Hi, new member here. Until recently i thought that onboard cards are pretty good, but reading this forum and other sources made me think otherwise. I decided to give it a shot. I am currently using a Creative 6.1 speaker set with the onboard audio card of my asus motherboard. The speakers are 6.1 and have a rear center unit the 5.1 doesn't. However i am not really sure if it ever worked correctly but anyway. After searching around I decided on getting an ASUS Xonar D2 (PCI, because although my mobo has PCI-express there is not enough space) and combine it with a Z-5500. I found the card at 125e and the speakers at 235e so that makes 360e which seems like a reasonable price to me for what i am getting. I have the following questions: 1) According to my "research" i have the option of connecting the speakers to analog and let the sound card do the decoding sound OR connect it to digital and let the speakers do the decoding. I think the Xonar can decode better(correct me if i am wrong) so i was wondering if i could let the xonar do the decoding but still connect the speakers to digital output? 2) I read various reviews and found some different models of the speakers. http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/z5500/img/z25.JPG http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x89/nickstamat/LogitechZ5500/25.jpg As you can see the back of the subwoofer is different. One has one round cable(coaxial?) for each speaker while the other has a pair of cables(red+black) to connect it. Is this a case of older/newer edition of the speakers, or is it something random? Is there anyway to know what i am getting? I would prefer the first type because it is less messier. 3) Magnetic Interference: Every time my cell phone rings an extremely annoying static comes from my current rig. I wanted to prevent that as much as possible so i picked the xonar d2 which has magnetic shielding. As far as the speakers go, is there any difference if i connect them with digital output or analog output as far interference is concerned, or does this problem have to do with an unshielded subwoofer and i can't do anything anyway? Any other suggestions are welcome. :] Thanks in advance!
The DACs (digital to analog converters) on the Asus Xonar D2 is said to be better than that of the Logitechs. So if u connect via analog u should get better sound. But it'll be prone to pick up interference than a, optical digital connection. i don't think u can let the card do the decoding and still connect via digital, Iam not sure tho. The newer manufacturing run of the Logitechs has separate speaker cables. The Xonars should match up really well with the Z5500.
You will get better sound quality using that card if you just use the analog outputs. Onboard audio chips are a pain and od all sorts of werid things as you mentioned. You can try to mute all the recording inputs as if they are left "floating" they can pick up stray signals. I am pretty sure the new soundcard will fix your issues with static or EMI/RFI. You will also get much better sound quality also. Also, if your connect up through digital, the speaker are doing the decoding and produce the analog signal for the speakers using a onboard DAC. When you use analog connection the Xonar card will be using it's onboard DAC to do the decoding and conversion to analog and the signal is sent to the speakers for amplification. You cannot have the card decode and send it to the speakers. If I am understanding what you are asking, it cannot be done in the way your asking about.
Ok, i got the card, but not the speakers yet. The sound is crystal clear, but i was not sure at first how much better the sound quality was. Then i tried hearing something on 48KHz(the max the onboard had) and on 192KHz. I am sure this isn't the only thing the xonar does from the onboard, but the difference is huge. Of course i have the annoying issues the Xonar has, like the channel mismatch and the disturbance in the sound every time you open/browse a folder etc. Now for the speakers... :]
The Xonar card produces good sound WHEN it works correctly, which is not very often. The drivers are terrible. The sound always trembles when i scroll on any program or try to launch or even try to browse a folder. When playing games, 90% of sounds disappear and a few specific random sounds are played. Not to mention that the channels mix with each other all the time, and i find my right front speaker behaving as a subwoofer and the subwoofer as a speaker. The patches and newest drivers don't solve the problems. Sadly i returned to the onboard audio card. Yes, the situation is THAT terrible.
Something must gone very wrong there, IRQ conflict? What's your system configurations? Is there any "!" in your hardware manager? Also try post your issues in the Asus support forum, I think it's faster than their phone support.
I don't have a 2nd PCI-e x1 slot, and i cannot put it on my 2nd PCI-e x16 slot because it is not supported by my motherboard. There is no "!" on my hardware manager. IRQ conflict ? I need to check that, but i think if i had such a problem it would be a LOT more disfunctional than it already is. Funny thing is, when i get into asus website the sound goes crazy ^_^.
