ASUS DGX, DSX, & Xonar ROG Phoebus Sound Cards @ [H]

New drivers! Who wants to try them?

The bad: Over on the forums they are saying that they removed DTS Ultra II and Dolby Digital Live support from the drivers. Also the DRM in Windows 8.1 won't allow the card to work with music services and Netflix.

The good part about these drivers is supposed to be a new UI interface. I wonder if they left in the voice changer that allowed you to sound like a duck? That's all I did with it in the last months of it's existence in my PC.

http://www.asus.com/us/Sound_Cards/ROG_Xonar_Phoebus/HelpDesk_Download/
 
KG1O1 said:
cagey, UNIxonar custome drivers FTW .
:cool:
Click to expand...

Note that the following Asus cards won’t work and will not be supported with UNi Xonar Drivers: Asus Xonar U1, U3, U5, U7, EssenceOne, Essence STU, ROG Phoebus, ROG Thunderbolt, D-Kara.

So those won't work. :)
 
Disregard, driver works fine when you download the correct one. (DGX instead of DG)
 
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Finally a Win 10 Beta driver. Seems that turning on surround sound kills all of the sound according to the Asus forums. Someone also mentioned that since the drivers aren't WHQL things like Netflix are broken due to Windows DRM. You need to hack the drivers to make it work, but then some people are saying this lowers the sound quality. My Phoebus card is sitting in a cardboard box with my Q6600 in my closet. I bought a Monoprice DAC as I needed to be able to hear sound.

ROG Xonar Phoebus driver for Win10
http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=ROG+Xonar+Phoebus&p=21&s=3

Please be noted that this beta driver has the issues. It has been debugging and a fixed driver will be uploaded soon.
The use of features below is not recommended.
1.When sound effect is on, it can’t be played.
2.SPDIF out via DDL cannot be played.

Asus support thread where you can read about what is still broken.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?68137-Windows-10-Driver/page11
 
You know even Creative stepped up to the plate and released Win 10 drivers for their Titanium X-Fi Fatality cards but Asus releases a beta not working driver with such a slow roll out history that its laughable. I mean my last motherboard purchase was not Asus because of this lazy attitude and disrespect to their customer base. I still am using the stock Windows 10 drivers and it works just fine but I'm sure even Realtek would sound nicer...
 
Since Asus already released the brand new Strix cards, I think the OP should rename this thread.
 
I just found my Phoebus sitting in a box. Went to the Asus ROG website and checked the Win 10 driver thread. Seems that Asus removed all of the Dolby features from the card and are working on emulating them via software. They hired some outside company to write the driver and guess what? It's still in Beta.

Ha ha ha.
 
cageymaru said:
I just found my Phoebus sitting in a box. Went to the Asus ROG website and checked the Win 10 driver thread. Seems that Asus removed all of the Dolby features from the card and are working on emulating them via software. They hired some outside company to write the driver and guess what? It's still in Beta.

Ha ha ha.
Click to expand...

This sort of bullshit is why mine is sitting in a cabinet instead of getting used in a system.
 
Just ordered a DGX cause my onboard has completely screwed up. Should I be using the official drivers or the custom ones posted here?
 
Took the plunge and bought the Asus Strix Soar 7.1 Gaming Soundcard.

After installing the card, I immediately went onto the Asus website and downloaded the latest drivers from the site.

I configured my setup as 5.1 both in Windows 10 & the software. To my dismay, stereo sources doesn't get upmix to 5.1 at all, the sound only plays in two speakers out of the 5...

I have to manually turn on the upmix in the software which actually makes the sound a lot worse. Both my previous X-fi extreme music and onboard sound did a much better upmixing job than this. Did anyone else here experienced this problem?
 
pencea said:
Took the plunge and bought the Asus Strix Soar 7.1 Gaming Soundcard.

After installing the card, I immediately went onto the Asus website and downloaded the latest drivers from the site.

I configured my setup as 5.1 both in Windows 10 & the software. To my dismay, stereo sources doesn't get upmix to 5.1 at all, the sound only plays in two speakers out of the 5...

I have to manually turn on the upmix in the software which actually makes the sound a lot worse. Both my previous X-fi extreme music and onboard sound did a much better upmixing job than this. Did anyone else here experienced this problem?
Click to expand...

My Asus Phoebus had the same issue when I used it. There is no cure for Asus sound card software as the engineers developing it are tone deaf.
 
I have a XONAR DG 5.1 card and using Windows 10 OS

Right now I only have 2 speakers (left and right) and I just bought a Blue Octave SW6D Powered 6.5" Subwoofer. It's just a rebranded generic subwoofer.


The input takes a regular left-right audio in (see picture below).
s-l1600.jpg


I just plugged in 3.5 to RCA cable that looks the one from below picture onto the Xonar DG center/subwoofer output.
416VMPzzaEL.jpg


And for whatever reason, I couldn't get the subwoofer working at it at all.

Is the subwoofer cannot take the input from the Xonar DG?

Can someone please give me some advice?
 
Just a quick update. Seems to work slightly better now

On the Xonar DG user interface, I set the following:
- 5.1 speakers and have "Swap center/bass output" checked
- FlexBass enabled and LFE CrossOver Frequency set to 120 Hz

On Windows side, I set it to 5.1 Surround

On the subwoofer side, I have to turn the volume all the way to max and frequency set to lowest, which is 50Hz.

I do hear some bass but it is not very noticeable, any suggestion?

Also the subwoofer would only work when FlexBass is enabled. If I disable then it wouldn't work even the speaker testers work but when I play music, the subwoofer just wouldn't do anything.
 
beyonddc Make a new thread here in the audio section. Nobody reads this thread. :) Honestly I don't even know where the Asus sound card that I talked about in this thread is since my home got robbed.
 
Well my Creative Soundblaster ZX died on Thanksgiving so I had to do something as the onboard tin can sound was driving me crazy. Installed the Asus Phoebus with the newest driver. The newest driver is missing DTS and Dolby, but the simulated surround was actually pretty darn good! It used to be an abomination, but they really worked on it and got it into a much better place. I would have been fine with that, but I paid for Dolby and DTS....

So I decided to install the 2016 driver labeled 4.29 as it said that Dolby was included. I didn't bother to uninstall the other driver. Worked great! From here on out assume that I'm using the 2016 interface. Dolby seems to be working I guess and the settings in the DTS panel changed the sound when I enabled them. I didn't poke around a long time as I wanted to do some gaming, listen to music, and watch Twitch streams. Everything I threw at it seemed to work great until I got to Twitch. There is one channel on Twitch called "Katgunn". I had no sound even though the sound meters were going up and down. I poked around and couldn't figure it out. Then for the hell of it I enabled Dolby Atmos Headphone in the Windows Spatial Sounds menu. Instant sound! I was happy even though it wasn't exactly the way it was intended to be used. I guess Windows decided that it was the fix to default to as I no longer have to enable it to hear her streams.

I found the Flex Bass option and enabled that. This automatically redirects the bass to the subwoofer out on the card. So that got my Infinity 8's back to playing! The headphone was just as impressive as before as it easily powers my Monoprice M1060 with the planar drivers. The bass is so darn potent when properly powered. ;) They will make your ears rumble! I played some Battlefield One and the explosions scared the heebie-jeebies out of me. Gunshots were so crisp. Just excellent directional sounds in the game! I could easily determine where horses and people were approaching on the battlefield. I was truly impressed!

I wish that the card had launched in this manner. There would have been zero complaints from me other than the Twitch stream that wouldn't decode.

Anyway I figured I'd share my experience with the new drivers. If anyone still has one sitting around, you might want to give it another try as it is like night and day in regards to software support for the excellent hardware. The hardware is a helluva lot better than the Creative Soundblaster ZX as the headphone amp on the Phoebus is a beast!

Dolby Atmos for Headphones. This saved my ass for the stream that wouldn't decode.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/dolby-atmos-for-headphones/9mv4jdrvqtnv

Driver(s). I installed the 2017 driver and then installed the 2016 driver over it. Works for Windows Creator Update too!
https://www.asus.com/us/Sound-Cards/ROG_Xonar_Phoebus/HelpDesk_Download/

Tips.

Don't forget to change the impedance of the headphone amp to match what you own. I use the 2016 driver's interface as it has all the surround stuff like Dolby and DTS. Right click the headphone icon and choose Headphone Settings.

If you have a separate amp dedicated to your subwoofer like me, then enable Flex Bass by right clicking the speaker icon and choosing Flex Bass II. It works in stereo mode also! I have mine crossed over at 100Hz which is the factory setting. You wouldn't need this if you have a sub where the L+R speakers get their power from the sub unit. I have a separate NAD amp for my bookshelf speakers.

If your onboard sound has Creative drivers, they seem to mess with the Phoebus drivers. The Realtek drivers seem to be agreeable with the Phoebus. I had both enabled to switch back and forth to see the difference in sound quality.


Product specs

Audio Performance

Output Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-Weighted) (Front-out) :
118 dB
Output Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-Weighted) (Headphone-out) :
110 dB
Input Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-Weighted) :
118 dB
Output THD+N at 1kHz (Front-out) :
0.00039 %(-108 dB)
Output THD+N at 1kHz (Headphone-out) :
0.001 %(300 dB)
Input THD+N at 1kHz :
0.0003 %(-110 dB)
Frequency Response (-3dB, 24bit/96KHz input) :
10 Hz to 48 KHz
Output/Input Full-Scale Voltage :
Unbalanced Output : 2.2 Vrms (3 Vp-p)
Headphone : 7 Vrms (9.9 Vp-p)

Chipset

Audio Processor :C-Media CMI8888DHT High-Definition Sound Processor (Max. 96KHz/24bit)

Sample Rate and Resolution

Analog Playback Sample Rate and Resolution :
44.1K/48K/88.2K/96K/176.4K/192KHz @ 16bit/24bit
Analog Recording Sample Rate and Resolution :
44.1K/48K/88.2K/96K/176.4K/192KHz @ 16bit/24bit
S/PDIF Digital Output :
44.1K/48K/88.2K/96K/176.4K/192KHz @ 16bit/24bit
S/PDIF Digital Input :
44.1K/48K/88.2K/96K/176.4K/192KHz @ 16bit/24bit
ASIO 2.2 Driver Support :
44.1K/48K/88.2K/96K/176.4K/192KHz @ 16bit/24bit with very low latency

Special Features

Dolby® Technologies : Dolby® Home Theater v4
Smart Volume Normalizer™
Xear Surround™
Magic Voice™
FlexBass™
GX 3.0 Game Audio Engine

If anyone remembers the saga of Asus support for the breakout box for the Phoebus, it is still broken, but I figured out what was wrong and sorta fixed it. I cracked it open and twisted some wires inside the unit and it has been working like a champ every since. I could try and figure out which solder joint was improperly soldered, but to be honest I don't care as it is working. ;)

Raja@ASUS If you could pass along to the driver team that they did a good job I would appreciate it. Thanks!
 
Is the Strix RAID Pro the best sound card for audiophile ? Or is it the Essence STX II? And how's the sound for either 1 of these 2 compares to Creative's ZxR?
 
Happy Hopping Best to open a new thread and ask. Someone will surely answer you then. This thread is pretty much dead except for me. ;)

To anyone that still reads this thread, I reinstalled Windows 10 and got Flex Bass II to work. Then I got it to work in stereo also. So I'm a happy camper. Surround sound doesn't seem to like HTML 5 video or whatever the newest and greatest video standard is. For example I can't watch a single video on Twitter with the Surround sound enabled. I have to put it in stereo mode. So the fact that the Flex Bass II crossover works is GREAT!

Now watch another Windows update break it again. ;)
 
If you don't get signal to the subwoofer, first thing to do is check that the sub even works (by plugging it to a regular music RCA out). If you start getting output, then the problem is in your sound card settings - the subwoofer out channel is not active for some reason.

Whatever you do, start testing with the sub volume to the _minimum_ not to the max. You can blow out your cone if you suddenly get full output.

Remember that sometimes it's necessary to set your main speakers to 'small' setting in order to get subwoofer output.
 
B00nie said:
If you don't get signal to the subwoofer, first thing to do is check that the sub even works (by plugging it to a regular music RCA out). If you start getting output, then the problem is in your sound card settings - the subwoofer out channel is not active for some reason.

Whatever you do, start testing with the sub volume to the _minimum_ not to the max. You can blow out your cone if you suddenly get full output.

Remember that sometimes it's necessary to set your main speakers to 'small' setting in order to get subwoofer output.
Click to expand...

If I play HTML5 video then Windows will reroute the sub to the front speakers. The only way I can figure out how to get it back going out the sub out is to reinstall Windows. After reinstalling Windows, every works again. Then if I play the wrong video it breaks and I have to reinstall Windows again. Setting the speakers to small in Windows takes the bass out of the front drivers, but Windows will reroute the sub frequencies to them just heavily attenuated. Or maybe it just sends it to neverland. ;)

So I'm just going to save up for an active crossover. Been looking at the minidsp and Behringer units. Really want to keep the crossover below $200, but I might splurge a bit. I have separate amps for the front and sub. NAD 2600A on the fronts and a two channel Stellar Labs PXA-320 from when MCM Electronics went out of business. Also have a four channel Stellar Labs gathering dust in a drawer. So I was thinking of getting a 3 way stereo crossover at least as I have some drivers sitting around the house also. Real life kicking my butt right now, so the best I can do is to just ignore the sub not working or reinstall Windows again.
 
Just a little update about my usage of XONAR DG 5.1 card on Windows 10.

I am using a 2.1 speaker system. Windows doesn't have a 2.1 settings by default, it only has a 5.1 settings so what I did originally is to set my speaker settings to 5.1 and then disable the 3 channels so it ended up with 2.1 only. When that settings applied, when playing music, there's no sound playing from the subwoofer at all until I enabled the Flex Bass settings thru Asus sound card application.

I then realized that I only need to set my speaker settings to stereo and it would automatically send sound to my subwoofer without the Flex Bass enabled. This is my final solution for my case.
 
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