Should I swap my trusty old X-Fi Titanium for a more modern card?

[andydsm]

Hey guys

 

We all know for "regular Joes" the soundcard's importance has faded away throughout the years, since integrated audio solutions within modern motherboards seem to be good enough for everyone.

Now I am aware that the SupremeFX audio solution on my Maximus X Hero mobo, might be on par or even slightly better than the old Creative X-Fi Titanium I currently use (the regular one, not the HD version), I could not for the life of me figure out how to configure the drivers to work as I want, so I did indeed end up using the old X-Fi and with the Win 10 compatible drivers I have 0 issues so far and everything works perfectly.

 

My speaker setup is an Edifier S760D 5.1 system, connected via Toslink to the X-Fi, I know I can get a better 5.1 experience if I connect the speakers via RCA cables, but … I cannot find a solution for the dreaded ground loop hum, analog connections can get plagued with, so I ended up using the optical interface. For music listening, it ain't that big of a deal since it can support uncompressed PCM 24 bit stream in 2 channel mode which is more than good enough for listening to FLACs. 

Just for FYI, I don't use headphones, nor do I plan to, the discussion should solely concern speakers setup.

 

So my questions are: even though the 5.1 DTS stream via optical is slightly compressed, will I hear a real gain in sound quality if I swap the X-Fi Titanium for the EVGA Nu audio card or a more modern Creative internal or USB product, or anything else on the market?

During FLAC listening sessions, will there be a difference in the PCM 2 channel mode, via toslink?

Is my current card good enough for the class of speakers or they do they "deserve" better ?

 

Looking forward to your input guys

 

[rice guru]

If it works fine and you have no problems with it I say no. But if you do get better speakers then probably as the my would most likely benefit 

[Derkoli]

5 hours ago, andydsm said:

Hey guys

 

We all know for "regular Joes" the soundcard's importance has faded away throughout the years, since integrated audio solutions within modern motherboards seem to be good enough for everyone.

Now I am aware that the SupremeFX audio solution on my Maximus X Hero mobo, might be on par or even slightly better than the old Creative X-Fi Titanium I currently use (the regular one, not the HD version), I could not for the life of me figure out how to configure the drivers to work as I want, so I did indeed end up using the old X-Fi and with the Win 10 compatible drivers I have 0 issues so far and everything works perfectly.

 

My speaker setup is an Edifier S760D 5.1 system, connected via Toslink to the X-Fi, I know I can get a better 5.1 experience if I connect the speakers via RCA cables, but … I cannot find a solution for the dreaded ground loop hum, analog connections can get plagued with, so I ended up using the optical interface. For music listening, it ain't that big of a deal since it can support uncompressed PCM 24 bit stream in 2 channel mode which is more than good enough for listening to FLACs. 

Just for FYI, I don't use headphones, nor do I plan to, the discussion should solely concern speakers setup.

 

So my questions are: even though the 5.1 DTS stream via optical is slightly compressed, will I hear a real gain in sound quality if I swap the X-Fi Titanium for the EVGA Nu audio card or a more modern Creative internal or USB product, or anything else on the market?

During FLAC listening sessions, will there be a difference in the PCM 2 channel mode, via toslink?

Is my current card good enough for the class of speakers or they do they "deserve" better ?

 

Looking forward to your input guys

 

To get rid of the ground loop issue you can get ground loop isolators for each 3.5mm out on the soundcard, then convert these to rca. All optical is heavily compressed for surround as optical can only carry 2 channels of uncompressed audio and 5.1 is 6 channels of audio, you wont get any improvement with a new sound card if you are using optical as optical is digital so it either works or it doesnt.

[andydsm]

19 hours ago, Derkoli said:

To get rid of the ground loop issue you can get ground loop isolators for each 3.5mm out on the soundcard, then convert these to rca. All optical is heavily compressed for surround as optical can only carry 2 channels of uncompressed audio and 5.1 is 6 channels of audio, you wont get any improvement with a new sound card if you are using optical as optical is digital so it either works or it doesnt.

Thanks for your input Derkoli

 

Do you think these speakers can benefit from a better sound card if the ground loop issue gets solved, as you suggested and use them via the analog interface, or do you believe they are not good enough to require a higher end sound card ?

 

Also, do you think if I buy an external audio card the ground loop issue will be gone, or is it caused on the speaker's end of things?