Source Upgrade needed, please help

[lhwidget]

Glad you like the card Landspeeder.

I'm sure there are others as good and some better, but after using and testing the analog output of a Xonar DX ($80), I had a feeling you might find the analog quality of the DX or any of the higher quality Xonars acceptable

[Landspeeder]

Thatguyyoulove: I looked a good long time at the STX+expansion. I do not need the headphone amps, and it appears that some people have been having issues in the same configuration I am using.

rdrowley: DTS, DD Live, and PCM all sound like bum. Highly 'metalic', random boughts of noise, and just general nastiness. I then tried PCM at every available output including 96 and 192.

ihwidget: the DX's analog output does indeed sound VERY good. I tried both it and the D2X. I stuck with the D2X as the analog feedback loop using RMAA shows nothing, whereas the DX had a little bit of noise (not enough to actually hear).

An aside: when playing fallout 3 using the onboard audio drivers the game would crash every 40 minutes or so. This weekend I had 2 LONG sit down sessions and noticed that 1) the game NEVER crashed using the Asus card and 2) the sound was PHENOMENAL!

[lhwidget]

ihwidget: the DX's analog output does indeed sound VERY good. I tried both it and the D2X. I stuck with the D2X as the analog feedback loop using RMAA shows nothing, whereas the DX had a little bit of noise (not enough to actually hear).

An aside: when playing fallout 3 using the onboard audio drivers the game would crash every 40 minutes or so. This weekend I had 2 LONG sit down sessions and noticed that 1) the game NEVER crashed using the Asus card and 2) the sound was PHENOMENAL!

That's nice to know, thanks for sharing your results.

About your aside, I've heard others mention that the Asus drivers are more reliable.

The only issue I've had is some odd audio behavoir when using the new Dharma pre-releases of XBMC (when stopping a playing audio file, the audio will stutter, like the last sample is being repeated).

Also, some are having trouble getting SoundEasy to work with the Asus drivers.

[Landspeeder]

That's good to know.

Fortunately I'm not currently using Soundeasy and I've found WMC + MyMovies to work great with Blu-ray ISOs. It's been awhile since I've seriously given XBMC a run, however when I last did it didn't like blu-ray ISOs too much. If that's since changed for the standalone version I'd give it another shot.