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Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim

Michael Brown — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:00:00 -0600

A very necessary evil

There’s no good reason for the existence of Asus’s Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim soundcard, and yet it’s a godsend for those of us who want to hear the high-definition soundtracks on so many of the Hollywood movies released on Blu-ray disc. Blame Microsoft for the contradiction: No one would need a product like this if Vista provided a protected audio path.

After all, this card doesn’t decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks, nor does it enhance the audio or the video; it just passes the signals through to your A/V receiver. Using the included HDMI cable, the card takes the output from your videocard, re-encrypts the soundtrack so that no one can intercept the bit stream to make a bit-perfect copy, and outputs the encrypted audio and video to a second HDMI port. For those without HDMI, Asus also includes a DVI-to-HDMI cable.

The protected audio path requires a software component, too, so Asus bundles a copy of ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre with the Xonar. Not your favorite media player? Too bad, it’s the only one that’s compatible. For what it’s worth, we don’t have any complaints about the program. There’s nothing objectionable about its user interface; it can handle all the major codecs; and it supports BD-Live, so you can access whatever online content is linked to the movie you’re watching.

Your home-theater PC will downsample Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks unless it provides a protected audio path such as Asus's Xonar HDAV 1.3 cards do.

Asus actually has three cards in its Xonar line that are capable of pulling off this trick. The HDAV 1.3 Slim, however, is the only low-profile card in the lineup, and it’s available only in a PCI formfactor. That’s unfortunate considering that our current favorite home-theater PC platform, AMD’s Live Home Cinema, ditched that aging standard.

So we dragged our desktop rig, which is currently outfitted with an HIS Radeon HD 4770, into our home theater for this evaluation. We connected it to a Yamaha RX-V665 A/V receiver, which is in turn connected to a 42-inch ViewSonic N4285P LCD television. We used Klipsch Reference Series RF-35 loudspeakers. In terms of image quality, the PC clobbered the Samsung BD-P1600 stand-alone Blu-ray player we used for comparison. But the Xonar card doesn’t perform any video processing, so we can’t give it credit for that; more importantly, the PC didn’t sound any better than the Blu-ray player. Then again, the PC would be forced to down-sample the soundtrack without the Xonar card in the loop.

To get lossless Blu-ray audio out of your PC, you'll need to also play the movie using the included ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre player.

The HDAV 1.3 Slim has a front-panel output header that you can connect to your enclosure’s headphone jack, and a four-pin auxiliary input header you can connect to your TV tuner’s analog audio output. The mounting bracket has an S/PDIF output that can accommodate both coaxial and optical connectors (with an adapter), along with the aforementioned HDMI input and output. The card is compatible with the HDMI 1.3a specification and supports all three of its optional features: Deep Color (up to 48 bits per pixel, compared to HDMI 1.0’s 24-bit color), the xvYCC color space (which means the card uses the full range of values in an 8-bit space), and both lossless audio codecs.

Nonetheless, there’s really only one reason to buy an HDAV 1.3 Slim: So you can enjoy the splendor of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks while taking full advantage of your home-theater PC’s video capabilities.

Asus Xonar Essence STX

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:36:15 -0500

Headphone audiophiles rejoice

There are a few dirty secrets in the tech industry, and one of the best-guarded among them regards multichannel audio—everybody wants multichannel audio but almost no one actually runs the speakers to use it.

Sure, we all cheered when PC audio went from 4.1 to 5.1, and then from 6.1 to 7.1, but who actually runs that many satellites around his or her PC? That’s why Asus’s Xonar Essence STX is a soundcard that’s long overdue. Instead of pushing pointless multi-satellite specs, the Essence STX is aimed at folks who spend more money on a set of headphones than some people put out for an entire surround sound set.

Three out of five editors picked the Essence STX over other soundcards.

The card shares the same audio processor and PCI-E bridge chip as the budget Xonar DX card, but the similarities stop there. Asus polished the PCB and components for the stereo and headphone crowd. Headphoneophiles will be especially pleased with the isolated power sources for the headphone and line out. Also catering to the audiophile crowd are replaceable opamps to let you tune the “color” of the audio. It’s not the first time this has been done, but it’s a nice touch. The card features Burr-Brown digital-to-analog converters and is rated at 124dB signal-to-noise ratio out the headphone jack. In addition to the 1/4-inch headphone jack, a pair of RCA outputs, a 1/4-inch line out, and a combo optical/coax SPDIF round out the card’s options (Dolby Digital Live is supported in digital).

We performed close listening tests using Dolby lossless TrueHD and a set of Etymotic ER4 earphones and found the audio to be clean and crisp. We also did an A/B Pepsi Challenge between the Essence STX, an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty, and a laptop, using 24-bit/96KHz PCM audio, and the Essence STX was preferred by three of the five test subjects.

Though the Essence STX is not pushed as a gaming card, we did play a handful of games with the card and found the sound to be quite good. Although EAX5 is not supported, Microsoft Vista and sparse title support has mostly nullified the X-Fi API advantage today.

The upshot is that the Essence STX is a hell of a good card. Hardcore gamers will still want a real X-Fi, but for folks who are interested in getting the most from their earphones, the Essence STX is your choice.

Asus Xonar D2X

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:23:19 -0500

Much hay has been made of the incredible speed advantages PCI Express offers over PCI. Beyond GPUs, however, we haven’t found much worthy of occupying those slots. Asus hopes to change that with its Xonar D2X card—the first soundcard we’ve reviewed that makes use of the PCI Express interface. The D2X is basically a PCI-E version of the Xonar D2 (reviewed April 2008). In our review of the Xonar D2 we lamented the card’s lack of advanced EAX support—EAX 3 and above are proprietary to X-Fi-chipped soundcards, making those cards the obvious choice for gamers who want the best audio quality.

Or maybe not. With the Xonar D2X, Asus has done an end run to get a level of advanced EAX support in the card—but it’s not without controversy. The D2X instructs games that it has EAX 5, and the card’s drivers then shunt the EAX calls into its own effects engine. The results are far from perfect. Using EAX compliance tools, we found that the drivers didn’t support many EAX functions, such as reverb and filtering. Asus even admits to this. But the hack at least gives the card access to some functions that were previously locked up, such as support for additional audio streams in Battlefield 2—one of the handful of EAX games even available.

We’re more troubled by this card’s PCI Express support. Our D2X simply wouldn’t work on two different EVGA 680i SLI motherboards, and users have reported issues with nForce 790i boards as well. Asus tells us the problems are related to a BIOS issue that is being corrected by board vendors. Nvidia confirmed that it is working on a BIOS update that should be out by the time you read this. The D2X worked fine on Intel P35, AMD 790FX, and MSI nForce 750i boards.

The Xonar D2X uses the same audio codecs and offers the same I/O ports and Dolby Digital Live support as the D2. The D2X, however, requires a floppy connector for power.

In game frame rates, the PCI Xonar D2 was slightly faster than the D2X. We surmise this is due to superior drivers for the D2 or the PCI-to-PCI-E bridge chip on the D2X. Either way, the differences are minimal, and frankly, frame rates should no longer be the primary factor in soundcard decisions. Far more important is audio quality and gaming API support. In these areas, the Xonar D2X does well. The audio quality, rated at 118dB, is quite good, with no transient audio ghosts. The Auzentech X-Fi Prelude (reviewed April 2008) edges the D2X in our 24-bit/96KHz audio-file listening test, but honestly, both cards sound great and far exceed onboard audio.

So what would we buy? It depends. The advanced EAX in the Xonar is flawed, but it sorta works. If you want a full EAX 5 card, you have to go X-Fi. But that limits you to PCI, as the PCI-E version of the X-Fi lacks advanced EAX support. That makes the Xonar D2X the most feature-rich PCI-E card today, and that’s not a bad place to be—even if the EAX is faked.

Asus Xonar D2

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:16:09 -0600

Who’d have thunk it? Long considered a dead zone, soundcards are making a resurgence. Driven by an outcry for audio that doesn’t sound like a box of snap, crackle, pop every time you access your USB ports, manufacturers are releasing new soundcards that surpass the free audio that comes with your motherboard. This month, we test an Auzentech card that uses a Creative Labs chip and Asus’s new entry into PC audio.

Asus tries to hide the origins of the Xonar D2, but it’s the same CMedia Oxygen HD 8788 audio processor (or a slightly tailored one) that’s featured in several other vendors’ soundcards; still, the Xonar D2 features the best implementation of this proc. The Xonar also uses very good Brown Burr DACs to achieve a 118dB signal-to-noise ratio, which is slightly lower than the Prelude’s 123dB rating. Most people probably won’t hear the difference, but we still give the Prelude the edge over the Xonar card. One editor also felt that the Xonar D2 was a bit too bright with some jazz tracks. Despite this, both listeners gave the card high marks.

We love the card’s color-coded LEDs, which let you easily identify the green or red plug. It’s definitely easier than squinting to find tiny colored stickers. We were also impressed by the Xonar’s high frame rates in our gaming tests, despite its lack of a DSP.

Keep in mind, this card supports only EAX 2, while Creative has reached EAX 5. Of course, everything above EAX 2 is proprietary, so Asus couldn’t support EAX 5 without a lot of reverse engineering or a license. As you’d expect, game-audio rendering is quite good on the Xonar, but not as good as the Prelude with its full EAX support.

While the Xonar has an edge in home-theater use due to its real-time Dolby Digital encoding, the Prelude excels at gaming and general PC use.

Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:47:30 -0600

It used to be that if you wanted the latest Creative audio chip in your PC, there was only one way to get it: buy a Sound Blaster soundcard. That changes with Auzentech’s X-Fi Prelude 7.1 card.

The Prelude packs Creative’s top-end X-Fi DSP along with 64MB of XRAM. Auzentech doesn’t stop with the vaunted X-Fi; the card also sports higher-spec’d digital audio converters and includes both SPDIF and optical I/O ports. An added bonus is the inclusion of a standard AC97 header that allows you to plug in your case’s front-panel jack. Finally!

In a listening test using 24-bit/96kHz audio samples, two editors compared the Prelude to Asus’s Xonar D2 and both preferred Auzentech’s card.

In gaming, the X-Fi Prelude represented well. Its scores were in line with a Creative X-Fi’s, albeit slightly slower. What’s really important, though, is the Prelude’s full support for all of Creative’s proprietary EAX technologies.

Creative Xmod

Michael Brown — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:14:41 -0500

Being audio purists, we typically piss on products that sit in the midst of an audio stream and manipulate what the artist intended to create. But when listening to music played through Creative’s X-Fi soundcards, we’ve increasingly found ourselves turning on the 24-bit Crystalizer—and liking it!

Creative’s 24-bit Crystalizer converts an incoming audio signal to 24-bit resolution with a sampling rate of 96kHz. This process alone doesn’t improve audio quality—Creative can’t conjure something out of nothing—but the algorithm employed during this near-real-time remastering does make the original recording sound remarkably better: To our ears, instruments and vocals sound more vibrant, punchier, and more “live” when the 24-bit Crystalizer is engaged.

But we listen to music on everything from digital music players to CD players to old-fashioned turntables, and it’s not always practical to pipe these signals through a PC’s soundcard. So we’re pleased to report that Creative has transplanted the 24-bit Crystalizer (along with a few other features) into this stand-alone device, which it has dubbed the Xmod.

So why aren’t we giving the Xmod a Kick Ass award? If you’re using it with a desktop PC or a laptop, the device acts as a USB audio device with an external DAC and draws power over a USB cable. If that PC already has an X-Fi soundcard, the Xmod is redundant. But our real complaint is that the Xmod requires an AC adapter when used with anything other than a PC, and Creative expects you to pay an extra 30 clams for one. We really dig the Xmod, but it would fry our snarlies to pay 40 percent on top of its base cost to use it with an iPod or a Zen.

We can also do without Creative’s annoying CMSS-3D Virtual and CMSS-3D Headphone effects. These are designed to widen the stereo field into surround sound, but when we listened to Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” it sounded as though the vocal legend was being flushed down a toilet. Fortunately, you can easily dial down or entirely defeat the CMSS-3D algorithms (same goes for the 24-bit Crystallizer).

Creative Labs X-Fi Xtremegamer Fatal1ty Pro

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:20:35 -0500

If you read our original review of the X-Fi way back in November 2005, you already know about this card. Back then, Creative packaged this exact same card with a drive bay and remote and charged an impossible to justify $280 for the X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS soundcard.

We ended up recommending its cheaper sibling, the X-Fi XtremeMusic instead.

Fast-forward a year and a half, ditch the remote and drive bay, and you’ve got the XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series priced at $130 less than the original. But does the X-Fi age like a fine wine or a punch-drunk palooka? For Creative, it’s pure vino!

Unlike the other two boards we tested here, the X-Fi continues to use a true DSP with “10,000 MIPS of power.” We don’t know how true that 10K figure is, but in our tests, the X-Fi remains the boss, especially when compared to the CMI8788, which is nothing more than a glorified I/O chip. In FEAR with graphics options cranked down and audio options cranked up to emphasize soundcard performance, the X-Fi led by 10 percent across the board. However, if C-Media ever releases multithreaded audio drivers, the day of the DSP will likely fade.

Of course, a good soundcard isn’t just about frame rates. In close listening using reference-quality earphones, two Maximum PC editors favored the X-Fi’s bottom-end push while listening to a variety of 24-bit audio.

We also give the edge in gaming fidelity to the X-Fi, as the subtle audio cues in games (in particular, Battlefield 2) stood out with this card. This may be due in part to the developer-relations money Creative spends to help developers utilize its technology. Most top games today support Creative’s OpenAL initiative, which is the only way to get hardware-accelerated positional audio in Microsoft Vista.

Although we think the X-Fi is the best of the cards tested here for general PC use, the real-time Dolby Digital encoding of the two other cards and optical SPDIF make them far better suited for home theater use. We must also note that the now-defunct XtremeMusic version of this card can still be found and is a better value. But for gamers, the X-Fi is the best choice.

Razer Barracuda AC-1

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:42:11 -0500

As we said with the Auzentech, we’re impressed when companies go above and beyond reference designs for products. Razer’s Barracuda AC-1 is such a product. Though it uses the same C-Media Oxygen HD chip as the X-Meridian, you wouldn’t think the two cards were related.

The AC-1 gives you a proprietary DVI-like connector that you can directly connect to the Razer’s HP-1 headset (or your standard speakers using the included dongle). And like the X-Meridian, the AC-1 features dual optical ports, but this card is definitely intended for gaming. And that’s where it gets interesting. The CMI8788 isn’t a DSP, like the X-Fi, it’s more of a super I/O chip that passes data from the PCI bus to the various components on the AC-1 at a very efficient clip.

Most of the filtering for 3D effects, including Dolby and other processor-intensive chores, is done on the computer’s CPU. In FEAR, for example, the X-Fi’s DSP gives it about a 10 percent frame-rate advantage over the other cards in analog mode. (Dolby Digital encoding adds even more overhead to the Razer card, but the X-Fi is incapable of real-time DD5.1 encoding.)

We’ve been wondering if our stance against host-based audio was outdated in the age of multicore CPUs, but a 10 percent hit is still painful—it’s like dropping the CPU down a rung or two.

Of course, the DSP doesn’t always work against the AC-1. In 3DMark03, which uses simpler audio routines, the AC-1 performs the same as or better than the X-Fi. Performance could also improve if the drivers for the AC-1 were multithreaded.

In gaming fidelity, the AC-1 fared well in our tests, with one exception. In Battlefield 2, we noticed dropouts in audio. The same happened with the X-Meridian, so we suspect it’s a problem with the chipset or its drivers that is induced by the tremendous amount of audio BF2 throws at you.

Where does that leave the AC-1? At $200, it’s pretty expensive. In fact, the AC-1 costs more than the X-Fi with its fancy schmancy (and so far useless) onboard X-RAM. It doesn’t help that the AC-1 lacks OpenAL support and sounds inferior to the Creative card in many of the games we tested.