Listening Tests

Headphones Used: Sennheiser HD595
Speakers Used: Modified Edifier S5.1 Surround system


Movies

The Xonar DX provided amazing sound quality for DVD movies. It was crisp, clear, well defined sound without a hint of muddiness in heavy action sequences all sounds seemed to have their own location in the output. Explosions, gunfire and all the good stuff were rendered easily without any noticeable distortions or clipping.

Dolby Headphone greatly aids the user in enjoying a 5.1 encoded movie over normal headphones. I preferred just to test out well known action scenes and heavily directional sections but found myself watching the DVD's for extended periods. Without a doubt, this card offers great imaging and overall amazing quality sound for surround encoded movies.


Movies Tested:

Saving Private Ryan
Ozzy Osbourne: Live at Budokan
Star Wars EPIII
The Matrix
The Matrix: Revolutions


Music

The tested music has that familiar Xonar flavor to whatever tracks played due in no small part to the front channel DAC’s and AV100 Chipset. The Xonar DX has a very warm “tube” like quality which we also heard when auditioning the Xonar D2. The sound of the DX is crisp, clear and very "musical" and there is great high end extension present with shimmering high tones and glossy cymbals. The bass regions are well defined and tight without a hint of muddiness, tubbiness or looseness. You can listen to the card for extended periods of time without it becoming fatiguing to your ears. Acoustic and electrics guitars have a very nice woody sound to them sometimes glossed over on other cards which adds to the realism of the music. However, a couple songs did exhibit some higher frequency distortions during critical listening with the Sennheiser 595's.

The DX was tested with Winamp 5 and different output plugins such as ASIO, DirectSound, WAV and Audioburst to ensure they all worked with this card. The only notable issue is when using the Directsound and DS-based output plugins since the DX card will NOT allow modifying the sound with its onboard effects. The EQ preset system settings seemed rather generic and would need further adjusting by the user for optimal listening. High resolution MP3, FLAC and CD audio and a DVD concert disc were used to test the music capabilities of the Xonar 7.1 DX.

Albums tested:

3 Doors Down: Let Me Go
Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness (CD 1-4)
Van Halen I,1984,5150,Fair Warning
Metallica: Master of Puppets, Black Album
Ozzy Osbourne -Live at Budokan (DVD)
Various Country and classical tracks.


Gaming

This is the section many of you have been waiting for with the info floating around stating the Xonar line of cards now supports higher levels of EAX namely 3,4,5 through ASUS’ newly released DS3D GX 2.0 drivers. Grab yourself a coffee or something a bit frostier and let’s see what we have with this card and these GX 2.0 driver routines.

Believe it or not, this card presented a bit of a mixed bag when gaming in both XP and Vista. When tested with compatibility applications like RM 3DS, the DX card does indeed show compatibility for EAX 1,2,3,4 and 5 through the Direct Sound API. OpenAL testing shows a similar output lineup but more on that later. There has been much information on the web regarding the DS3D GX 2.0 drivers and what they actually do and what function the user will have when using them.

The information we have on DS3D GX 2.0 is that the driver is NOT a exact copy of Creative Labs EAX 3,4,5. The GX 2.0 drivers intercept to outgoing Direct-Sound EAX gaming audio data and translate it to use the reverb and delay effects the Xonar cards have to offer. I would prefer not to get into a debate about EAX, but would like to say that these GX 2.0 drivers drastically improve the gaming audio effects previously available to Xonar users under the Vista OS. These effects are of course software based and will impact your CPU usage to some extent. Without the GX 2.0 drivers, direct sound game titles would have no environmental effects in the Vista. These gaming titles were chosen to see what the Xonar 7.1 DX was capable of when gaming and what exactly the GX 2.0 drivers could do when their effects needed to be applied in certain titles.


Bioshock


Bioshock produced some compatibility issues with the GX driver mode since when we first tested it gave no audio output whatsoever. After contacting ASUS, we received a patch for the drivers which gave full audio support in this game. Further testing yielded big lush reverb and directional audio cues as well as other environmental effects required to properly enjoy bioshock. The only noted audio anomaly was a bit of static during certain level loading screens. I found myself being drawn into the game without realizing it and finished off a few levels before I knew it.

This game also sounded exceptional with Dolby Headphone effects. The surround modeling effects produced by DH allows the user to hear enemies coming from behind with plain 2.0 headphones, this greatly increased the creepiness factor of an already creepy game.


PREY


I just started playing this game awhile back and don't know my way through it yet but it seems sound in the game is very integral to the story. Prey has very impressive audio based on what I have heard so far. This game has great immersion effects and the large environments which pull you right into the action.

The game loaded up, allowed configurations for the newly installed Xonar 7.1 DX and snapped right into using EAX HD. The first time the game was loaded with this card the game locked up half way into the alien abduction cutscene and while the game could be ctrl-alt-deleted out of, the lopping audio continued to play in the background and the system needed to be reset to stop the loop. After this initial looping issue there were no troubles whatsoever with this game. I could hear people screaming and yelling far back in the distance and far behind me when being abducted in the beginning levels of the game. The directional audio was spot on when moving around the level while listening to a stationary sound source. I was very impressed with the Xonar DX when playing this game since I deliberately looked for anomalies in imaging or directional audio and found none. If there were any glitches with audio or effects they were unnoticeable. The original issues with looping audio never resurfaced through all the remaining tests of this game.


Call of Duty 4


This game provided very nice sound with very realistic sound-scapes with the DX with the bullets seemingly whizzing by my ears and explosions shaking the desk. CoD4 has a very light audio setup page and there weren't any settings for advanced effects. This game sounded quite good on the Xonar DX and I noticed no anomalies or missing audio while playing through the levels. I was particularly impressed with the sound of the weapons produced by the DX and I found myself running from gun to gun and squeezing off a few rounds to audition the sound difference between each one. This game has great audio and was very enveloping in 5.1 speaker mode and while using the Dolby Headphone technology with the Sennheiser HD595's.


Call of Duty 2


Unfortunately, this game would not lock into EAX 3.0 mode even though there was no trouble with lower EAX versions during testing. I did notice the weapons and explosions sounded very clean, clear and realistic with the Xonar DX but it was still a shame about the EAX 3.0 mode. There was no noticeable clipping of the higher volume effects such as explosions and large caliber weapons fire. Although this game would not lock into EAX 3.0 mode the Xonar DX still made this game sound quite good and enveloping in the lower EAX 2.0 mode and the default Miles engine. I also tested this game with Dolby Headphone mode and as with the previous game tests I was equally impressed with what Dolby headphone offers; directional audio and rear surround effects that make you turn and look behind you. Perhaps as the GX 2.0 gamings drivers mature they might have less trouble with compatibility with these older classic gaming titles.


Theif: Deadly Shadows


This Game would not lock into EAX mode as well and it continued our frustrations with older titles. Audio Hardware Mixing was available but EAX Advanced HD and EAX multiple environments settings were greyed out and unavailable for selections. This Could be driver issue or audio engine is not compatible with GX 2.0. Without the big reverbs, stone environment reflections, occlusions and multiple reverb effects this game just didn't sound correct and was very difficult to play. I was disappointed as this remains one of my favorite games and sounds very good with the right sound hardware.