Chaintech AV-710 price to performance?

Anime_Fan

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Chaintech AV-710 @ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829120103

So I recently upgraded to an sli board that does not have optical audio out. I use optical audio out to hook up to my Logitech Z-680s for when I play divx/dvd stuff through my pc on my tv.

I dont really have a lot of money to throw down on some fancy new creative labs product. It seems like you cant get optical audio out on a creative product unless you spend over $100 unless you use one of their usb external options.

I figure for $25 this card has some features that are pretty good for the price. I read some reviews and it seems to be pretty decent for music playback which is good as I do listen to a fair amount of mp3s as well. I have read mixed reviews about the surround support though. Will this thing get the job done for divx/dvd playback on my z-680s?

Also I use these 5.1 headphones Kinyo KY-100 http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4013853 for gaming and music listening and occasionally dvd playback when I need to be quiet :p they have an amp and stuff. I am not an audiophile or anything like that, I feel they sound pretty good compared to my old headphones.
 
It's absolutely fine for digital-out. If you were going high-end you might get people telling you to get a card with less jitter, but for a set of Z680s, you aren't at a level where you should worry about that. :)
 
Sweet :) I think its a great budget card from the looks of it ;) I'll throw down on it after xmas
 
I have the card, it's a huge pain in the ass. Read the (highly intelligent) negative Newegg reviews for the card to see what's wrong with it. Once you get the card you're basically thrown to a pack of wolves to try and figure out how to get it to work. The latest drivers on the chaintek site are from 2003. VIA doesn't officially support Envy so the latest envy drivers are "hidden". The latest drivers are also "broken" "fucked" "worst crap ever made" If you want to get the card to work you have to flash the eeprom to a different companies card and use the different companies drivers. I will not tell you how to do this however since I spent hours researching to get this crappy card to work. If I could do it again I would just go back and buy a card that works out of the box without the huge amount of trouble for an extra $30-$50.

I am now researching new cards because this card is horrible for games, it causes terrible popping noises ever 2 seconds. It also seems to output sound too lound but the VIA drivers are broken and don't allow you to adjust the master volume do everything will sound distorted because the output is too high.
 
peacetilence said:
I have the card, it's a huge pain in the ass. Read the (highly intelligent) negative Newegg reviews for the card to see what's wrong with it. Once you get the card you're basically thrown to a pack of wolves to try and figure out how to get it to work. The latest drivers on the chaintek site are from 2003. VIA doesn't officially support Envy so the latest envy drivers are "hidden". The latest drivers are also "broken" "fucked" "worst crap ever made" If you want to get the card to work you have to flash the eeprom to a different companies card and use the different companies drivers. I will not tell you how to do this however since I spent hours researching to get this crappy card to work. If I could do it again I would just go back and buy a card that works out of the box without the huge amount of trouble for an extra $30-$50.

I am now researching new cards because this card is horrible for games, it causes terrible popping noises ever 2 seconds. It also seems to output sound too lound but the VIA drivers are broken and don't allow you to adjust the master volume do everything will sound distorted because the output is too high.

The card works fine. What are your computer's specifications again? Do you have Cool n' Quiet on? Is your case grounded?
 
aznx said:
The card works fine. What are your computer's specifications again? Do you have Cool n' Quiet on? Is your case grounded?


Me? Specs in sig :) Case is grounded yes. Oh and cool n quiet is off I believe


What about the turtle beach catalina 8?
 
aznx said:
The card works fine. What are your computer's specifications again? Do you have Cool n' Quiet on? Is your case grounded?

No cool and quiet

A64 3500+ @ 2.7ghz
2 gig Corsair Ram
7800GTX 512
Antec 550 True Power 2

Case grounded? Yes it's hanging from a metal shelf on the side of my desk. I'm using Optical out on the sound card so grounding would have no effect on an optical signal as it's being passed through digitally (perfect 1's and 0's instead of analog open to these sorts of interferences)

I'm using the sound card for flac's, DVD's through theatertek, and games.

The card is decent for flacs and dvd's (able to pass through DD and DTS streams unmolested) but the card royally sucks for games. It's not every game but in games like BF2 the audio pops and clicks. I want a card that has the best of both worlds. Also if you want to do bit perfect sound (kernal streaming, asio etc) you need to flash to a different Envy 24 eeprom and use the specific cards drivers (as the VIA drivers are extremely poor)
 
Also I use these 5.1 headphones Kinyo KY-100 http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4013853 for gaming and music listening and occasionally dvd playback when I need to be quiet :p they have an amp and stuff. I am not an audiophile or anything like that, I feel they sound pretty good compared to my old headphones.


The AV-710 is not much better then many onboard solution's when used as a multichannel card... skip it.
 
Mister X said:
The AV-710 is not much better then many onbard solution's when used as a multichannel card... skip it.

What about stereo?

To the OP: Don't mean to derail your thread, but I was literally 30 mins from ordering this card, and this thread now got me thinking :( I thought that $25 would get me a nice card till X-fi linux drivers emerge/mature...
 
in stereo it should be at the level of an audigy 2 zs... but really.. can't u just pay 35 bucks for an audigy 2 zs :D or value at the creative ebay store refurb. hehe
 
Ahriman4891 said:
What about stereo?


In high-res 2 channel mode the AV-710 sounds better then a stock AudigyZS but of course there is a catch.
The catch is:
It is underpowered for driving headphones directly. ;)
 
mister: please read the original post. The OP wanted a card for DIGITAL output. Quality of the DACs and opamps on the card is utterly irrelevant.

As regards the driver issue, I should have mentioned I use Linux so I really can't comment on the Windows drivers.
 
AdamW said:
mister: please read the original post. The OP wanted a card for DIGITAL output. Quality of the DACs and opamps on the card is utterly irrelevant.

As regards the driver issue, I should have mentioned I use Linux so I really can't comment on the Windows drivers.

Who exactly are you referring to here?
 
Anime_Fan said:
Optical Audio Out was the primary feature I was after
Does it need to be optical?

Digital coax is just as well in virtually any case - just 1s and 0s, as you say - and basically any Creative card can do that just fine.
 
Well I was thinking it had to optical, but now I just remembered that the z-680 receiver does have a digital coax but thats in use by my digital cable box. So yeah I guess I would say optical out = yes
 
I dont think so......

Ugh I wish I could just afford an x-fi series or something
 
x: the original poster:

"So I recently upgraded to an sli board that does not have optical audio out. I use optical audio out to hook up to my Logitech Z-680s for when I play divx/dvd stuff through my pc on my tv."

I didn't notice someone else had been asking about the "quality" of the card without specifying whether they were talking digital or analog, though, so apologies.

dderidex: not "any" creative card can do decent digital out. Audigys resample everything to 48KHz, so they don't give you a bit-perfect stream for CD-sourced music, only DVDs. X-Fis don't resample though (well, they can, but they don't HAVE to, you can turn it off).
 
AdamW said:
dderidex: not "any" creative card can do decent digital out. Audigys resample everything to 48KHz, so they don't give you a bit-perfect stream for CD-sourced music, only DVDs. X-Fis don't resample though (well, they can, but they don't HAVE to, you can turn it off).

X-Fi cards actually do resample unless you specifically turn it off, which you can only do in the 'creation' mode.

Still, the resampler is uses is very, VERY good. Indeed, better than the Foobar2000 PPHS resampler, so you can effectively not have to worry about it being a factor on that card.

I agree, the Audigy2 resampler...is kinda weak. Still, it's not any worse than the Chaintech's....
 
Sigh...

I dunno for 25 dollars you probably cant complain much :p

I'll probably just buy it unless something better can be brought to my attention for under $50
 
My speakers + reciever sounded twice as good as they did with onboard.


Highly recommended!!!
 
I think with optical out it simply is what it is since it is a digital medium. 1's and 0's passed through unmolested. So if you have onboard with optical out it will be the same quality as opitcal out on a $300 pro card. The only difference is drivers + feature set (which a null on the Chaintek cards) however with my chaintek I experience sync issues, have to use a tweaked bios to get Asio to work, have to dick around looking through google/forums to figure out how to do all this etc.I can't raise or lower the master volume, I get popping noises in games etc.. If I had to do it over again I would have just bought a card like and Audiotrak prodigy for the drivers/feature set out of the box. I have this card hooked up to almost $1000 worth of audio equipment so I probably shouldn't have cheaped out on it...

In our situation though (using optical out + wanting to game etc) I have no idea what the best card would be. I'm in the market for the ultimate card for optical (dvd's DTS, DD, etc) that also works in games without causing popping or strange problems. I don't need EAX 4. don't want to use a drive bay just for optical, don't wan't to pay a $300 exclusive for gaming features I will never use etc.
 
To break it down:

Multi-channel (5.1): Not much of an improvement over onboard sound
Stereo: Extremely good budget solution, beats the Audigy2 by a long shot. Must be amplified.
Optical out: Can be flashed to become a bit-perfect transport.
Gaming: About as good as onboard sound in terms of hardware acceleration.
 
dderidex: yeah, av710's resampling is nothing to write home about, but it doesn't force resampling like the audigy does.

why creative write these horrible drivers with multiple modes I do not know. Almost makes me not hate ALSA quite as psychotically as I do.
 
talonz: one extra note about optical out: doesn't need any flashing to be bit perfect in Linux, though it does need some ALSA configuration voodoo.
 
Optical out: Can be flashed to become a bit-perfect transport but that disables the analog outputs

Fixed. ;)

Adam... where do you suppose the OP plans on connecting the Kinyo headphones he mentioned in the first post? ;) ;) ;)
 
mister x: um, I'll give you the answer to that question right now...LOOK! A THREE-HEADED MONKEY! *runs*
 
Does anyone know how to get this to work properly with games (44.1 KHz) when using the high resolution output (48 KHz on the Aux output, using the Wolfson DAC)?

All the game sound effects are sslloowweedd down because of the different sample rates.

Right now my solution is to plug in my headphones for gaming on the regular front outs, and my speakers into the aux out for high res output for music :D
 
the rear surround "high quality" output shouldn't be limited to 48KHz only. At least, on Linux it ain't. You probably need to configure the drivers a certain way for it to work right, not sure how though. Check the setup guide threads on head-fi?
 
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