Something to replace Xonar D2X

[chrcoluk]

I have been wanting to replace it for a while.

Reasons.

Floppy connector is almost falling off.
On old rig I used to hear interference from motherboard although its gone on my current board.
Drivers are ancient and is totally unsupported and abandoned now by ASUS, I am using UniXonar modded Win 8.1 drivers on Windows 10.
Has no built in headphone amp.
I am getting sound quality issues, typically a pop at start of deep sounds, and when things get loud enough some distortion.

Requirements.

Headphone amp.
Dont care for 5.1 or 7.1, stereo is fine. But still want speaker outputs, so can use speakers when I want.
Line in, Spdif in, Mic in, would be nice, but Mic in is the least important out the three as I now use a USB Mic.

I was looking at the Creative AE-5 plus, which on paper is superior. But this is old also (at least not as old), although at least has more recent vendor support.

I will also consider USB external units, that people can personally vouch for. Providing they have the connectivity i desire and the ability to set custom equaliser, base control etc.

I am an a bit of an audiophile, already tried the onboard realtek and isnt for me, just too flat.

 

[droopyRO]

I'm not too picky about sound, but i use a Fiio E10K for my headphones and the Realtek ALC1220 for my speakers and switch between them depending on the time of the day. I would suggest looking in to a good USB DAC, and hear if it sounds good to your ears.

 

[Deleted member 229121]

Get a DAC +amp stack, or a DAC/amp combo.

I'm partial to JDS Labs but there are plenty of good options.
Have the element combo (MK1); the MK2 got a little pricier ($450), but Atom stacks are only $220-60.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Look into some Topping.

Considering you come form a Xonar D2X, don't break the bank and don't gun for the flagships... it ain't worth it. Why? Because gear needs to be matched. For you existing setup anything entry, mid tier will be OK. If you decide to split and use a dedicated headphone AMP... again... things need to be matched, jack of all trades, we know how the saying goes. Something like DX3Pro+ will be enough tough it is really good.

Don't look at internal cards anymore... don't wake the dead.

If you are into reading... this is the real place for audio related stuff, not here. That place doesn't have much bullshit, plain brute data and no regrets. Look for SINAD charts and their devices.

Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

Audio reviews, science and engineering discussions.

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Drivers are ancient and is totally unsupported and abandoned now by ASUS, I am using UniXonar modded Win 8.1 drivers on Windows 10.

Gee! That's even more behind than for the SoundBlaster ZXR. At least, Creative has an update that adds support to 10. (Hope it accepts 11 as well.)

 

[Luke357]

I personally use the Sennheiser GSX 1000 (soundcard) + a Schiit Magni Heresy (amplifier). The GSX1000 has speaker and headphone out. It does not have custom EQ's (but it does have a few preset ones) it does however, not need ANY Windows drivers! Windows 10 (and probably 11) just works out of the box with it. It has the best virtual surround sound I've ever used (and I've tried a LOT of virtual surround).

 

[chrcoluk]

I was all over the place on this and ended buying an AE9.

Before installing the AE9 I tried the onboard as well.

My personal conclusion my onboard (which is ALC897 I think) is trash, the xonar d2x is better, but the AE9 is just really good compared to both. I am very happy with the purchase.

It will probably take me a small time to get over what I spent on this thing though, never spent this level of money on a audio card before, but on the flip side it will probably last me a decade.

 

[JWNoctis]

Watch out though that AE-9 and for that matter AE-7 are currently unusable under any current Linux distribution, and will in fact prevent them from booting without some quite specific configuration, due to a bad but so far underappreciated bug in a kernel module, if you ever go that way.

Found out about that after I got an AE-7, and had Ubuntu 24.04 go no-boot. Had to pull it out just to get back in and put up the configs. Luckily motherboard audio (internal USB audio on my board, which used a different kernel module under Linux) still worked, even without the offending kernel module.

 

[chrcoluk]

Watch out though that AE-9 and for that matter AE-7 are currently unusable under any current Linux distribution, and will in fact prevent them from booting without some quite specific configuration, due to a bad but so far underappreciated bug in a kernel module, if you ever go that way.

Found out about that after I got an AE-7, and had Ubuntu 24.04 go no-boot. Had to pull it out just to get back in and put up the configs. Luckily motherboard audio (internal USB audio on my board, which used a different kernel module under Linux) still worked, even without the offending kernel module.

Thanks for the heads up, luckily this system will only be running Windows.

 

[droopyRO]

My personal conclusion my onboard (which is ALC897 I think) is trash,

In games, music or Youtube stuff ? It is insulting to me that there are still motherboards over 150$ with ALC897. I have an ALC1220, but i only use 2.0 speakers so i don't know if buying something like the AE-9 would sound better for me.

 

[natr0n]

Any usb dac less headache than slot based sound cards

 

[Ferrum Master]

Watch out though that AE-9 and for that matter AE-7 are currently unusable under any current Linux distribution, and will in fact prevent them from booting without some quite specific configuration, due to a bad but so far underappreciated bug in a kernel module, if you ever go that way.

Found out about that after I got an AE-7, and had Ubuntu 24.04 go no-boot. Had to pull it out just to get back in and put up the configs. Luckily motherboard audio (internal USB audio on my board, which used a different kernel module under Linux) still worked, even without the offending kernel module.

As using Linux daily... Creative cards are unusable. Pipewire+Wireplumber causes my ZxR to cracle no matter what mode I set to it. Ofc there is so many f*cking around the newly wireplumber syntax and it is beyond stupid how it works really, I could write a book... a tragedy about it and what I have tried. It is against hardware logic... it is for (insert rude statement) using compressed Bluetooth these days... like most of people abuse these days. Linux audio sucks so hard... microsoft has a tech internal magician that has scared the crap out of all other divisions to make his vision clear and make the software stack tight. I am all in for FOSS, but I am not blind and subjective... Microsoft is miles ahead of Linux audio stack wise.

Downgrading to Pulseaudio is better for this card, ALSA/JACK also or pure ALSA. Disable tched and limit to plain 16/44100 and then it works. Keep in mind Creative has no real support there its a DIY contributor driver using windows binaries.

PCIe audio is dead, avoid using it. Sell your AE9 while it costs something... get a decent Topping or something similar, thank me later. Quit fooling around anyone... look into https://www.audiosciencereview.com, and not anywhere else, Amirm is the guy you should listen to, not any other reviewer dudes, including locals here. Any recent PCIe cards are fake pcie, those are with USB hub inside actually. Creative bridge and CMEDIA 8828? are the last ones... if you don't count fully Xilinx SPARTAN ASICs like Lynxes. Thats a decade or more already for those ICs.

 

[chrcoluk]

In games, music or Youtube stuff ? It is insulting to me that there are still motherboards over 150$ with ALC897. I have an ALC1220, but i only use 2.0 speakers so i don't know if buying something like the AE-9 would sound better for me.

Yeah thats why I mentioned what chip I have, it seems the ALC897 is low end, my board isnt a budget model either.

I dont know how to explain my sensitivity to audio quality, I have used discrete sound cards for pretty much my entire time on PCs, so maybe I have got tuned to the quality of them, whilst someone who has only ever used onboard would be satisfied with it, I used to use speakers originally, but now when gaming its always headphones, same with music, speakers are only occasionally used watching videos for short time on low volume and I cant be bothered to put on headphones.

 

[JWNoctis]

As using Linux daily... Creative cards are unusable. Pipewire+Wireplumber causes my ZxR to cracle no matter what mode I set to it. Ofc there is so many f*cking around the newly wireplumber syntax and it is beyond stupid how it works really, I could write a book... a tragedy about it and what I have tried. It is against hardware logic... it is for (insert rude statement) using compressed Bluetooth these days... like most of people abuse these days. Linux audio sucks so hard... microsoft has a tech internal magician that has scared the crap out of all other divisions to make his vision clear and make the software stack tight. I am all in for FOSS, but I am not blind and subjective... Microsoft is miles ahead of Linux audio stack wise.

Downgrading to Pulseaudio is better for this card, ALSA/JACK also or pure ALSA. Disable tched and limit to plain 16/44100 and then it works. Keep in mind Creative has no real support there its a DIY contributor driver using windows binaries.

PCIe audio is dead, avoid using it. Sell your AE9 while it costs something... get a decent Topping or something similar, thank me later. Quit fooling around anyone... look into https://www.audiosciencereview.com, and not anywhere else, Amirm is the guy you should listen to, not any other reviewer dudes, including locals here. Any recent PCIe cards are fake pcie, those are with USB hub inside actually. Creative bridge and CMEDIA 8828? are the last ones... if you don't count fully Xilinx SPARTAN ASICs like Lynxes. Thats a decade or more already for those ICs.

It -was- fake PCIe, but not quite in the way you think for AE-7 and AE-9, at least. These had PCIe-to-PCI bridge chips, and it's apparently those chips and not really the audio hardware that are causing problems with that kernel module. Creative actually broke Linux support with a hardware revision on AE-7 by changing said bridge chip, but they did not officially support any Linux to begin with. A shame, really. The entire thing about discrete internal sound card is a shame. Those two cards are probably the swan song of high-quality internal sound cards.

On a not-quite-unrelated note about my motherboard's onboard audio, and anything else that uses ALC4080, they were kind-of fake onboard, since it's attached to an internal USB 2.0 link. It's also unable to drive a 300ohm headphone without audible artifacts on low end, despite supposedly featuring a headphone amplifier with impedance detection, which indicated correctly on the bundled software. I do have a FiiO for portable uses, and it is great on balanced.

 

[Deleted member 229121]

Perhaps it is time to get yourself a DAC / stack or a DAC/AMP combo as suggested.
No drivers required, and they don't take up any real estate on the board if you have other expansion cards (or a super thick GPU).

 

[SchumannFrequency]

I am getting sound quality issues, typically a pop at start of deep sounds, and when things get loud enough some distortion.

If you choose a motherboard with good audio (and the connectors you need) there is technically no reason to buy a sound card.
Without a dedicated sound card in OpenBSD I achieve sound that is similar (or better) than most windows10/11 users who do use a sound card.
OpenBSD demo with F&D F550X https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pb2xf5wOCeR7tj11QotK4q2cMxClyKlh/view
The above demo are (all in one) '69 EUR speakers' (price for newpurchase). I do not use a sound card to achieve this sound quality.