Get the new Z. It's the latest card from Nvidia.

The Titanium HD has quite a few quirks. No analogue surround outputs, no switch between headphones and speakers. No XP support.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Get the new Z. It's the latest card from Nvidia.

Don't you mean Creative?

I chose to go with a cheap Asus Xonar DG as it features a built in headphone amp and still sounds better then on-board audio 😀. It also supports 'Dolby Headphone' (virtual surround), but i personally don't like virtual surround with either the Asus or Creative cards as it sounds a bit unnatural and tinny to me.

I've not had any issues with my audio, but it's known that both Creative and Asus release shoddy drivers.

🤣, yes, Creative of course...

The newer sound ICs on the motherboard nowadays have started to blur the difference in audio quality with add-in boards. They are quite impressive and most new motherboards will support a Dolby Digital codec right out of the box, especially in those from the two companies going head to head against each other - GIGABYTE and ASUS.

For your headphones, the audio quality from the motherboard will be quite impressive. There's less reason to go for a PCI or PCI-e based sound card, since the on-board audio mostly support HD codecs already. The supposed FPS performance hit has become less of an issue.

The motherboard/interference noise is almost non-existant in newer motherboards.

Your i7-based motherboard should have a support for HD audio. What brand is it anyway (the motherboard)?

Malik wrote:

The newer sound ICs on the motherboard nowadays have started to blur the difference in audio quality with add-in boards. They ar […]
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The newer sound ICs on the motherboard nowadays have started to blur the difference in audio quality with add-in boards. They are quite impressive and most new motherboards will support a Dolby Digital codec right out of the box, especially in those from the two companies going head to head against each other - GIGABYTE and ASUS.

For your headphones, the audio quality from the motherboard will be quite impressive. There's less reason to go for a PCI or PCI-e based sound card, since the on-board audio mostly support HD codecs already. The supposed FPS performance hit has become less of an issue.

The motherboard/interference noise is almost non-existant in newer motherboards.

Your i7-based motherboard should have a support for HD audio. What brand is it anyway (the motherboard)?

My motherboard features an 8 channel Realtek ALC892 chip that supports 7.1 surround sound, 24-bit HD audio up to 192KHz, THX Trustudio Pro, Dolby Digital and DTS... But my cheap Asus Xonar DG still produces better quality sound 😉.

Integrated audio is definitely getting better these days, but i'd still recommend a good dedicated sound card if you're using good quality speakers or headphones. I know some boards are now using 'Creative Sound Core3D' chips which are quite decent when it comes to integrated audio.

Most mainstream boards these days feature a Realtek HD codec and some cheaper boards use a VIA HD codec (which i don't recommend).

PowerPie5000 wrote:

But my cheap Asus Xonar DG still produces better quality sound 😉.

Have you had any trouble with the Xonar drivers? That seems to be the biggest complaint with those..

Stull wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

But my cheap Asus Xonar DG still produces better quality sound 😉.

Have you had any trouble with the Xonar drivers? That seems to be the biggest complaint with those..

I'm also using a Xonar DG and never had any troubles with it's drivers. It works flawlessly, for the 2 months or so I've been using it.

OS is Windows 7 btw.

What troubles do these drivers usually have? Now I'm curious 😜

Stull wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

But my cheap Asus Xonar DG still produces better quality sound 😉.

Have you had any trouble with the Xonar drivers? That seems to be the biggest complaint with those..

Drivers are the biggest complaint for both Asus and Creative cards. You can't go wrong picking either brand... Or you could go very wrong picking either brand 🤣. I've had no issues with my Xonar so far.

Tetrium wrote:

I'm also using a Xonar DG and never had any troubles with it's drivers. It works flawlessly, for the 2 months or so I've been us […]
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Stull wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

But my cheap Asus Xonar DG still produces better quality sound 😉.

Have you had any trouble with the Xonar drivers? That seems to be the biggest complaint with those..

I'm also using a Xonar DG and never had any troubles with it's drivers. It works flawlessly, for the 2 months or so I've been using it.

OS is Windows 7 btw.

What troubles do these drivers usually have? Now I'm curious 😜

My Xonar has been working quite well too, but i know there have been driver issues that people complain about (i didn't bother to look up the specifics as mine is working fine)... The Xonar Unified drivers will probably give details on certain fixes, and there's even hacked Creative drivers with bug fixes too!

Details here:

http://brainbit.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/asus … nified-drivers/

According to my extensive research (read: Newegg and Amazon reviews 😜 ), there are quite a few people complaining about bluescreens and device recognition issues when installing the drivers. But I recognize the fact that there are a lot of people out there that don't know what they're doing, either. I've been tempted by the Xonar DS in the past, but the lazy person in me didn't want to deal with potential issues. 😁

I personally wouldn't buy anything from Creative again. I have the X-fi elite pro and it's a piece of trash. However if gaming is your main goal I don't know if there are any cards that have all these features like EAX and CMSS3D, which really help for games.

For a nice pair of headphones, I can recommend the Philips SHP5401, these are the best I've ever heard for €20.

jwt27 wrote:

I personally wouldn't buy anything from Creative again. I have the X-fi elite pro and it's a piece of trash. However if gaming is your main goal I don't know if there are any cards that have all these features like EAX and CMSS3D, which really help for games.

For a nice pair of headphones, I can recommend the Philips SHP5401, these are the best I've ever heard for €20.

The Xonar cards support up to EAX 5.0 (EAX is dead anyway) and the Xonar uses Dolby Headphone instead of CMSS3D for virtual surround.... I don't know which is the better virtual surround technology as they both sound a bit iffy to me. I guess it's down to personal preference as you always get people saying one is better than the other.

I skipped the X-Fi generation based on the constant complaints it received, but it probably improved towards the end of it's life though.

I suggest Samson SR850, Superlux HD 681 or the Superlux HD 668B for a set of decent low cost headphones (they get pretty good reviews).

Yup EAX is not used anymore, but it massively improves sound in older games that support it.

I must add that the CMSS3D virtual surround only works when using headphones. Downmixing surround to stereo doesn't really improve anything and I heard upmixing from stereo to surround is downright horrible. Haven't heard it myself though as I don't have a surround setup (you only have two ears anyway 😉 ). And I haven't heard the Xonar's dolby feature either so I can't comment on that.

Tetrium wrote:

I'm also using a Xonar DG and never had any troubles with it's drivers. It works flawlessly, for the 2 months or so I've been us […]
Show full quote

Stull wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

But my cheap Asus Xonar DG still produces better quality sound 😉.

Have you had any trouble with the Xonar drivers? That seems to be the biggest complaint with those..

I'm also using a Xonar DG and never had any troubles with it's drivers. It works flawlessly, for the 2 months or so I've been using it.

OS is Windows 7 btw.

What troubles do these drivers usually have? Now I'm curious 😜

I have a xonar dg too. Once I disabled the audio in my graphics card it was fine. I hate the control panel though, very hard to read and laid out by a jackson pollock fan. I still miss the turtle beach santa cruz panel where I could easily find effects etc..

I have an X-Fi Platinum with a nice 5.1 speaker system, but when I want to crank up the volume without disturbing others I connect up my old Sennheiser HD497 Headphones.

They sound great but are Stereo Only.

I have a PCI express X-fi titanium, entry level (the 80€ one) and it's great. On the basic headphones I can hear a large différence, and on the hifi, it's like day and night.
The onboard is just very very bad.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Get the new Z. It's the latest card from Nvidia.

The Titanium HD has quite a few quirks. No analogue surround outputs, no switch between headphones and speakers. No XP support.

Will the Z be as good for older games that do use EAX though, since it lacks hardware support? I guess that is the main thing that makes me shy away from it, the headphones thing is a great point though!

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I chose to go with a cheap Asus Xonar DG as it features a built in headphone amp and still sounds better then on-board audio . It also supports 'Dolby Headphone' (virtual surround), but i personally don't like virtual surround with either the Asus or Creative cards as it sounds a bit unnatural and tinny to me.

That requires Dolby Headphone-compatible headphones, right?

Hater Depot wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I chose to go with a cheap Asus Xonar DG as it features a built in headphone amp and still sounds better then on-board audio . It also supports 'Dolby Headphone' (virtual surround), but i personally don't like virtual surround with either the Asus or Creative cards as it sounds a bit unnatural and tinny to me.

That requires Dolby Headphone-compatible headphones, right?

Dolby Headphone technology is designed to work with any stereo headphones, so all headphones are compatible 😀.