ASUS Xonar D1, buy it or no?

[hyrule571]

I'm looking at this sound card because this cheap $20 sound card I got a while ago just decided to poop out on me and give me some really static audio. I'm ready to move on anyways from junk sound quality.

Is the ASUS Xonar D1 a good card for my PCI mobo to buy or not? Is there something else I should look at?

What I mainly do: Videos, Music, and gaming(Mainly Unreal Tournament 2004, Urban Terror, Counter Strike: Source, Unreal Tournament 3, Unreal I and II.)

Does this card support EAX 5.0 and some of the more later sound technologies? Thanks!!!

 

[rolli59]

I am a firm believer that the onboard sound today is good enough unless you have high quality speakers. The card as I see it is good and supports most new technologies. http://www.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Cards/Xonar_D1/

 

[hyrule571]

Don't worry, I'm a fairly firm believer of that as well. My motherboard ---> Intel D875PBZ. No on-board sound. It seems as if recently they have been coming out with nice sound cards built in. My computer isn't very recent, check it out under member configuration.

Does anyone have this card and can testify that it is a great sound performer? Thanks.

 

[boabs]

i have asusdx1 pci exress.awsome sounbd card for the money i had creative xfi audio wasnt to gd. got new board asus maximus gene z . xf2 sound and its was *** compaired with xonar.

 

[gamerk316]

The D1 is basically the PCI varient of the DX that I recommend so often. Its an older card, but still a very strong competitor.

 

[maxpain12]

I have had the D1 for sometime now. First of all let me tell you for the price it is an excellent product. Just un boxing the thing will give you a good idea of the build quality and when properly configured it really pumps some decibels. Not to mention GX mode that restores hardware sound acceleration which is handled by the Asus AV100 processor; unlike the creative solution games will not have to be individually configured to use hardware sound acceleration where supported. Rumor has it that this is technically the same chip on the much pricier D2. Word of caution; I would recommend you use the Xonar Unified driver instead of the Asus driver. Also if you want reduced latency's for more responsive audio handling in such critical things as recording, then choose the low latency mode in the unified driver. Low latency mode will remove hardware sound acceleration but for most modern PC's you will not notice the difference in performance. Don't forget to run the driver as administrator in Windows 7 or else it may not install correctly.

 

[hyrule571]

I guess I may get the D1.. but what exactly is the Unified driver and why don't people use the regular drivers ASUS supplies? Thanks.

 

[maxpain12]

Well lets just say the Asus driver is known to cause some issues to people; at least it did to me. Some games like Fallout 3 don't like the D1 and tends to crash. This is also true for the creative X-fi range. In such instances it is better to use the low latency driver as it will minimize audio issues (not like FA3 uses H/W acceleration anyways). Also it helps turning the radio off in your pip boy. Anyways back to topic. There is a certain degree of subjectivity here. If you are running a cheap pair of speakers or headphones you will not miss much but if you hook up a THX speaker setup and use a decent pair of headphones like the Sennheiser HD 380 then you will notice a big difference from on board audio. The D1 with its better signal to noise ratio and better output stage really is a big difference on the HD 380 cans. So much so that I can't bear to listen to onboard sound on my laptop and decided to purchase a xonar U1 usb solution to drive them. Mind you the D1 does not have a dedicated headphone amp like the U1 does but I can't crank the volume over 60% as my ears hurt from the high sound pressure level. I reckon that the D1 can handle cans up to 75ohms resistance. Remember at the end of the day the sound quality of the sound card depends on the signal to noise ratio and the DAC's, both of which are better than onboard but not as good as the D2 for example; but then again for the price its decent. The Asus AV100 processor only accelerates the processing in hardware but does not necessarily improve the audio quality unless you have an outdated CPU that is struggling. Like some here have mentioned the D1 is an older card; the reason I got it is because my motherboard had both the PCI-E 4x slots sandwiching my dual slot GPU. This can cause heat build up and EMI interference. For this reason I got the D1 so that it can be placed in a PCI slot located at the very end of the mainboard. If you have no such issue you can always consider the PCI-E version like the DX.

Link to the unified driver. It will give you a rundown of the different components of the unified driver.

http://brainbit.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

 

[gamerk316]

I guess I may get the D1.. but what exactly is the Unified driver and why don't people use the regular drivers ASUS supplies? Thanks.

The ASUS driver CAN have issues, but I've found it to be stable over the past year or so. The Unified driver is basically the generic C-Media driver release with a few tweaks thrown in. [ASUS, Auzentech, and HT Omega all use C-Media based chipsets for their soundcards].

 

[Thomas_89]

I am thinking of buying a dedicated sound card as well. I did some reading and some people say that it only outperforms onboard audio if you have quality speakers. I have Audioengine 5's, are they good enough to have a dedicated sound card make a difference?

 

[hyrule571]

I bought the Xonar D1, and in game it sounds now like night and day from what I can remember from the old sound card to the Xonar D1. Just one more question... Why does my sound card make an audible click noise(not through headphones or speakers, I mean straight from the tower) when I go to shut my PC off or turn it on or put it to sleep or wake it up from sleep mode? You know? Why? =/ Is that bad?

 

[nt13]

Don't worry, it's normal, those clicks come from the small relays on the D1 board, they are activated just after the final audio stage is powered to prevent signal peaks (POPs) in the amplifier when you power on/off the system.

 

[gamerk316]

I bought the Xonar D1, and in game it sounds now like night and day from what I can remember from the old sound card to the Xonar D1. Just one more question... Why does my sound card make an audible click noise(not through headphones or speakers, I mean straight from the tower) when I go to shut my PC off or turn it on or put it to sleep or wake it up from sleep mode? You know? Why? =/ Is that bad?

That's normal; its the relays being activated/deactivated. My Xense does the same thing, and I believe most (all?) of C-Media's cards do this.

 

[hyrule571]

Best answer selected by hyrule571.