New sound card, dont hear much of a difference?

[makua]

I just got a new HT OMEGA claro+ sound card, and in all of my games, I dont hear much of a difference (Wow, mount and blade, MW2, TF2) I read somewhere that having 3d sound is an advantage in MW2, I can hardly even hear other peoples footsteps though.. Am I doing something wrong? My headphones are ATH-AD700.

 

[jefe323]

you might have to set the sound in-game to be 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound

 

[makua]

Yeah, I've tried that.. I'm kinda disappointed.

 

[astrallite]

So you are saying your Claro+ is barely better than on-board?

 

[davcon]

Wow! cuz that's a great card.
Have you plugged the headphones into the card and not the front panel?

 

[makua]

Yes I have. What games should I hear a difference in?

 

[makua]

So you are saying your Claro+ is barely better than on-board?

sadly, yes.

 

[MEgamer]

so how about music??? is there no overall improvement?

by teh way, set your game and your system sound output to stereo, and on your card, enable dolby headphone, then you may hear footsteap behind and such.

the sound on MW2 is not that great anyway, guns sounds tinny.

 

[makua]

Not much of a difference with music, unless i turn on the surround sound which i dont like as much.

 

[astrallite]

Some motherboard makers have pretty good on-board implementations. I've had some surprisingly good onboards. For example, the nForce2 onboard audio chipsets were legendary. People wouldn't take a soundcard (at the time) over it.

 

[makua]

Well, thanks for the info, feel free to post if you have anything else to say.

 

[cjl]

While that is an excellent sound card, modern integrated sound is surprisingly good, and I've found that unless you're driving quite high end equipment, you probably won't hear much of a difference.

That having been said, the AD700s are decent headphones, so I'd expect you would be able to hear a bit of a difference at least. It might be fairly subtle though - I can barely tell the difference between the integrated sound and my sound card on my desktop when using my headphones (Grado SR225 or Senn ie7), but it's a much more noticeable difference when driving my 2.1 stereo setup (Bowers and Wilkins 685s with an SVS sub).

 

[MEgamer]

i got IE7 i can hear fairly lot of differences with my ASUS xonar DX, from ALC888

 

[Guest]

Maybe your card is faulty. Send it back for a new one.

 

[davcon]

i got IE7 i can hear fairly lot of differences with my ASUS xonar DX, from ALC888

I concur when i added my Auzentech Forte i noticed the difference immediately on 2.1 speakers and AKG headphones.
My onboard was ALC889A.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

even my old audigy 4 is noticebly better than onboard Nforce 650i audio. youhave got the speakers plugged into the sound card and your onboard sound disabled..right?

 

[gamerk316]

Odd, I consider the Claro to be the second best card on the market, behind only the godly ASUS Essence STX...

Some notes:

Music encoded in 2.0 channels will sound exactly the same. Just because you have 7.1 speakers doesn't mean that music encoded for two channels will suddenly fill all the other speakers. You CAN use something like Dolby Pro Logic to upmix the audio though...

Make sure windows is set to use 7.1, and run a full speaker test through the Windows Control Panel to make sure all the speakers are working right.

After that, check the driver control panel (I'm not sure on how the HT Omega display looks like, but its probably based on teh standard C-Media driver suit...) and toy around with the settings, equalizer, etc. These cards can take a lot of configuring to get set up properly.

Never use the front panel; you lose a lot of quality by having the audio signal go through the entire PC before reaching the headphones.

Finally, getting actual surround headphones might help; at the end of the day, your using 2.0 headphones, and wondering why you aren't getting a surround output. Try some surround gaming headphones or actual speakers. [Remember to avoid USB, which ignores the soundcard]

 

[cjl]

Finally, getting actual surround headphones might help; at the end of the day, your using 2.0 headphones, and wondering why you aren't getting a surround output. Try some surround gaming headphones or actual speakers. [Remember to avoid USB, which ignores the soundcard]

Surround headphones?

Definitely not. A good set of 2 channel headphones (and the ATH-AD700 are quite decent) will utterly flatten any so-called surround headphones for sound quality. Not only that, but a 2 channel set of headphones can give an incredible sense of surround without needing any extra gimmicks (don't believe me? Get a 2 channel set of headphones and try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA - note that it only works with headphones, speakers won't give the proper effect)

 

[MEgamer]

get a good 2.0 headphone, then use dolby headphone on your soundcard.

 

[gamerk316]

@cji:

To clarify, I was referring to headphones that actually uses seperate speakers, and not Virtual Surround based headphones; should have clarified that point a bit more. I fell in love with my Tritton AX Pro's; among the best side processing I've seen in a headset yet. [Too bad the build quality is...questionable at best]

Also, I forgot to mention the use of Dolby Virtual Headphone, which he should probably be using in this case...

 

[cjl]

And I maintain that that's a terrible idea. Surround headphones, whether using virtual or multiple speaker setups, are far inferior to a good standard (2 channel) headphone for the same price. They're basically a gimmick, which a surprising number of people fall for.

 

[MEgamer]

And I maintain that that's a terrible idea. Surround headphones, whether using virtual or multiple speaker setups, are far inferior to a good standard (2 channel) headphone for the same price. They're basically a gimmick, which a surprising number of people fall for.

yes but not matter how good the 2.0 headphone maybe, ull never ever ever be able to do surround sound, unless you use a software. so the OP wont have much choice, if its only stereo and he wants surround sound

 

[cjl]

yes but not matter how good the 2.0 headphone maybe, ull never ever ever be able to do surround sound, unless you use a software. so the OP wont have much choice, if its only stereo and he wants surround sound

The same is true of so-called surround headphones though, regardless of how they do it. The reason surround speakers work is because when a speaker is behind you (for example), both ears receive the sound from that speaker, and they receive it with a slight audio delay and each ear hears the sound slightly differently. This is what allows you to locate the sound, and this is also why binaural recordings work so well with headphones - they replicate this perfectly. Simply putting speakers around each ear, isolated from each other, will not give the correct effect.

 

[MEgamer]

each ears hear the sound differently because they are at different distances from the sound source.

anyway the point is, good stereo headphones with dolby headphone, is better then companys own proprietary surround sound headphone. such as razer.

 

[cjl]

Absolutely.