Asus Sonar DX or staying with onboard Sound? (1 Viewer)

[42andreas]

Hi Together,

our HTPC is working fine with the onBoard "Realtek High Definiton ALC892 Codec" sound of the Gigabyte GA-H67MA-UD2H-B3 on an active 5.1 Logitech THX box set (connected analog).
The sound is "o.k." for us, but I am thinking if a real sound card would/could improve the sound noticeable. For music playback (mainly 256KBit mp3) and DVDs.

Opinions? Suggestions?

Thanks in andvance
Andreas

 

[wagenveld]

Can you not connect those speakers digitally? Then it would not matter one bit what soundcard you have.

 

[42andreas]

No, only analog 5.1 connection is possible. Therefore my question....

 

[kiwijunglist]

Yes the Asus Sonar has a lot better DAC than 99% of onboard sound and will give a better quality analog output. You must also bear in mind that logitech speakers are quite low quality so you might only notice a small difference if any.

 

[42andreas]

Generic "all" Logitech speakers? I thought the were not as bad because THX certified,...

 

[kiwijunglist]

Still quite low end despite meeting a thx standard + logitech paying for the logo The Asus card is good value for money and not too expensive so it's not a big loss if you can't notice a difference [DOUBLEPOST=1359971963][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh I was thinking Asus Xonar DG, which I think would be a better match for your speakers, probably not worth getting DX

 

[edterbak]

Got a Xonar DX myself. In general im pretty happy with it due to the DTS live function.
Soundquality wise, I think the speakers used are the biggest influence normal people notice. Not talking about audiophiles..

One downside of Asus is they deliver crap drivers with the xonar. It is still not doing good "event mode driven" exclusive mode audio handling.
Audio channels are swopped and downmixing to stereo (I thought) is not working correctly.
If you use other drivers, the last two are solved. You can find them here:
http://brainbit.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/