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Bug Report (already emailed) posted on forum see if anyone has any advice

Lothos
Level 7

‎05-20-2013 09:04 AM - last edited on ‎03-06-2024 09:06 PM by Community Admin

Audio Card Model Name XONAR D2
- Xonar Phoebuss

BIOS
- 1014

Driver
- 8.0.1.29

Audio Card S/N BBYACM002029-002038
- C4YACM004795

Motherboard / System P9X79 Deluxe
- ASUS Crosshair V Formula

Motherboard BIOS version 906
- 1703

O.S. Information (XP/Vista/7, SP version) Win7-64 SP1
- Windows 8 Professional 64 bit (all updates are installed)

VGA BIOS version 80.04.09.00.01
- Unknown

VGA Driver version 300.83
- NVIDIA 320.14

Previous audio card model XONAR DG
- Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum Champion Edition

Previous audio card driver version (completely uninstalled) version 1.0
- Yes completely gone

CPU overlocking (Yes/No) No
- Yes

GPU overlocking (Yes/No) No
- Yes (very little though)

OS audio setting (Sample Rates) Sample Rate 44.1, Speaker 5.1
- 192k Sample Rate
- 5.1 Speaker

Output Device Connected (Include brand/model name) SPDIF to Pioneer amp + 5.2 home theatre speakers
- Standard connection from the back of the card

Input Device Connected (Include brand/model name) Logitech microphone
- Standard connection from the back of the card

Content Used (Game/Music/Movie) MIB 2 ; At 00:15:20 sound comes from rear end speaker
- 6 Movie tested (muted)


I just switched over the weekend to this card and I am very impressed. I ran into a few minor things. If you play several movies simulatneous and have them all muted the Sound Card is still processing the sound and applying the filters. This will cause the system to lock up eventually and crash. Under X-Fi sound card it did not do this.

Effects filters appears to need performance enhancements. Same scenario as previous paragraph but with sound turned on. If you apply the effects you take a big performance hit and some of the movies actual stop playing until the system finally locks up.

In both scenarios cases if I turned Effects off and set the card down to 16 bit and the lowest Sample Rate available it then works perfectly fine. Under the Creative Labs X-Fi (my old card) it could handle all of this just fine. My guess is that someone needs to look over the filtering code for performance enhancements. My test is a bit extreme but I was very curious to see what it can do and if it was on par with my old sound card. The sound quality is way better on the new card (ASUS made a great sound card). Just need to push these performance enhancements to get it locked down.

One last note, my BIOS is still at 1014 and on the forums I read it shoudl be 1015. The driver software is not updating it and it was a clean install. Would suggest a flash utility of some sort.

Thanks for your time
Lothos
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WTC
Level 7

‎05-20-2013 09:43 AM

Your sound card is Xonar D2 or Xonar Phoebus?
How many effects you've turned on?
Setting bit-depth to 16 or 24 bits makes no difference because all effect working with 32-bit floating-point data.
If you turning any of the effects on, you should set sampling rate to 44.1K or 48KHz. If you set the output sampling rate to 192kHz and you're playing several movies (assuming they got 48kHz stereo audio data), Windows audio system will first up-sample all the audio data to 192KHz, user-mode driver component will down-sample it to 48KHz, convert it to 5.1ch, do the necessary "local" effect process on the 6ch streams (one 6ch stream for each movie), up-sample it back to 192kHz (6ch data now), mix them into one 6ch stream (by Windows audio system), then down-sample the mixed stream to 48KHz again, do necessary "global" effects, then up-sample back to 192Khz finally. All these done in CPU, and you may imagine how much work there is.

One thing you may try is set output sampling rate to 44.1 or 48KHz and turn the effects on and see if the performance is better than the 192KHz case.
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Lothos
Level 7

‎05-20-2013 12:57 PM

Its the Xonar Phoebus

Also I tried with the effects turned off. If Creative Labs sound card with similar specs can handle it then this card should as well. I am 100% positive it is just a performance/driver issue.
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WTC
Level 7

‎05-20-2013 04:40 PM

Yes, I agree that there's performance issue with the Phoebus driver. In your test case I would guess the most possible cause is the sampling rate conversion. Like I said, you may see the difference setting 48K and 192K output with the same set of effects turned on.
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AVtemp
Level 10

‎05-20-2013 11:52 PM

I don`t recommend use 16bit mode, as it drops SNR (signal-to-noise ratio), dynamic range, THD, etc. Try to use at least 48KHz and 24bit mode. Of course it`s always better to match sample rate.
Phoebus has better electronic components (improves sound), but in some cases it`s even worse than old Creative cards.
P.S. Don`t expect them to improve effects.
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Lothos
Level 7

‎05-21-2013 06:21 AM

Yea, I think you guys are right. It is not the bit but the sampling rate turning it down to 44.1k solves the issue. So it just sounds like the ASUS driver team needs to spend some time doing performance work on their code.

I am having some EAX issues, it seems like it caps out at EAX2 and in Neverwinter Nights 2 it detects it but it does not appear to work with it as it locks up if EAX is selected.

Oh and FYI FIFA 2013 locks up if you have the EAX features in the ASUS console turned on. If you turn that off inside the ASUS panel then FIFA 2013 works fine.
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