[PhantomICEMAN]

Hi Guys i recently build a high spec gaming rig . Everything has gone in the last piece that was remaining was a good sound card as from what i hear onboard sound doesn't really do justice.. I use my rig mostly for movies , but also play games and listen to music on occasions. Currently I have a roccat Kave 5.1 true surround head set.I want to get a sound card that will bring the most of this headset but will make my movie and gaming sessions eargasmic. I have been searching and found the Asus Xonar DG & Asus Xonr D2X fitting the bill however im having a hard time choosing which to go for.The Asus DG seems to be more geared towards headsets, its a lot cheaper than the D2X, its a low profile card , has a built in amp and its geared for 5.1 surround sound. The D2X from what i can see seems to be a high range card geared mostly for movies, i assume has better set of processing units has better dolby digital and dts support as it has on board encoders.Obviously of i go for the d2x two of the channels will goto waste but from what i can see the d2x will offer clearer sound than the DG. However im still unsure which will suit my purpose better whilst keeping in mind il be using a 5.1 headset not speakers,i dont want to splash out on the D2X if i would get the get the same output on the DG via a headset.. Any advice or pointers will be appreciated.. Also if there any other cards you guys you can recommend im open to suggestions... Cheers guy

[EndlessWaves]

Onboard is supposedly pretty good these days and the Dolby Headphone/CMSS-Headphone isn't going to benefit you which is the primary reason for a lot of headphone gamers getting a sound card.

You mention dolby digital/DTS, what will you be connecting the sound card to that uses these?

[PhantomICEMAN]

Originally Posted by EndlessWaves

Onboard is supposedly pretty good these days and the Dolby Headphone/CMSS-Headphone isn't going to benefit you which is the primary reason for a lot of headphone gamers getting a sound card.

You mention dolby digital/DTS, what will you be connecting the sound card to that uses these?

Well the soundcard will be outputting to a 5.1 headset.I dont have an amp or anything.. Im hoping that considering alot of these blu ray movies have a DTS HD Master Audio track on them having a card that has Dolby digitial and DTS support on it will improve the sound than just having normal sound card.or have i misunderstood the whole thing entirely

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by PhantomICEMAN

or have i misunderstood the whole thing entirely

Yes, but it's a very common misconception, the marketing folks have done their job well to make people want to have them without knowing what they are.

Dolby and DTS are companies who bought started out with a single product named after themselves but have since diversified so there's some name confusion thrown in there as well.

A lot of their products including Dolby Digital, 'DTS', Dolby TrueHD & DTS Master HD are nothing more than codecs like the humble mp3, almost the equivalent of zip files for music data. They get unpacked by the player software into an uncompressed digital format (PCM) which the sound card can then convert to the analogue signal for your headphones.

I'm not sure how HDCP interacts with the TrueHD/DTS-HD when used on a blu-ray though, you'd have to ask someone more familiar with the home cinema side. I wouldn't have thought it'd be a problem though.

However, Dolby and DTS do make other technologies and related bits of software, to take the list of Dolby/DTS features from the D2X webpage:

Dolby Digital Live: Converts PC or game audio content into Dolby Digital in real-time
Dolby Headphone: Creates a surround sound listening experience when using any set of headphones
Dolby Virtual Speaker: Delivers a vibrant surround sound listening experience from stereo speakers
Dolby Pro Logic® IIx: C reates up to 7.1-channel surround sounds from stereo or 5.1 sources
DTS Interactive for real time AC-3 encoding and
DTS NEO: PC stereo to multi-channel expander

Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive are bits of software that take the uncompressed digital sound that's been generated on the PC (typically dynamically generated, e.g. a game) and compresses it so you can send higher quality down a digital link to another device than you would otherwise be able to. It's of no use if you'll be converting directly to the analogue signal needed to make a speaker cone wibble.

The other four are all technologies that distort the sound in convincing ways to simulate different positioning of the sound source than where it's actually coming from and have nothing to do with quality of the sound.

[PhantomICEMAN]

Cheers mate for the detailed explantion.So ideally i would need something that would provide the top two out of them 6. The motherboard i have is the Asus P8Z68 Deluxe Gen 3. Can you see if you can check the onbaord sound chip on that please and advise if thats good enough?

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by PhantomICEMAN

Cheers mate for the detailed explantion.So ideally i would need something that would provide the top two out of them 6. The motherboard i have is the Asus P8Z68 Deluxe Gen 3. Can you see if you can check the onbaord sound chip on that please and advise if thats good enough?

No, you don't need any of them if you're just using the headphones.

Dolby Digital Live/DTS Connect is useless to your headphones because you're not transporting the data anywhere, it gets converted directly to an electrical signal for the speakers in your headphones.

Dolby headphone is likewise useless because it converts a 6 channel signal (5.1) into a 2 channel signal with surround positioning. As your headphones have got 6 speakers they're designed to take the 6 channel signal directly.

If you do end up with Dolby headphone capability then it should work perfectly well if you wish to try it and you may even prefer it but I would use your headphones as they were intended to be used first.


As to the original question of quality I'm no expert on the hardware side so I can't give you a real answer but my inclination would be that unless you need a particular feature of the sound card then with a relatively high end motherboard like that the headphones may be the limiting factor in sound quality.