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Said to offer "supreme quality components," resulting in an SNR of 124dB.
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Said to offer "supreme quality components," resulting in an SNR of 124dB.
So the actual audio processing chip is half outside the pointless shroud anyway. Way to go marketing departments.
What I find more concerning than that is analogue audio is sent over to the daughterboard via probably unshielded ribbon cable i.e. the same stuff which so frequently picks up interference on front panel connectors.
Lack of digital in seems a fairly glaring oversight, but common on most of these kinds of products, sadly. Makes it a hard sell to anyone using it for non-gaming/movie purposes :( One of the common reasons that folks request sound cards in new PC builds (bearing in mind that most people are happy with mobo audio or HDMI audio) is for recording purposes from other equipment.
As for the shroud, I suppose they'd say it is designed to shield the analogue stuff (DACs etc) rather than the purely digital elements (audio processor), but still. Likely of little benefit either way, but they seem to be the "in thing" in mid-range sound cards with gaming aspirations.
Surely these days anyone who cares about their audio is just sending the pure digital bitstream to an external device, i.e. an AV receiver or speakers with the analogue stuff built in? Most people are happy with some reasonable speakers and the (usually OK) motherboard audio, the days of a dedicated sound card actually making a difference to frame rates or "Soundblaster required" are long gone.
The price will pretty much make or break it in terms of desirability, in all honesty. And curiously, there seems to be quite some similarities between this card and the Asus Xonar Essence cards, from both hardware and software standpoints. Also, would've been nice for the Devil HDX to support ASIO 2.3 rather than 2.2.
With that said, I'm pretty satisfied with my Essence STX II and, while implementation makes a difference, I prefer my PCM1792A DAC over the WM8741 DAC (it's still great, mind you), only really lacking gaming audio support for the huge library of older games that use and benefit from it, as well as its stock processing features being somewhat unpleasant to my hears, whereas I prefer Creative's solution for that, but that's very much a matter of personal opinion.
Usually these days I find motherboard audio to be more than sufficient for gaming. I have it hooked up to an AV receiver anyways which does all the work with my speakers for me. Sound cards are probably useful for those who are more into the multimedia producing and editing is my guess, I just don't see the need for the average gamer to have a dedicated sound card, because the lower end ones are mostly pointless if you have a really good motherboard anyways.
Personally I use a Xonar DG for the headphone amp, I guess all the loud metal music in my teens and 20's has affected my hearing a bit. Onboard audio just isn't loud enough.
It's kind of funny being accused of cheating in BF4 by my friends because with the amp, I can "almost hear their soldier breathing". Subtle sounds such as the soldier's gear moving when walking/crouched and moving and footsteps I never noticed using the onboard audio are now pretty obvious, so long as I'm actually listening/paying attention.
I am still rocking my pci X-Fi Fatal1ty pro gamer, mostly just because I can, it is the longest standing component in my PC but I get a feeling I will end up with a board without pci one day.
As it is gaming on the TV downstairs is HDMI out through the 7950 to the 7.1 amp so its only in my cave it gets use, with that its good for my video editing and hooks in with sony vegas, may only be a small difference but I may as well take it.
Also its more or less worthless on ebay.
I was surprised anyone had still been making them within the last decade. Turns out that through virtue of the ancient chipsets they still sport, some AMD motherboards still have 32-bit PCI.Quote:
Originally Posted by Percy1983