# Xonar DGX vs higher end cards



## livngston

Is there a significant difference in features between the entry level Xonar cards like the DGX vs the higher end cards like the Xonar Essence STX or the Creative Xi-Fi Titanium HD if all you care about it sound through headphones?  
   
  While I do have an analog output to a receiver to power some stereo speakers, I predominately use my sound card for gaming and listening to music via headphones (will be purchasing Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80).  So I don't necessarily need optical outputs/inputs nor do I need Dolby Live functionality.  
   
  I care about music sound quality and surround virtualization.  Also I would like the auto-detect to work on the front panel so I can jack in the headphones without switching each time in the software.  I understand that is a problem with some of the cards.
   
  I am willing to spring for the Titanium or the Essence if it would qualitatively make a difference in headphone listening.  But if not, then I would just go for the DGX.


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## PurpleAngel

Quote: 





livngston said:


> Is there a significant difference in features between the entry level Xonar cards like the DGX vs the higher end cards like the Xonar Essence STX or the Creative Xi-Fi Titanium HD if all you care about it sound through headphones?
> 
> While I do have an analog output to a receiver to power some stereo speakers, I predominately use my sound card for gaming and listening to music via headphones (will be purchasing Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80).  So I don't necessarily need optical outputs/inputs nor do I need Dolby Live functionality.
> 
> ...


 
  Asus Xonar sound cards to not auto detect headphones, everything is manual switched thru the Xonar control panel.
  The Creative TiHD (Titanium HD) does automatically switch to headphones when headphones are plugged in.
  I'm not sure how well the TiHD's front panel headphone jack powers headphones (compared to the back panel headphone jack)?
  With the Xonar sound cards, the front panel headphone jack is just as equally powered as the back panel headphone jack.
  The Essence STX/ST and TiHD both come with better DAC(s) then the DGX.
  I do think the DGX is a great value for it's price.


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## livngston

For the DGX, at least according to Asus on the product info webpage, it supposedly has auto-detect of the front panel jack.  Not sure if anyone got that feature to work or not.  I know it is only advertised on the DGX and not the DX or Essence.
   
  What makes the DAC better on the Essence/Titanium?  The 192K versus 96K sampling rate?


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## cel4145

The DGX is a budget sound card. Not just the DAC, but the electronics in the whole analog audio path for headphone output will be better in the Essence and Titanium.


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## germanium

Quote: 





livngston said:


> For the DGX, at least according to Asus on the product info webpage, it supposedly has auto-detect of the front panel jack.  Not sure if anyone got that feature to work or not.  I know it is only advertised on the DGX and not the DX or Essence.
> 
> What makes the DAC better on the Essence/Titanium?  The 192K versus 96K sampling rate?


 
   Both the TiHD & the Essense cards support 24bit /192KHz sample DAC output but the TiHD only supports 24bit /96KHz recording & the Essense STX/ST cards support 24bit/192KHz recording. I wouldn't worry too much about the higher recording sample rate though as it actually comes at the expense of performance & some aliasing distortion as it is not very well implimented on the Essense cards & it is best to just use the 24bit/96KHz recording option on these cards anyway. Measured  output above 48KHz reproduced freuency showed only aliasing products.


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## PurpleAngel

Quote: 





livngston said:


> For the DGX, at least according to Asus on the product info webpage, it supposedly has auto-detect of the front panel jack.  Not sure if anyone got that feature to work or not.  I know it is only advertised on the DGX and not the DX or Essence.
> 
> What makes the DAC better on the Essence/Titanium?  The 192K versus 96K sampling rate?


 
  Just double checked, the Xonar DGX & DSX have auto sensing on the front panel headphone jack.
  But I think only those two models have auto sensing.


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## livngston

Is there a huge difference in sound between the 192 KHz vs 96 KHz for playback?  What about the surround virtualization?  Do the TiHD or the Essence STX offer any advantages over the DGX for surround virtualization?


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## stv014

Quote: 





livngston said:


> Is there a huge difference in sound between the 192 KHz vs 96 KHz for playback?


 
   
  Not really, especially if you do not even have music recorded at 192 kHz. The difference is that the higher quality cards can also play the lower sample rates better. How much of that is audible, or whether it is worth the extra price, that can be debated. At least the Essence STX does have a better headphone amplifier, though (not sure about the Titanium HD).


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## livngston

Thanks.  I am on the fence.  I am considering purchasing either the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (80 ohm) or the new Beyerdynamic Custom One (16 ohm).  The new Beyers would not even require a headphone amp, and I know the DT770 will need one, but the 80 ohm model should be fine with even the DGX amp.  
   
  As most of my music is in MP3 format (from Amazon) I doubt they have many encoded at 192 Khz.  I predominately will use the card for gaming over music.  So I am really curious if the Essence or TiHD offer any advantages in virtualization.  I understand EAX is emulated in Windows 7, so not sure if the TiHD offers any advantage there?


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## PurpleAngel

Quote: 





livngston said:


> Thanks.  I am on the fence.  I am considering purchasing either the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (80 ohm) or the new Beyerdynamic Custom One (16 ohm).  The new Beyers would not even require a headphone amp, and I know the DT770 will need one, but the 80 ohm model should be fine with even the DGX amp.
> 
> As most of my music is in MP3 format (from Amazon) I doubt they have many encoded at 192 Khz.  I predominately will use the card for gaming over music.  So I am really curious if the Essence or TiHD offer any advantages in virtualization.  I understand EAX is emulated in Windows 7, so not sure if the TiHD offers any advantage there?


 
  I would recommend not using 16-Ohm headphones (Beyer Custom One) plugged directly into sound cards, sound cards have a high impedance (at the headphone jack).
  So you would need to get an add-on external headphone amplifier with a low impedance, like the O2 (Objective 2) headphone amplifier, new $155.
  The DT770 Pro 80-Ohm would be better for plugging straight to the Essence or TiHD (or DGX).
   
  I'm far from an EAX expert, But I'm fairly sure Windows 7 does not emulate EAX, in any way.


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## cel4145

Quote: 





livngston said:


> Is there a huge difference in sound between the 192 KHz vs 96 KHz for playback?


 
   
  One question you should be asking is what source media are you going to use that is encoded that way? Commercial CDs are 16bit/44.1khz, and there's no benefit in upsampling them. SACDs (expensive) and blu-ray (multichannel) support higher higher bit and sampling rates. There are some downloadable flacs for purchase that use higher sampling rates, but they are more expensive.


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## Newt182

Quote: 





purpleangel said:


> Just double checked, the Xonar DGX & DSX have auto sensing on the front panel headphone jack.
> But I think only those two models have auto sensing.


 

 So does the ROG Xonar Phoebus


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## PurpleAngel

Quote: 





newt182 said:


> So does the ROG Xonar Phoebus


 
  Check Asus's Phoebus website, nothing on auto sensing for the Phoebus.


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## jasonf

I just got the Beyer dt770 80 ohms and just got a cheap xonar DG soundcard for 20 bucks on newegg (just looked it is 16 bucks). Unlike the DGX the DG has a dedicated headphone amp. 
   
  This is my first real jump into hi-fi and it has been great. You will for sure want to find some higher quality source files - it will really make a difference.


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## PurpleAngel

Quote: 





jasonf said:


> I just got the Beyer dt770 80 ohms and just got a cheap xonar DG soundcard for 20 bucks on newegg (just looked it is 16 bucks). Unlike the DGX the DG has a dedicated headphone amp.
> 
> This is my first real jump into hi-fi and it has been great. You will for sure want to find some higher quality source files - it will really make a difference.


 
  Try the "Unified Xonar Driver" from the website Brainbit.
  I believe the Xonar DGX does come with the same headphone amp. as the DG.


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## preferedu

only difference between the Xonar DG and DGX  electrically  is the PCI  bridge chip and of course the connection .
  it was cheaper to do  that than desighn a whole new pcie card . Sound cards in that price range are an endangered species 
  with on board solutions getting better.


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## NamelessPFG

Quote: 





livngston said:


> Thanks.  I am on the fence.  I am considering purchasing either the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (80 ohm) or the new Beyerdynamic Custom One (16 ohm).  The new Beyers would not even require a headphone amp, and I know the DT770 will need one, but the 80 ohm model should be fine with even the DGX amp.
> 
> As most of my music is in MP3 format (from Amazon) I doubt they have many encoded at 192 Khz.  I predominately will use the card for gaming over music.  So I am really curious if the Essence or TiHD offer any advantages in virtualization.  I understand EAX is emulated in Windows 7, so not sure if the TiHD offers any advantage there?


 
   
  It still does, for the games that use it. Let me clarify a few things:
   
  -The new Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 sound stack removed DirectSound3D support. Most older games that used EAX did so through DS3D. It is NOT emulated in any way; your DS3D games are reduced to stereo, maybe even mono, with no reverb/chorus/occlusion/etc. effects.
  -OpenAL remains unaffected. This is why ALchemy, DS3DGX, 3DSoundBack, etc. can even work in the first place: they wrap the old DS3D calls to OAL, thus restoring hardware sound acceleration and EAX. Obviously, you don't need to use it on games that are OpenAL-native to begin with (Battlefield 2 being a great example).
  -Only the X-Fi DSP handles EAX 3/4/5 natively due to Creative refusing to license them out like they did with EAX 1/2.
  -Asus claims to emulate the higher versions with DS3DGX, but I remain unsure how well it holds up to the real deal in terms of compatibility and quality.
  -For that matter, Creative's own software OpenAL renderer that claims to support up to EAX 5, used with the X-Fi MB(2) software packages, USB "X-Fi" devices, Recon3D cards, and probably their upcoming Z-series cards too, has issues that even the hardware X-Fi OpenAL renderer doesn't. Not just EAX 5, but even basic EAX 1/2-era games.
  -EAX aside, the way DirectSound3D and OpenAL work allows CMSS-3D Headphone to create a proper 3D binaural mix. Dolby Headphone is incapable of leveraging this extra positional data, instead downmixing it to 5.1/7.1 before it does its work. Needless to say, this gives CMSS-3D Headphone a substantial imaging advantage. Kind of like having an aural wallhack, as I say all the time.
   
  For gaming, I'd still advise going with the X-Fi Titanium HD, if you can afford it...unless you really want that FiiO E9-class amp on the Essence STX and you only play games that use XAudio2 + X3DAudio and FMOD Ex (for which the X-Fi DSP brings no benefit because it's not being used by the game engine).


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## Newt182

Quote: 





purpleangel said:


> Check Asus's Phoebus website, nothing on auto sensing for the Phoebus.


 
   

 Late reply but I'm posting because I have just got my Phoebus. I didn't reply before as I wasn't sure where I had read that the card has auto-sensing. Anyway, got my card and I can confirm that when you plug in headphones audio is automatically switched from the speakers to the headphones, and when unplugged audio is switched back to the speakers. You can manually select the output in the control panel too.


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## jasonf

cool, thanks for that - didn't know about those drivers


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## Ptruslow

yeah, he is correct, the only difference is one little PLX chip on the board, nothing else changes between the DG and DGX


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## tan1415

purpleangel said:


> I would recommend not using 16-Ohm headphones (Beyer Custom One) plugged directly into sound cards, sound cards have a high impedance (at the headphone jack).
> So you would need to get an add-on external headphone amplifier with a low impedance, like the O2 (Objective 2) headphone amplifier, new $155.
> The DT770 Pro 80-Ohm would be better for plugging straight to the Essence or TiHD (or DGX).
> 
> I'm far from an EAX expert, But I'm fairly sure Windows 7 does not emulate EAX, in any way.


 
 Hi,
  
 What do you mean? Will it damge the headphone?
  
 Another question...my pc has a front jack. Will thesound card be able to power it thru the frpont jacks?
  
 How is the onboard amp?
 The DS has wolfson dac ,w hile the DGX has a cirrus logic  one


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## romeozdistress

tan1415 said:


> Hi,
> 
> What do you mean? Will it damge the headphone?
> 
> ...


 
 you just have to plug the jack cable into the soundcard itself and you can use your front jack. i always have to use the xonar audio center to switch it though. it makes a huge difference over onboard not sure if there is actually a huge difference between this and say $100 card for playing music.


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## BigTerminator

There is a HUGE difference. I went from onbaord to a Xonar Essence ST and it made my Logitech Z3's shine like no other. Then when I got proper studio monitors my listening experience jumped incredibly. Invest once and the card will last forever as a great sounding card.


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## 368986

romeozdistress said:


> you just have to plug the jack cable into the soundcard itself and you can use your front jack. i always have to use the xonar audio center to switch it though. it makes a huge difference over onboard not sure if there is actually a huge difference between this and say $100 card for playing music.


 
 You should be careful using your front jack. Unless you have a higher end case most of the connection cables to the front jack are pretty lousy.


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## kraken2109

shlemik said:


> You should be careful using your front jack. Unless you have a higher end case most of the connection cables to the front jack are pretty lousy.


 
 Agreed, I have the Xonar DG and Antec 900 case and both headphone and mic front panel are noisy.


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## evolucian911

Late Reply but i still own thte dgx and its great for the price. thinking of upgrading but not sure if i should get the creative xfi titanum..( long ago i owned a platinum i thik the first one) or the stx.. even better if i can get something cheaper than stx but better than dgx with headphone amp. most of the cards i see im still unsure if they "realy" have built in amps. my old jvc dx3 sounds hungry on the dgx.


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