Hi All, So I've been scouring the web for information on what would be the best sound card to buy, and finally settled for the Asus Xonar DX. Order placed, should arrive tomorrow. Then I happened upon a number of posts regarding horrendous driver issues. Typical. Seeing suggestions regarding the unofficial unified drivers available, I went and had a look and from what I can tell there are 3 versions available; but not having had any experience with this card, I'm finding the little info available to be somewhat less than helpful for "my" required scenario. My question, thusly: My use for this card is primarily gaming (eax support not particularly important), music listening and watching movies etc (specifically, bluray). The option for ASIO would be nice but certainly not a requirement at this stage (also why I settled for the DX specifically). I will primarily be alternating between Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II 2.0 speakers, and Sennheiser 595 headphones, therefore don't require any surround, upmixing, or amp connections of any sort. For this configuration, what provides the best quality / stable / most feature rich solution? a: Asus's own official drivers? b: Unified Drivers - Normal? c: Unified Drivers - Low Latency? d: Unified Drivers - CMedia Audio Panel? Additonal: I'm using Windows 7 x64 Thanks in advance!
I have used Xonar DX for nearly two years now without any issues whatsoever. I'm using Asus' own driver with zero issues whatsoever. Also, I'm using WASAPI with Foobar without any issues either. Atm the card is hooked up into Vincent KHV-111 headphone amp feeding pair of Sennheiser HD650's and works like a charm.
@Slowmotionsuicide & brave758, cheers for that! @Sponge12349 - that's exactly what I wrote in my post, but "which" version of the 3 was my question....
I've been using asus' own drivers on windows 7 x64 for a while (with a xonar essence st but I don't think that matters). They are generally quite good, low profile and do what you need them to do. However they do have some problems with bit-perfect playback, I've found that if I'm using wasapi in foobar, every time windows tries to make a sound I get a loud click. It's easily circumvented by disabling windows sounds but it is a consideration if you will be going the bit-perfect route. I haven't tried the unified drivers yet, may give them a go but as everything is working as desired at the moment, I'm a bit reluctant to risk breaking anything.
Not really, it has a number of long-standing bugs and problems that have been fixed in the unofficial drivers. Subv3rse - Choose between Normal and the Low DPC latency version, I would say. The Low DPC latency version offers slightly better performance but disables the GX mode (EAX emulation mode). I use the Low DPC version because GX mode has always been a glitchy mess that doesn't even sound that good in practice and only has an effect on older games as EAX is barely used by developers any more. 'Normal' is pretty much the same as the ASUS drivers, but with bugs fixed and minimal changes to performance and features. If you scroll down the page a bit on http://brainbit.wordpress.com you'll see a table comparing the different versions of the unified driver, so that you can make up your mind.
Thanks Zurechial, Yeah I saw the table, but found myself undecided between the low latency or the cmedia versions. Tables are all well and fine but wanted some real-world opinions behind it also. Cheers!
No really it does, used both the Asus driver and the unified ones. I experienced more crashes with the uni ones so swithed back to the latest Asus one. Although I have not tried the latest uni one.
Cheers Brave; Was running with Asus (for about about 3 hrs), have just switched over to Uni low latency to give it a shot. Of both, I haven't actually gamed on either yet, and personally can't really tell the difference in audio quality but what I did note of the Asus driver was when playing around with the shiny new buttons (music, game, etc) when dropping back to normal there were still some environmental audio reverb effects kicking even, even though reportedly "disabled". Easy enough fix was to turn bathroom effect (never, ever figured out why that has persisted since sound blaster live days) on and off again. Yeah it's quick and easy to find a fix, but it's annoying to have to look for such things. Plan to give it a shot in a bit on BFBC2 later, which is what prompted me to buy the thing in the first place as BFBC2 hates my Realtek onboard (can't blame it really). Glad for the sound quality upgrade, definitely noticable. Be interesting to see what proves most stable though. That said, BFBC2 is the only game that HAS managed to crash my onboard, but I haven't had much time to test anything else as this rig is new as of last Friday so.... roll on the weekend
Well... Results: a: Asus official drivers remained stable and kept BFBC2 working. a1: Not that I think it was worth the sodding effort, that game (at least, vietnam) has degenerated into a "camp the enemy base and spawn kill" slaughterfest. *uninstalls* b: Reverting back to Asus official drivers from Unidrivers is... err.. fun. Several failed installs / crashes later, numerous driversweeps and 1 system restore later and boom, ta muchly.
