Having a heck of a time with an Auzentech X-Mystique. Can't get it loud enough?

[sswilson]

Really???

That's a new one. How did you find that? Somebody have a PSU tester?

Noticed the wire for my -12V rail wasn't plugged all the way in. Reseated it and the card works fine :s

[sswilson]

Heh.... damn those electrons......

We don't ask the -12v ones to do all that much work nowadays, you'd think they'd go the extra mile and jump over a small gap like that... :)

[sswilson]

He had a problem with the power plug itself, not the PSU.

I sleeved my PSU some time back and that plug got mangled. I never noticed any adverse effects, but I change hardware in and out a lot, so it must have stopped making contact at some point. Anyway, it's fixed now :)

[Gav]

Did you read about replacing the OPamps. From what i've read around the net it really increases the sound quality.

Replacing Your Operational Amplifier s(OPAMPs)

Note that if you drive an external receiver through the digital S/PDIF output, this sound card upgrade is not for you. But if you drive multi-channel speakers directly from the analog outputs of the Auzentech X-Mystique and X-Plosion sound cards, this upgrade can make the analog signal stronger and clearer. Recordings have greater detail and accuracy and expansion and separation will be improved in the soundstage.

For this sound card upgrade we recommend the Texas Instruments / Burr Brown OPA2134PA. You will need six in total to upgrade the OPAMPs on your X-Mystique or X-Plosion card. Visit DigiKey.com to purchase your OPAMPs.

The steps to upgrading your OPAMPs are listed below. Before getting started, take a moment to read the full instructions. You may need to take a trip to Radio Shack®—see step four.

1. Power down your PC completely, unplug it, and open it.
2. Ground yourself by touching the metal casing of the computer. This lets the static electricity to safely dissipate. You should also avoid placing the circuit board on an ungrounded surface during the sound card upgrade.
3. Remove the sound card to upgrade from the computer, taking note of the direction of the six existing OPAMPs. Look for the small semi-circle at one end of the chip. The upper two chips face one way, the bottom four face another.
4. Remove the old OPAMPs using a chip puller (available at Radio Shack®).
5. Insert the replacement OPAMPs. Remember that they must face the same direction as the old chips.
6. Reinstall the card, close the case, and restart the PC. You have finished the sound card upgrade.

We mentioned that this sound card upgrade is not for someone who uses the Toslink S/PDIF optical connector to transfer the audio bit stream to a home theater system. The reason is that your home theater system acts as the Operational Amplifier. However, if you supply analog audio to high-quality powered multi-channel speakers, you can expect even more clarity with an OPAMP sound card upgrade.

I've heard of this for the X-meridian, but I was not aware that it can be done with the X-Mystique. Either way, I've switched back to my X-fi now that things are working ok. I only got rid of it in the first place because I couldn't get it working on the 680i board.

My parents have inherited my X-Mystique, and they will be using optical output into a home theater, so I don't think I'll do it now, but certainly something to keep in mind if I ever take that card back, haha.

[lcdguy]

all of the x-whatever series have the upgrade opamps. But they are kind of pointless for me since i use an external receiver and a toslink fiber optic cable. I never had any trouble with volume but i only ever used an amp with it so blah. I still have my x-mystique but i have since upgraded to the x-meridian (it's an awesome card) IMHO if your using a decent receiver this card blows creative's out of the water for a couple of reasons.

DDL and DTS Connect
Playback at a max of 192Khz/24bit
DPL IIx and DTS NEO

Very awesome. as it's just great to be plaing in a game in full 5.1 dts surround sound. :)

[sswilson]

I should look into one of these cards.

I'm running coax spdif to an amp (no 5.1 for me, just a set of 20 year old polk audio reference speakers) from the "multi-plug" on the back of my audigy2 and I'm getting tired of having to re-enable the bit-accurate playback every time I boot.

Seems to me I saw something about a third party app to do it automatically... don't know why creative doesn't fix it.

[lcdguy]

i would definitely look at it. I would look at either an X-plosion or X-Meridian depending what features and how high quality of digital sound you want.