rezonsor

I tried and returned the Creative Audigy Rx this week. The sound quality simply wasn't not as good as my X-Fi Titanium, but the CMSS 3D worked exactly how I wanted it to. I am becoming increasingly desperate for an alternative to X-Fi Titanium sound card, as Windows 1709 is the latest version of Windows to properly support it. It is annoying that my amplifier only seems to output sound properly in the rear speakers when CMSS 3D is being used. Perhaps it is the age of it, being nearly 20 years old. But for me it is nice, ruined only by Creative and/or Microsoft's inability to support "legacy" hardware.

I have been considering the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Rx as it will likely have better support for Windows 10 and likely to have CMSS 3D. I am hoping that with some third party drivers, such as PAX, this will be an acceptable substitute for my Creative X-Fi Titanium. I'd appreciate any thoughts.

Can I buy just any DAC from Amazon? Where do I connect it to?

My speakers are connected to the amplifier, which in turn is connected to my sound card.

My audio setup is a 5.1 amplifier connected to my sound card with three 3.5mm cables. I currently have a Creative X-Fi Titanium which I am mostly happy with - except for driver support for Windows 10. It seems that with update to Windows the drivers become increasingly buggy. Sound cards i have tried in the past are Sound Blaster Z, Sound BlasterX AE-5 and Xonar D2X. The new generation of sound cards from Creative don't seem to support CMSS 3D - which is what I currently use and happy with me. I have spent many hours trying combinations of settings with buggy software, but nothing seems to match or even come close to my CMSS 3D. The Xonar D2X simply didn't work under Windows 10 for me. I'd really appreciate some advice in what I should buy. I'd rather not spend more than £200 in total, unless it's my only option that will give me what I want.