Hello all.

I have been reading this forum for a few days now and am amazed at the quality of the posts. Most forums have a lot of droll which completely puts you off ever coming back, but not here.

Kudos to you all!

I have a few questions and observations I need looked at. I apologise if any of these have already been asked and answered.

My audio requirements:

1) Sound card that will play lossly and lossless music files on my computer well. I only recently came to my senses and realised that my onboard audio is just pretty much horse manure. I was treated to listening to a lossless flac music file on a Creative X-Fi Platinum on Sennheiser HD 650 at a friend's home and it blew me away.

Current soundcard: Asus onboard 7.1
Ordered soundcards (budget conscious): M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (for listening to music and producing) and Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio (movies, gaming)

Reason for ordering above soundcards: I ordered two because besides listening to music, I also like to play games on my PC and have just started producing music on Reason 4. If having both of these in one system causes too many problems I will have to get rid of one.

Questions:
1.1) Does anyone know if having both of these in one computer cause problems?
1.2) I have read that I will need a headphone preamp to connect my headphones to the Audiophile. Is this correct? And if so why was it working on the onboard soundcard?
1.3) If I connect my speaker system (see below) to the Audiophile card and then my headphones to the speaker system (it has a headphone jack), would this be sufficient or would I lose quality?

2) Headphones and loudspeakers.

Current headphones: Sennheiser HD 280 Pro
Current Speaker: Creative I-trigue 3800 2.1

Questions:
2.1) Are the Sennheisers above enough to match the Audiophile or am I sorely losing out on quality?
2.2) I am thinking of purchasing the M-Audio (I think I am becoming a Fanboy ) Studiophile AV40 Desktop speaker system. Is this a good choice? And they seem to have a headphone jack on them, would this mean I would not need to buy a preamp?

Any answers or comments would be greatly appreciated.

-- vampirnata --

You might want to consider a pre-amp to drive your headphones. A thread was brought up regarding the Audiophile 24/96 a few days ago. It was recommended at the time that the OP buy a pre-amp for what they were looking to accomplish very similar to your situation:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=69065




Having produced some music with Reason in the past I would recommend you keep both cards if possible. Each of them has their strengths and weakness, but if you had to keep one I would make sure it was the M-Audio Audiophile 24/96. If not you will need to find a card that has a MIDI I/O and has support for OpenAL and up to at least EAX 3.0 for your games.

Generally, it's not a very good idea to have more and very different soundcards in one pc, though it may work under certain circumstances. But this depends on the installed hardware components, the BIOS, the drivers, and the operating system's configuration. (Exceptions are for example Audiophile cards, which are designed to work up to 4 within one system. However, we don't speak here about professional environments.) Two soundcards are particularly not recommended, if there's already one on-board. Of course, you can deactivate this chip, but that can be more or less successful, depending on the qualities of motherboard and BIOS. (A non-active device is not the same as none!)

You don't need a preamp for headphones, if you are using an active speaker system with a headphone jack.


EDITED: orthography.

Don't lots of motherboards come with onboard sound - which many users simply ignore and use something else?

Or am I out of date here?

(My two PCs are certainly out of date, but this is how they're both configured).

Cheers,
David.

You are not out of date.
Yes, many motherboards have an on-board audio chip, e.g. "SoundMax" (Analog Devices), C-Media or whatever else. I assume that most people follow the recommendations and deactivate this port when putting in a real soundcard. And, as i said above, this may work more or less... If you expand such a system with two cards, you have three in all. This is an increased danger because of the facts, that even nowerdays many cards are unable to (really) share IRQs (though they claime to do), or that some devices don't get on with one another. Not to mention that the OS and applications as well may get confused.
However, that's enough for not to blow up this topic...

Unfortunately, you probably should have sought some advice before buying the Xtreme Audio if gaming is your intent. The Xtreme Audio doesn't pack gaming-centric features that the higher-end X-Fis support such as hardware acceleration, newer EAX environmental effects and 128 hardware voices (utilized in only a handful of games, but regardless) -- basically everything that comes as part of the EMU20K1 DSP, aka the X-Fi audio processor. The number of games that support EAX is dwindling, but it's still a pretty cool tech to experience if you haven't experienced it before.

The Xtreme Audio should be a moderate step up from onboard audio, and it's certainly more than adequate for movies, but it's significantly less interesting and useful than the "real" X-Fis for gaming.

It's unfortunate that Creative's X-Fi lineup is so complicated and basically incomprehensible for most people (I can't even keep the damn things straight). Amusingly, for having 12 different SKUs, there are really only three or four differences between those 12 SKUs, and Creative's probably had 30 different SKUs for X-Fi cards throughout the years.

Generally, the current half-height Xtreme Gamer is the card most gamers should set themselves up with if they're going with an X-Fi. It's the cheapest X-Fi to feature the EMU20K1 DSP and doesn't come attached with any other features that are by and large useless such as X-RAM. Another perfectly good option is the phased-out Xtreme Music, which is essentially a full-height Xtreme Gamer and is sometimes less expensive in the used market.

Hey

Thank you all for replying.

So since I have done a lot more reading on the subject I decided to cancel the order for the X-Fi Music.

I have also upped my budget a bit.

I now have the choice of either getting a Creative X-Fi Titanium or the Asus Xonar DX.

I am currently leaning towards the Asus. From what I've read the Creative is a nightmare to install (if it even works) on Vista x64 (which I use and will not move away from).

Also from a Tech Report review it seems that some blind listening tests they preformed on these two cards, the DX came out tops 90% of the time.

Lastly I have been reading HA and there seems to be a general dislike of Creative as well as their Crystal technology.

So I think I will pick up a Xonar tomorrow unless someone convinces me otherwise

Thanks again

-- vampirnata --

Speakers and headphones tend to have more effect on sound quality than anything else. I suggest you take your headphones to your friends house and do an A/B test. (Of course, it's best to change/compare one component at a time.)

The HD280s have a good reputation as being one of the best in their price range. (I have a pair.) But, it's my understanding that "open" headphones tend to have better sound than "closed" headphones (in a given price range). I also have couple pair of open headphones (Grado & Koss), and I do prefer them to the Sennheisers. (The older Koss headphones were less expensive than the Sennheisers, and the Grado cost more.)

I'm not sure, but it's "headphone amplifier". Some stereo-system preamplifiers do have a headphone output, and they could also be used for this purpose. Different soundcards can drive headphones better than others, and different headphones have different sensitivity.

It could be that the M-Audio 2496 can't drive headphones at all... I don't know. I checked the manual on their website, and it does need a microphone preamp, if you're going to use a microphone with it.

If you can get enough volume, without distortion, you don't need a headphone amp. And, whenever you add an amplification stage, you have the potential for adding noise (and you'll amplify any existing noise). That's my opinion... Some people claim that a headphone amplifier can improve sound quality. A headphone amp will give you a handy volume control knob, which might be useful when you're "producing music". Like everything else in the audio world, headphone amplifers run from affordable (under $50 USD) to very expensive (hundreds of dollars).

Why? What audible failings does it have?



I see the AP2496 as also being the card of choice for movies, routing multichannel to its digital output, and into a surround receiver for listening.



Shouldn't be a problem as long as you can keep them straight in your head. Most likely scenario - you try something and their is no output or input. Eventually you find that whatever you are trying to record or play has been routed to the *other* audio interface. ;-)





Asked and answered.



Terminology check. You think you might need a headphone amplfier. ;-)

First see how your headphones work with your gaming card.

if that doesn't meet your needs, then pick one of the inexpensive headphone amps that are mentioned in the other thread you were referred to. Don't get bullied into thinking that you need a megabuck headphone amp to get good sound.



Because onboard soundcards aren't all that helpless.




Try it, it may work.



Sennheiser HD280s are pretty good. I have a pair. They aren't my favorites, but I use them not infrequently.



I don't have personal expereince with these speakers.

IME, M-Audio are a more consistent source of quality audio than Creative. They have a far better rep in professional circles. People who are comfortable with M-Audio products are often uncomfortable with Creative products. I would say that is often more prejudice than fact.

Many of the Creative products I've used are really pretty good. For example my Creative Jukebox 3 gave me many years of service. It alwsys sounded good. But it was replaced with a M-Audio Microtrak which is more of a professional tool.

This is definitely true. I neglected to mention that in the post above. I am somewhat more biased towards M-Audio myself. I have an M-Audio Revo 5.1 card and it's been solid for the most part. Creative on the other hand is known for it's terrible service and for duping their customers for years with snake oil salesman marketing tactics

Hey all

Thanks again for all your input.

As I mentioned in a previous post I was going to purchase an Asus Xonar DX, and I did.

I was instantly impressed. But saying this, I wanted to see if I was not being fooled by my excitement.

So I did a double blind test with 2 rock WAV files. One was a Deep Purple track that had been remastered. The second was a Blind Guardian track from their latest CD.

I also did a double blind test with 2 192k MP3 files encoded with LAME 3.90. Track 1 was a remastered Queen track and Track 2 was Amon Amarth (Metal).

I apologise if I slip up in my terminology on anything but I am rather new to all this and am still learning.

So the results of the test:

Xonar DX vs Realtek Onboard

WAV 1: 16/16 in favour of the Xonar
WAV 2: 16/16 in favour of the Xonar

In fact if I could I would push it to 17/16 ;p

MP3 1: 16/16 in favour of the Xonar
MP3 2: 16/16 in favour of the Xonar

Either I was incredibly lucky or the tests clearly show that the onboard was much much worse.

Will be getting my copy of Protools 8, my M-Audio Audiophile 2496 and M-Audio Oxygen 49 delivered next week so I will post my observations for anyone who cares.

I work for an R&D Electronics company so some of the guys in the development department were kind enough to offer to build me a headphone amp. I was very thankful but even more so when I learned it will be a headphone/mic vacuum tube amp. Very nice guys.

Will get some speakers next month and then a pair of Senn 650's the month after. I believe I will be set for a while then.

-- vampirnata --