What to use for sound: Xonar DX or Supreme FX ?

[ajinta]

Hello I got myself a new Maximus 8 Ranger motherboard which has Supreme FX sound on it which is told to be best motherboard audio. In my current build I am usin Xonar DX souncard wit unofficial driver, because official actualy sound bad at least for me. I must state that I only use TOSLINK output and no headphones. I heve a 5.1 system with high quality floorstanding speakers and a Harman Kardon AVR5500 reciver. It is unit from 2001 and I wont replaci since it sounds better than most never ones, it has 16 kilos by the way. I am usinx xonar for Dolby digital, but Supreme FX uses DTS.neo. No problem for me because receiver can use both encodings. My question is if supreme FX isbetter than 8 year old card for optical listening or not and if someone has any experience. I am asking in advance as I am still waiting for my RAM to have all the parts for Skylake build.

 

[smorizio]

i would use the onboard then see if you want to use a sound card. i went with a refurb soundblaster z it was 20.00 at micro center. had a nice pre amp for headphones that i use. if you do go with sound make sure there usign the newest audio chipset or dsp.

 

[Bearmann]

Of course, you can try both and see. I have a 2.1 system and use my Xonar DX2 (I think that is the model) in my Hero VIII. A separate sound card is usually superior because there is less interference and because of the higher build quality. Once I saw a circuit layout of the sound path on a high end MB which had about 10 doodads on it versus the 100's found on a sound card. The question was "Which do you think is going to give you better sound?" You can probably find it if you search. By the way, I never listed to the on-board sound on the Hero VIII.