Auzen Prelude vs. Asus Xonar D2

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Got it, installed, working properly now. Some impressions. Control panel set to Music, AE2s angled slightly outward. NO Dolby effects enabled.

Rock - Led Zeppelin, Kashmir (Mothership, 2007. FLAC, lvl 8): Strong reverb effects on the intro, clear guitar work after "all will be revealed....." in the beginning.

Not really the best-mastered sound out there, but I'm very familiar with the song, so it's here. Nice emphasis on the vocals.

Psychedelic Rock - Pink Floyd, Coming Back To Life (Pulse, 1995. FLAC, lvl 8).

Awesome. One word. Intro guitar sounds VERY good, nice treble on it. Vocals are clear, dripping with emotion. Background vocals are quite good as well, blend in nicely with the music.

Hindi - Dhoom Tana, (OST Om Shanti Om 2007, FLAC lvl 8).

Excellent, again. The intro sounds very good; it overwhelmed my older X-Fi somewhat. Vocals are very good again.. Strong background vocals here as well, (backup singers going "dhoom tana dhoom tananana...), come out very well in the soundscape.

Dance –Dare, Gorillaz. (Demon Days, 2007. FLAC, lvl 8). Bouncy, happy song. This card makes you feel like bopping along with Noodle. Shaun Ryder’s back-up vocals sound awesome again.

Classical Entry Of the Gladiators, Fucik. (dunno the album, FLAC again, lvl8). Stumbles a bit here, complex, interwoven soundscape.. it's a little tough for me to resolve the instruments properly. Oh well.. it probably needs some time to warm up :)

Will update with gaming and movie-watching impressions later.
 
dhirukholia said:
^^ OT: Is there any _proven_ difference between _modern_ music players like
winamp/xmplay/foobar in terms of SQ?
Click to expand...

As long as you use the same options... no. However if the player supports ASIO and some form of SSRC resampling, then yes - it'll sound better.
 
Depends... until the clock upgrade I used to resample to 96kHz as my dac liked that more than anything else. Now after an upgrade to a TCXO clock, i get best results at 44.1 so resampling ain't needed.
 
Correct... this is XP. There's ASIO even in Vista. It all depends on the soundcard driver. However there's a dramatic drop in audio quality when using ASIO in Vista. Not sure why. Reason enough for me to stick to XP.
 
A small question to the experts here. If I use an ASUS Xonar D2X, say in my HTPC, and take the analog out and connect it to my receiver, can I or can I not use the Dolby Digital/DTS features offered by the card itself?

If not, then would not something like the Xonar Essence be a better buy as it seems to have the best audio quality? Does anybody know what is the card priced at?
 
balashome said:
A small question to the experts here. If I use an ASUS Xonar D2X, say in my HTPC, and take the analog out and connect it to my receiver, can I or can I not use the Dolby Digital/DTS features offered by the card itself?

If not, then would not something like the Xonar Essence be a better buy as it seems to have the best audio quality? Does anybody know what is the card priced at?
Click to expand...

You can, using the analogue outs.
 
TechHead said:
You can, using the analogue outs.
Click to expand...

I thought the Digital effects such as DTS or Dolby can only be activiated if we use Coaxial or Optical outs. Is that not correct? So you are saying that even if I use 7.1 analog outs from the soundcard to connect to my receiver, I can still use the DTS Interactive, Dolby Digital Live etc from the soundcard?
 
^^Dolby or DTS are not any effects. They are just an transmission standard for transmitting audio data over an SPDIF/Toslink channel. Both use an encoding scheme called AC3 which is the format in which the audio on dvds is stored as well.

Most playback software like kmplayer will decode AC3 and play it on analog outs. If you use a digital transmission medium such as SPDIF, the decoding is done by the receiver. That is the only difference.
 
Chaos said:
^^Dolby or DTS are not any effects. They are just an transmission standard for transmitting audio data over an SPDIF/Toslink channel. Both use an encoding scheme called AC3 which is the format in which the audio on dvds is stored as well.

Most playback software like kmplayer will decode AC3 and play it on analog outs. If you use a digital transmission medium such as SPDIF, the decoding is done by the receiver. That is the only difference.
Click to expand...

Ah, I love KMPlayer! That helps, Chaos. In your experience would you say that the best way to go would be to take an analog out from the Xonar D2x and connect it to my Marantz receiver? Rather than take the digital out? I am thinking that this sound card would have better sound quality than my Marantz SR4001. And that way I get to use the receiver as a sort of Pre/Power amplifier (if I take analog outs from the HTPC). What do you think?
 
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