Asus Xonar D2X

N

Neutrino

Gawd
Joined
Nov 10, 2005
Messages
602
Well it looks like we are about to receive some more much needed competition in the audiocard industry.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38230

I know the link its from the Inquirer but they do have pictures plus since this will be unveiled at CeBit we'll have further details and confirmation soon.

In particular I love this feature:
What makes this sound card a bit special is the presence of a secondary music processor, which alows legal "ripping" of music you've bought onto regular MP3, WMAs and so on. The trick is called Analogue Loopback Transformation, or in technical terms, the redirection of outputs from a physical output to secondary audio processor which will then record the file in the format you want.
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Although I'm sure RIAA will scream bloody murder about it since it exploits the analog hole and bypasses the DRM infection. I see it as a great feature allowing people that bought legal music online exert their Fair Use rights and transfer their music on their medium of choice.
 
Awesome. Waiting to hear news on price and performance.
I swore after purchasing an X-Fi with an NF4 board I'd never buy another Creative product again.
 
The only thing interesting or innovate I see on the Asus board is the fact that it uses the PCIe x1 bus. The record from analog output option has been around since at least 1995. I think pricing will be the only thing to determine its success.
 
PCMusicGuy said:
The only thing interesting or innovate I see on the Asus board is the fact that it uses the PCIe x1 bus. The record from analog output option has been around since at least 1995. I think pricing will be the only thing to determine its success.
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Yeah, but this is internal recording. Basically all you have to do is tell the software to convert the files and it'll do that for you. You wont need' to capture, edit, rename and tag all the files you convert. With it internal it will do all of this for you supposedly.
 
I'll be totally sold on it as long as it comes with front panel audio connectors. More cards need this!
 
Neutrino said:
I see it as a great feature allowing people that bought legal music online exert their Fair Use rights and transfer their music on their medium of choice.
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Wait a minute here. Are you, or are you not, aware of copy protection schemes and limited usability/transferability of purchased music when you purchase online?

How can one tout the "Fair Use" horn when you knowingly agree that the content that you're purchasing does not in any way, shape or form fall under that umbrella? Upon launching the iTunes store for the first time, for example, you agree to the following (and to much more):
iTunes Store TOS said:
b. Use of Products. You acknowledge that Products contain security technology that limits your usage of Products to the following Usage Rules, and you agree to use Products in compliance with such Usage Rules...You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
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One might question the legal validity of a digitally signed document, but that's a separate issue. I doubt this card would meet the criteria for an acceptable "digital recording device" under the Audio Home Recording Act, either.

To put it bluntly, if Asus markets this card as having the capability to subdue copy protection, they're going to get the hammer. If they don't market it specifically that way, I see no legal ground for an RIAA suit.
 
With heatsink... It would be very interesting if the card has a hardware acceleration. If your X-Fi has the SCP issue and you go to Creative for a support, they might blame the motherboard. Then you go to Asus for the support and guess what, you'll end up with a new sound card Lol.
 
phide said:
Wait a minute here. Are you, or are you not, aware of copy protection schemes and limited usability/transferability of purchased music when you purchase online?

How can one tout the "Fair Use" horn when you knowingly agree that the content that you're purchasing does not in any way, shape or form fall under that umbrella? Upon launching the iTunes store for the first time, for example, you agree to the following (and to much more):

One might question the legal validity of a digitally signed document, but that's a separate issue. I doubt this card would meet the criteria for an acceptable "digital recording device" under the Audio Home Recording Act, either.

To put it bluntly, if Asus markets this card as having the capability to subdue copy protection, they're going to get the hammer. If they don't market it specifically that way, I see no legal ground for an RIAA suit.
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well you might want to tell Steve Jobs that because he agrees with me (check out his recent open letter). Last time i checked it also iTunes makes it easy to back up your iTunes collection by burning the music you DL from then then ripping it as MP3. So what this cards offers is simply a more elegant solution to that. Threfore unless you want to tell Apple to sue itself I don't see the problem.

Furthermore I mentioned Steve Jobs agreed with this and as it happens so does Bill Gates (he was recently in the news for stating that DRM is a bad thing). And if the position of big market players does not sway you consider that politicians are becoming aware of the problems overly restrictive copyright policies cause. There is a new law being pushed in the senate to curb DMCA and restore Fair Use and in the EU there is a big push to make the vendor lock-in caused by DRM illegal.
 
Don't get me wrong here. I don't actually recall taking a stance on the DRM issue, I just stated the relevant facts. Don't confuse the two. I was actually the first to start a thread in the Apple sub-forum regarding Steve's open letter, so I know the position, and I fully agree with it.

The point today is that we aren't living in that DRM-free, ideal Steve Jobs world yet. If you want to justify your illegal actions, or the illegal actions of others, by the fact that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have an opinion, and the fact that there are gears in motion, that's fine. But that doesn't magically make it legal.

If you want your Fair Use, buy music on a hard medium.

What's curious about this Asus thing is whether or not Microsoft will approve this card for use in the DRM-laden Vista. As far as we're aware, Microsoft can completely deny audio devices the right to Vista's protected audio path, so this all sort of depends on Microsoft at this point.
 
Ah ok gotcha, guess I misunderstood your position. And yes I understand the potential legal issues. But as I've mentioned a somewhat similar procedure already exists in iTunes itself through the whole burn/rip/drm-free mp3 and there have been no complaints so far. Also the legality of this card can be argued depending of local laws (I'm sure the card will be sold globally).

As far as Microsoft's stance, I don't think they will do anything about it in Vista my guess is they will wash their hands of it and blame ASUS. If they do block it there is a chance though they will get into worse trouble in the EU (pure guesswork though)
 
alg7_munif said:
With heatsink... It would be very interesting if the card has a hardware acceleration. If your X-Fi has the SCP issue and you go to Creative for a support, they might blame the motherboard. Then you go to Asus for the support and guess what, you'll end up with a new sound card Lol.
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I would take adv of that, I just go make up a story just to get a free sound card from asus. :D
 
It is interesting that they have no support for EAX at all, favoring Dolby and DTS. Not necessarily a bad move but it certainly shuns the gaming crowd of today. I am anxious to see more specs on the card after reading the bit-tech spot this morning. It sure would be nice if they tried to standardize on a header that could connect from the card to, say, an HDMI video card. Asus is certainly big enough to pull something like this together and now that they will be making both video and sound cards, I have renewed hope for an HTPC using only an HDMI connection.
 
It not really a shun, you dont have use EAX to be a gamer. it just be a choice , if you want EAX that bad then just go buy a creative card. You dont really have to have eax to game. People need to realise this. It just a option not a must. I wish people didnt think you had to have EAX to game because Theres people that dont care about eax so this card and oxygen HD cards would be the best choice for them. I just hope it just dont get crazy and we in up with 239023 number of these cards flying around.

But If you care for eax alot then thats what the creative cards are there for , just get one of those for EAX3-5 if you must have it. problem solve.
 
It's features set is comparable to the 8788 Chipset. Which is probably what they are running on this card. MOre competition for the sound card market. That is good news.
 
AdmiralFlameberg said:
It not really a shun, you dont have use EAX to be a gamer. it just be a choice , if you want EAX that bad then just go buy a creative card. You dont really have to have eax to game. People need to realise this. It just a option not a must. I wish people didnt think you had to have EAX to game because Theres people that dont care about eax so this card and oxygen HD cards would be the best choice for them. I just hope it just dont get crazy and we in up with 239023 number of these cards flying around.

But If you care for eax alot then thats what the creative cards are there for , just get one of those for EAX3-5 if you must have it. problem solve.
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I still believe it is a shun of today's PC gamers. At the least they could have done EAX 2.0. Creative has invested a lot of time and money into making their cards the card for gaming. Yes, it's true no one really needs EAX to game but the games that make good use of it are very nice. No one really needs AA or AF or 24" monitors to game but we do it anyway. ;) Anyway, If Asus is hoping the target market for this card will be gamers I think they will be sorely disappointed. Maybe if we start seeing many more console ports that have native Dolby or DTS streams they will have a winner on their hands.
 
When you actually consider the sheer number of PC's out there. The amount of people playing games without a Creative soundcard is alot higher then people who are using one.
Alot of people either don't know or don't care about EAX in any of it's forms. They still enjoy their games just fine. Asus is making this move because they are predicting a shift in the market. Who know if they are right or not. It is great to see more competition in the soundcard market. It will drive the technology forward.
 
Especially for us Vista users.

Microsoft kiled EAX in Vista.

But Creative in a panic is using alchemy to make use of openal to get access to hardware sound acceleration and EAX goodness :X *this is totaly depent on whether the game supports opeanal. And currently there are few games that support this....

So even if creative has eax i mean for a vista user such as myself, will my games actually use it in the first place :rolleyes:

I got an old audigy 2 zs .... sigh... i'll wait a bit and see what happens.
 
I personally didn't lose any features under the Vista OS. My card sounds better then ever. I don't use Creative soundcards though. Hopefully everything will get fixed for you gamers.
I think game companies will start moving to audio technologies that are a little more open and available on most systems instead of s small percentage of PC users..Who knows....
 
Audioguy said:
When you actually consider the sheer number of PC's out there. The amount of people playing games without a Creative soundcard is alot higher then people who are using one.
Alot of people either don't know or don't care about EAX in any of it's forms. They still enjoy their games just fine. Asus is making this move because they are predicting a shift in the market. Who know if they are right or not. It is great to see more competition in the soundcard market. It will drive the technology forward.
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So? Most people don't know a thing about AA or AF and game just fine without it. Does that mean ati/nvidia shouldn't support it any longer?
EAX makes games sound better, and until there's a new standard that is supported by many games and sounds at least as good as EAX, it should still be supported.
 
I didn't say any of that. Don't put words into peoples mouths You can see that MS cares little for Creative Labs or EAX as they are only a very,very small piece of the market. If it makes games sound better or not is a matter of opinion, nothing more. I can understand why you Creative guys would be upset but it's all been patched more or less. When the technology is forced to advance it is good for everybody gamer and the like. Although we usually have to go through some growing pains to get there. That is all I am saying. This is just a stumble along the way. Hopefully things will work out better for all people interested in PC audio.;)
 
Uh... from what i understand, not only is EAX being knocked aside, but sound card hardware acceleration.

My question is, does sound cards make much difference against integrated sound cards in motherboards for Vista pcs ?

:eek:
 
Add in will still offer better sound quality and possibly better features. I think the Creative cards still hardware accelerate OpenAL...
 
Moogle Stiltzkin said:
Uh... from what i understand, not only is EAX being knocked aside, but sound card hardware acceleration.

My question is, does sound cards make much difference against integrated sound cards in motherboards for Vista pcs ?

:eek:
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A sound card is used to get a better sound, if you just want a hardware acceleration, a faster GPU/CPU will be a better choice. If you are using analogue connection, a sound card does make a difference compared to an onboard solution. Btw EAX doesn't always make a game sounds good but if correctly used, it will. Some people said that EAX in FEAR sounds worse than without EAX.
 
Audioguy said:
Add in will still offer better sound quality and possibly better features. I think the Creative cards still hardware accelerate OpenAL...
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OpenAL is really a tricky thing. Creative created it, and gave it a name with OPEN making people believe it is really an OPEN standard for every HW maker to follow, but that's really not the case.

If you have seen the documents on the OpenAL.org site, and download the tools there, you'll find there is no doc for HW makers to follow at all.

More interestingly, if you select software mode OpenAL, it actually redirects back to use the standard DirectSound API founction to make sounds or noises. In other words, DirectSound could do what OpenAl was intended to do.

If you have questions about OpenAL, the email goes to Creative engineers, do you think they'll release the ways to do HW accelerated OpenAL for other vendors? hahaa...
 
Moogle Stiltzkin said:
Microsoft kiled EAX in Vista.
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You make it sound like a very well-directed hit job. It wasn't. They pulled something that EAX relies on with DirectSound -- they did not kill EAX.

yoyolai said:
If you have seen the documents on the OpenAL.org site, and download the tools there, you'll find there is no doc for HW makers to follow at all.
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Like OpenGL, OpenAL must be licensed to hardware vendors. As far as I'm aware, there is no fee for this.

alg7_munif said:
A sound card is used to get a better sound, if you just want a hardware acceleration, a faster GPU/CPU will be a better choice.
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In my opinion, a sound card should deliver a better experience, not to solely improve audio quality.

I want hardware acceleration because hardware acceleration is a good thing. Let's not pretend like it's totally undesirable.
 
There is no way Asus crested an audio chipset from scratch.
The might be using CMI 8788 but they don't say anything about EAX 2 support. They might be using a new audio-chipset from ADI or some other shop and have exclusive contracts.
 
Creative Labs DID NOT create OpenAL.
They feature set mentioned by the Asus card shows me they are using the 8788 Audio controller. That card AFAIK does not have EAX at all, they opted instead for Dolby Digital and DTS technologies. They don't HAVE to include EAX becasue they are using this chipset. It would be in software anyway, so it would be soley up to them if they wanted to write it into the driver or not. I think they are looking to the future with this card and not worrying about EAX.
 
Creative swears that they cannot implement a sound card in PCI Express due to the "extremely small packets" that sound typically uses. The latency inherent in the PCI EXpress bus precludes that, or so they say.

LOL.
 
dook43 said:
Creative swears that they cannot implement a sound card in PCI Express due to the "extremely small packets" that sound typically uses. The latency inherent in the PCI EXpress bus precludes that, or so they say.

LOL.
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I too have heard that claim but that was quite a while back. For all I know it could have be true because of a certain way the X-Fi processor operates. I suspect we'll see an X-Fi 2 this year on the PCIe bus though.
 
I was thinking about one of the $100-$120 Oxygen chip PCI cards, but I'm going to hold out and wait for this pci-e card. All my future systems will have that, not pci slots. Any hints on availability?
 
In my opinion, a sound card should deliver a better experience, not to solely improve audio quality.

I want hardware acceleration because hardware acceleration is a good thing. Let's not pretend like it's totally undesirable.[/QUOTE]

Although I am not a wiz in audio nor claim that I know anything more than anyone here, I agree with alg 7munif. A sound card should be used to get better sound, not accelerate the game being played. Although DSP does take away clock cycles from the CPU so frame rates go up, what good would a DSP be if it did not help in creating good sound? I think too much emphasis is placed on cards having DSP and not what kind of sound experience you get from using the sound card. It is because of this, some people tend to look at other sound cards that don't have DSP as inferior when they might produce better experience in playing games, listening to music or a DVD. If you want less slow downs in games, in my opinion, it is better to get a faster CPU and GPU to play your games. Otherwise leave the sound to the sound card.

Just my two cents

Kmat :D
 
Although I am not a wiz in video nor claim that I know anything more than anyone here... A video card should be used to get better video signal, not accelerate the game being played. Although hardware 3D functions do take away clock cycles from the CPU so frame rates go up, what good would they be if they did not help in creating good picture? I think too much emphasis is placed on cards having 3D support and not what kind of visual experience you get from using the video card. It is because of this, some people tend to look at other sound cards that don't have 3D support as inferior when they might produce better experience in playing games, or watching a DVD. If you want less slow downs in games, in my opinion, it is better to get a faster CPU to play your games. Otherwise leave the video to the video card.

Just my two cents

:D
 
LOL! What utter snake oil about this card not reducing sound quality. As long as you're playing the song it's getting decoded to a straight audio stream. As long as you're re-recording it it's getting recoded. Whether this is with the exact same codec or a completely different codec, this is where all the quality loss occurs. What lame BS. Gogogo Marketing department!
 
Ahriman4891 said:
Although I am not a wiz in video nor claim that I know anything more than anyone here... A video card should be used to get better video signal, not accelerate the game being played. Although hardware 3D functions do take away clock cycles from the CPU so frame rates go up, what good would they be if they did not help in creating good picture? I think too much emphasis is placed on cards having 3D support and not what kind of visual experience you get from using the video card. It is because of this, some people tend to look at other sound cards that don't have 3D support as inferior when they might produce better experience in playing games, or watching a DVD. If you want less slow downs in games, in my opinion, it is better to get a faster CPU to play your games. Otherwise leave the video to the video card.

Just my two cents

:D
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I don't know whether you are mocking me to insult me or joking. I will leave it alone.

Kmat:rolleyes:
 
Ahriman4891 said:
Although I am not a wiz in video nor claim that I know anything more than anyone here... A video card should be used to get better video signal, not accelerate the game being played. Although hardware 3D functions do take away clock cycles from the CPU so frame rates go up, what good would they be if they did not help in creating good picture? I think too much emphasis is placed on cards having 3D support and not what kind of visual experience you get from using the video card. It is because of this, some people tend to look at other sound cards that don't have 3D support as inferior when they might produce better experience in playing games, or watching a DVD. If you want less slow downs in games, in my opinion, it is better to get a faster CPU to play your games. Otherwise leave the video to the video card.

Just my two cents

:D
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All that work and you missed one. :p

Kmat, I can understand what you are saying well enough. Stand alone sound cards should give us better sound. But why can't we ask for hardware accelerated audio as well? Remember, hardware acceleration of sound is not just to squeeze a few extra frames per second out of a game. With it you can have a large number of incredibly complex sounds playing all at once. I didn't really know what the big deal with X-Fi cards was until I played UT2004 with the X-Fi patch. It really makes for a more enjoyable experience; at least to me it does.
 
Kmat said:
Although I am not a wiz in audio nor claim that I know anything more than anyone here, I agree with alg 7munif. A sound card should be used to get better sound, not accelerate the game being played.
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Firstly, your perspective on the issue is completely backwards.

Hardware-based sound cards do not accelerate games, they simply diminish the performance impact of utilizing sound over a fully-software or partial-hardware solution. You cannot under any circumstance achieve greater performance with a hardware-based solution than you would by simply disabling sound.

Again -- they don't accelerate the game, they diminish the CPU load required to reproduce sound. They accelerate audio tasks, not the game itself.

Secondly, why can't a sound card perform both hardware acceleration and improve sound quality? This is precisely what many past Sound Blaster cards have done, and it seems as if you think that the cards would be better without hardware components whose sole purpose is accelerating sound-related functions. Why?

To not pursue some sort of hardware acceleration, whether it be strictly buffer acceleration or fully-blown DSP, is patently silly. The dominant Creative Labs has tackled this in precisely the wrong way (pursuing the advancement of game sound in an anti-consumer manner), but that doesn't mean that hardware acceleration is wrong.

We can do phenomenal effects on modern multi-core CPUs without substantial performance hits, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's something we should do until the end of time.
 
Imo, if using full hardware creates more problems, I don't think that it is worth it to use that. The performance gain is also not very significant and can be easily matched by a better CPU or GPU. Eventhough using full hardware can achieve a large number of incredibly complex sounds playing all at once, the processing is actually not as complex as 3D rendering by a GPU. a modern CPU can handle the processing with just a small performance impact, the Cell CPU on PS3 is capable of processing up to 512 voices:
The PS3 will be able to run up to 512 different voices, and apply different sound layers onto them depending on what the developer wishes.
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Eventhough no developer will use all 512 voices, Resistance already uses 100+ voices in the game.
 
One of the primary reasons higher performance gains are not evident in today's applications is because today's applications are tremendously simplistic. Developers often times don't allow processor-intensive tasks (such as playback voices numbering up to 128) for non-X-Fi cards, even when other cards (such as the X-Meridian) are capable of playing back 128 voices. Most sound engines at this time would be shockingly simplistic were it not for EAX extensions, because developers often refuse to offer users with software-based sound cards access to the same level of audio post-processing. I believe the removal of the DS HAL in Vista is beneficial to getting developers to lose their narrow-mindedness toward what users should and should not be allowed to do without very specific hardware.

If we're going to talk about hardware acceleration in general, it's important to try and not focus on the specific realities of the game audio plateau as it stands today.

The only assumption we can make at the moment regarding issues with hardware acceleration is that it causes issues with DirectSound specifically. I've experienced zero blue screen issues when running OpenAL or ASIO applications on my X-Fi, so my assumption is that we're not at a point where something broad like Direct3D is achievable with today's sound cards. Maybe there's a lack of compliance, or maybe Microsoft focused very little energy in DirectSound in general, but hardware acceleration via other APIs seems particularly solid. So, don't try to generalize hardware acceleration as a bringer of compatibility issues, when in fact that's something of a half-truth.

It's very possible to bring the level of audio processing complexity up to the level of graphics rendering complexity of a game like Crysis or Project Offset, but developers simply aren't utilizing an audio framework anywhere near that complex (nor should they right now). There is software DSP that can completely saturate a Digidesign HD Accel card (and let me assure you that these cards are massively powerful), so it's not as if it's not possible to bring that kind of fidelity into the software realm. Mimicking reality via audio DSP is generally much less intensive than mimicking reality visually, however.

In the end, it boils down to what features a sound card offers. If this D2X thing is indeed based on the 8788 chipset, then it will sacrifice some features while offering others. Hardware acceleration is still a good feature, though the importance of it today is somewhat lost with the kind of games we have today.

EDIT: And to put hardware acceleration in perspective, think about titles that support higher levels of EAX and how that processing (which is actually a fair bit more advanced than what's offered in OpenAL natively) is achievable for free (or very near free) on Audigys and X-Fis. It's natural to expect very few miracles from simplistic audio engines like Oblivion's, but I think EAX makes a pretty good case for the capabilities of hardware acceleration.
 
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