Strix Soar impressions

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MorgothPl

2[H]4U
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Oct 13, 2008
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So the Soar finally is with me - I decided on the "lowest tier", because the only difference between it and Raid Pro is that volume knob, which I'd pay about $50 more, and the DLX is too expensive.

The visual impressions are okay - though, the orange eye on the card glows in orange, so if you have different colours of LED stripes or whatever lightning source, it might collide with the effects - and it can't be switched off in drivers. Also, it needs PCIE power source plug. Drivers have different presets - music/FPS/RPG/gaming/movies (each sets different equaliser and other options) - you can set there surround and such or you could manually set the output - headphones/spdif/speakers.

Now for the gaming effects - absolutely amazing. I'm using CloudX 2 headphones, and comparing to standard USB card added to this headset, it's night and day. Positioning is epic, sound stage is much greater, it's like totally different PC now :) Can't wait to see it on proper headphones, but they have been pushed down the budget, because of some house maintenance urgent spending.

Played a bit of Starcraft 2 prologue and Black Ops 3, and well, could hear the sound and ingame music around me, would feel if the effects, shots or whatever were in proper positions - even when Zeratul's ship was passing the asteroids, they would whizz behind my head.

This card proves to me, that soundcard with a proper amp really makes a difference :)
 
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So the "surround" simulator in the card works really good and easy to pinpoint where each sound is coming from compared to the Cloud 's surround?
 
Yep, it's more accurate... haven't tasted that "radar" feature that shows you from where certain sounds, like gunshots is coming from, but on same headphones, it sounds better on Soar, than on the USB dongle from Cloud's surround.
 
I was looking around to upgrade my aging Essence STX i had now for 6-7 years. It looks like Raid DLX will be right up my alley.

Do they still have only Dolby Headphone on Strix? Is it still drenched in reverb while gaming? Do they have DTS option now too? Does it support some old school stuff like EAX (in software)for older games?

I can't wait for this to release in USA to check it out. Wonder what Creative has in the works to counter this.
 
GibsonEX said:
I was looking around to upgrade my aging Essence STX i had now for 6-7 years. It looks like Raid DLX will be right up my alley.

Do they still have only Dolby Headphone on Strix? Is it still drenched in reverb while gaming? Do they have DTS option now too? Does it support some old school stuff like EAX (in software)for older games?

I can't wait for this to release in USA to check it out. Wonder what Creative has in the works to counter this.
Click to expand...

To be honest, I don't think Creative has anything to worry about -- this is ASUS playing catch-up after the royal screw-up with their ROG Phoebus sound card a few years back (very good hardware on paper, horrible software implementation). This is ASUS trying to match the Z series. So far, looks like ASUS is doing just that. Nothing that blows away the ZXR (Raid DLX spec-wise), but is roughly equal to it.
 
Crap, that is disappointing. It looks like STX will survive couple of more years :eek:
Part with the longest service record in my rig.

Thanks.
 
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