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GCTonyHawk7
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2007
- Messages
- 179
I will start by explaining my previous audio setup. Before a few days ago, I was using my onboard soundcard. This had all the ports I needed and was working great. I had my great 5.1 speakers hooked up, my headphones and their amp hooked up, and all was fine. I got to thinking though, $600 worth of audio listening equipment and I was using the onboard soundcard? Kinda lame I would say.
Come June 5th, Woot.com had a great sale of the Razer Barracuda AC-1. ($50, and $5 shipping) Through a long string of fiasco it finally showed up on my doorstep on June 24th. I completely disabled my onboard, plugged everything in, installed the drivers, was going good. Then the shortcomings began. We will put them into a great list for you.
- Problem 1: Inputs on AC-1 are complete shit
The Razer AC-1 (at least mine) seems to have completely shitty inputs. It has the S/PDIF input which I am unable to use, and then the Line-in and Mic jacks. I use my Wii with my computer and route the audio through the line-in port. So, naturally, this is where I plugged it in at first. I started up my Wii and noticed a speratic popping sound. This kind of faded in and out, and I got over it. I started to play Brawl and noticed it was completely clipping random parts of the audio. I talked to my friend which is in to this sort of stuff, and he said that might be the Wii's fault. So, since I don't use the microphone, I could use that as another input. I tried that and that distorting goes away, but the popping/clicking sound was still there. On top of that, a new distortion issue arose where it would randomly get really distorted about once a minute. After playing with this for about 2 hours, I straight up concluded that the input system on the Razer AC-1 is complete shit.
- Problem 2: No ability to map ports to what you want (Mic is always a Mic, Rear Speakers are always Rear speakers)
On my onboard card, I had my speakers hooked up using three analog connections, and then also was outputting my headphones over the Mic jack. (When plugging stuff in, I was able to map any port on the onboard card to any purpose.) This was great, and made me happy. The $200 retailing soundcard can not do this. It maps the ports to certain functions and that is that. Don't like it, too bad. To hell if I am going to plug in my headphones every time I use them.
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It was at this point that I started to rethink all this. Thinking about solutions. Stuff that used to work on my probably $5 audio card suddenly didn't work on my new premium audio device. So, I figured, why not use the strengths of both cards. Windows surprisingly has no issue with this.
After much time and effort, I did map out a working and functional dual soundcard setup. I used the onboard to handle all the inputs, I used the optical output on the Razer AC-1 to go to my speakers, and the analog output on he AC-1 to go to my headphones (which shockingly, do work at the same time if you don't mess with settings too much) It all sounds simple, but it really isn't. I actually mapped out a diagram of all of this in this chart:
Click to see diagram
This all works, but has a good number of cons. For one, unlike that diagram shows, splitters don't work the other way as combiners. Therefore, I have no way to use my Wii with my headphones; annoyance. Now we get into more flaws of the AC-1:
----------------------------------------------------------
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- Problem 3: Stereo S/PDIF and no Dolby/DTS when also using Analog output as well
When outputting something over the S/PDIF, you have a number of ways to do this. You can output using Dolby, DTS, or just plain digital data. I found that using DTS or Dolby made it so the analog port just stopped working; no reason, it just doesn't work. (I am using this analog to go to my headphones) So, I am limited to using the Digital 96KHz audio, which is fine. Although, for some reason, the AC-1 wants that to always be stereo. no matter what I try, it is impossible to get 5.1 audio to go over that connection. And yes, I know a lot of the directsound output settings and configuring the media players, and so on. It just outputs over stereo.
- Problem 4: Crappy Analog sound when in conjunction with optical
This is a brand new one, but for some reason there is an odd faint buzz/chripy sound on the left side of the analog output of the AC-1. (My headphones) Not sure why, there just is. It gets louder and software with the hardware volume control. Annoying as shit.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
So now I am sitting here and thinking to myself. The inputs of the AC-1 suck. The S/PDIF of the AC-1 suck. The analog outputs of the AC-1 suck. The driver software sucks. So, what is good about the card? One thing, sound quality. The sound is miles better than my onboard, and it is the only reason I have gone through all this. Music, movies, games, they all sound so amazing when routing through this sound card. All my music seems to have new definition.
So I am now to a decision. Should I send it back on RMA and get another one to see if it is better? Should I just return it and move on? Should I get a different sound card? Are there solutions? Hopefully someone can give some input.
Thanks for reading.
Come June 5th, Woot.com had a great sale of the Razer Barracuda AC-1. ($50, and $5 shipping) Through a long string of fiasco it finally showed up on my doorstep on June 24th. I completely disabled my onboard, plugged everything in, installed the drivers, was going good. Then the shortcomings began. We will put them into a great list for you.
- Problem 1: Inputs on AC-1 are complete shit
The Razer AC-1 (at least mine) seems to have completely shitty inputs. It has the S/PDIF input which I am unable to use, and then the Line-in and Mic jacks. I use my Wii with my computer and route the audio through the line-in port. So, naturally, this is where I plugged it in at first. I started up my Wii and noticed a speratic popping sound. This kind of faded in and out, and I got over it. I started to play Brawl and noticed it was completely clipping random parts of the audio. I talked to my friend which is in to this sort of stuff, and he said that might be the Wii's fault. So, since I don't use the microphone, I could use that as another input. I tried that and that distorting goes away, but the popping/clicking sound was still there. On top of that, a new distortion issue arose where it would randomly get really distorted about once a minute. After playing with this for about 2 hours, I straight up concluded that the input system on the Razer AC-1 is complete shit.
- Problem 2: No ability to map ports to what you want (Mic is always a Mic, Rear Speakers are always Rear speakers)
On my onboard card, I had my speakers hooked up using three analog connections, and then also was outputting my headphones over the Mic jack. (When plugging stuff in, I was able to map any port on the onboard card to any purpose.) This was great, and made me happy. The $200 retailing soundcard can not do this. It maps the ports to certain functions and that is that. Don't like it, too bad. To hell if I am going to plug in my headphones every time I use them.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
It was at this point that I started to rethink all this. Thinking about solutions. Stuff that used to work on my probably $5 audio card suddenly didn't work on my new premium audio device. So, I figured, why not use the strengths of both cards. Windows surprisingly has no issue with this.
After much time and effort, I did map out a working and functional dual soundcard setup. I used the onboard to handle all the inputs, I used the optical output on the Razer AC-1 to go to my speakers, and the analog output on he AC-1 to go to my headphones (which shockingly, do work at the same time if you don't mess with settings too much) It all sounds simple, but it really isn't. I actually mapped out a diagram of all of this in this chart:
Click to see diagram
This all works, but has a good number of cons. For one, unlike that diagram shows, splitters don't work the other way as combiners. Therefore, I have no way to use my Wii with my headphones; annoyance. Now we get into more flaws of the AC-1:
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
- Problem 3: Stereo S/PDIF and no Dolby/DTS when also using Analog output as well
When outputting something over the S/PDIF, you have a number of ways to do this. You can output using Dolby, DTS, or just plain digital data. I found that using DTS or Dolby made it so the analog port just stopped working; no reason, it just doesn't work. (I am using this analog to go to my headphones) So, I am limited to using the Digital 96KHz audio, which is fine. Although, for some reason, the AC-1 wants that to always be stereo. no matter what I try, it is impossible to get 5.1 audio to go over that connection. And yes, I know a lot of the directsound output settings and configuring the media players, and so on. It just outputs over stereo.
- Problem 4: Crappy Analog sound when in conjunction with optical
This is a brand new one, but for some reason there is an odd faint buzz/chripy sound on the left side of the analog output of the AC-1. (My headphones) Not sure why, there just is. It gets louder and software with the hardware volume control. Annoying as shit.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
So now I am sitting here and thinking to myself. The inputs of the AC-1 suck. The S/PDIF of the AC-1 suck. The analog outputs of the AC-1 suck. The driver software sucks. So, what is good about the card? One thing, sound quality. The sound is miles better than my onboard, and it is the only reason I have gone through all this. Music, movies, games, they all sound so amazing when routing through this sound card. All my music seems to have new definition.
So I am now to a decision. Should I send it back on RMA and get another one to see if it is better? Should I just return it and move on? Should I get a different sound card? Are there solutions? Hopefully someone can give some input.
Thanks for reading.