Discussion Forums > Technology
New PC - Xeon or Opteron?
Honemi:
If I may be so bold to continue to make some recommendations:
I'd suggest a Creative Sound Blaster Z(X) over the ZXR version. The ZXR has slightly better audio quality, but the main distinction between it and the other Z series cards is that the ZXR has a daughterboard focused mainly for recording. If you aren't recording a lot, then the main benefit of the ZXR over the Z(X) is gone. Also, the difference between the Z and ZX is that the ZX has a control module (portable volume knob).
Of course, if you're using your sound card mainly (solely?) for headphones, I'd recommend a Magni+Modi combo. Or the O2+ODAC if you can get yours hands on one (and looking for a reference class DAC/External Soundcard). They'll offer better sound quality, but you won't be getting the other special effects included with Creative sound cards.
Or get an AVR and use HDMI.
Or, or, I'll shut up now.
kitamesume:
xonar STX and screw everything else, they go for $160 and i doubt anything else could best such a low price.
Pentium100:
The Xonar card has only one input - combined line-in and microphone-in, just like my current X-Fi. The problem is that for some reason the switching kinda failed and now one channel is permanently in "mic" mode - it can record, but the source has to have low output impedance. Also, even when it worked correctly, some software automatically switched the input to mic mode putting +5V out the input and into the output of some other device (didn't really matter if I wasn't copying a record to tape at the time, not so good if I was). That lead me to put DC filter caps between the input of the sound card and the program route selector (dbx 400), but now I can't use the mic input.
I mainly use headphones, but I also have a couple of tape decks, a radio and a record player connected to the same system, so USB headphones or using HDMI is not an option.
I also noticed that in the specs of both card, the input impedance is not published. Weird, though it's probably 10K, just like all other sound cards.
kitamesume:
thats pretty much due to software issues, try checking uni xonar drivers, i think they've fixed the toggle issue there.
Pentium100:
--- Quote from: kitamesume on October 05, 2013, 02:21:08 AM ---thats pretty much due to software issues, try checking uni xonar drivers, i think they've fixed the toggle issue there.
--- End quote ---
Or it could be a broken chip. Anyway, even if the permanent mic mode does not happen, the problem of other software (games and skype mostly) randomly switching the input to mic remains.
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