.

 

Makes sense, maybe they give options so more advanced users can build up their own SMPS/ separate PSU to power the card

 

There are a few guys that have built external linear power supplies.

 

Really? How do it sound after that?

About opamp rolling, have you tried LT1361 on I/V? If I ever buying this card I already have these opamp and a modded PSU to power it

 

I don't get something. I was able to use 7.1 Virtual Speaker Shifter without stupid Dolby Virtual Speaker. However now, after assembling my new system, i can only enable Virtual Speaker Shifter if Dolby Virtual Speaker is already enabled. This is totally dumb. Dolby thingie distorts the spound badly and creats some echo crap effect while Virtual Speaker Shifter just enhanced 3D positioning in games and added a bit bass and enhanced center in movies. Is there a way to complain to ASUS so i (we) could get this option back.
Dolby Virtual Speaker sucks and i don't want to use it. But i totally like Virtual Speaker Shifter feature which worked very well before.

Back then i first installed drivers from supplied CD and later installed the ones from web.
This time i installed them from web directly.