- Mar 15, 2007
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There are plenty of people that don't think soundcards are worth having at all. My main argument for having one has always been that a pair of headphones with a good binaurial algorithm improves my gaming, the better I can position sound the more situational awareness I have. Its something that onboard Realtek's do very poorly if at all so its really only a technology found on decent sound cards today or software solutions from other firms like Razor.
Recently I found a comparison video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BxO9cd-sYA) comparing the various surround sound simulators and that combined with feedback on head-fi suggested I would likely find the Soundblaster Z series cards better at positioning sounds than anything else. Listening to it I noticed that SBX pro at 30% was by far the best surround sound effect for me, it was quite noticeable from the demo video even with youtube's rubbish sound quality. So I got a Soundblaster ZX.
My previous sound set is:
Xonar D2X sound card
Sennheiser HD598 headphones
Dolby headphone using 7.1 -> 2.0, normally DH1 or DH2 sometimes depending on the game.
My replacement sound set is:
Soundblaster ZX sound card
Sennheiser HD598 headphones
SBX Pro 30% 5.1 -> 2.0, no crystallizer or other effects like bass boost.
This was a notable improvement in positioning when I went from an Xfi music to the Xonar D2X. I never really found CMSS to be that good having come from an Aureal Vortex 2 but it was all there was available at the time. The Xonar with Dolby Headphone was an improvement but I wasn't happy at any point with it. The positioning was not great and I struggled to pick out explosion directions and footsteps in the middle of the chaos in BF3 and BF4 and other FPS games.
Today I installed and tested the Soundblaster ZX, both cards are still in the system so I could test them side by side. I played a few rounds of BF4. The performance of the ZX is night and day better than the Xonar D2X. I place explosions reliably, I can hear footsteps much better and gunshot positioning is much more reliable and accurate. The ability to position is so much better and it resulted in by far my best K/D by nearly 2x. I also had multiple kill streaks of 13 kills, something I have never achieved before. I attribute this climb to the sound card and to SBX Pro, its amazing in comparison to Dolby Headphone and its not even funny how much better the positioning works when compared to onboard sound. It dramatically improved my situational awareness and my combat effectiveness. I almost always knew where everything was and was happening and its something I have struggled with using the Xonar.
Music is about a the same, I don't notice the difference (my Xonar has a better SNR) really and it doesn't matter all that much considering the point of the card is games. In games there is no doubt in my mind that SBX pro is superior to Dolby Headphone, which in itself is superior to CMSS and that beats Realtek's decisively as well.
To get surround sound to work over headphones well with such a card in BF4 I needed to set the ZX to SBX mode, 30%, turn off the crystallizer and bass boost and other SBX effects, set the card to headphones and then edit BF4 config with the following changes:
PROFSAVE_profile:
GstAudio.AudioQuality 4
GstAudio.SoundSystemSize 51
GstAudio.StereoMode 0
For the Xonar you are better off using GstAudio.SoundSystemSize 71 and its 7.1 to 2.0 setting for DH.
Anyhow wanted to share my thoughts on this card, a definite improvement over my Xonar and Xfi.
Recently I found a comparison video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BxO9cd-sYA) comparing the various surround sound simulators and that combined with feedback on head-fi suggested I would likely find the Soundblaster Z series cards better at positioning sounds than anything else. Listening to it I noticed that SBX pro at 30% was by far the best surround sound effect for me, it was quite noticeable from the demo video even with youtube's rubbish sound quality. So I got a Soundblaster ZX.
My previous sound set is:
Xonar D2X sound card
Sennheiser HD598 headphones
Dolby headphone using 7.1 -> 2.0, normally DH1 or DH2 sometimes depending on the game.
My replacement sound set is:
Soundblaster ZX sound card
Sennheiser HD598 headphones
SBX Pro 30% 5.1 -> 2.0, no crystallizer or other effects like bass boost.
This was a notable improvement in positioning when I went from an Xfi music to the Xonar D2X. I never really found CMSS to be that good having come from an Aureal Vortex 2 but it was all there was available at the time. The Xonar with Dolby Headphone was an improvement but I wasn't happy at any point with it. The positioning was not great and I struggled to pick out explosion directions and footsteps in the middle of the chaos in BF3 and BF4 and other FPS games.
Today I installed and tested the Soundblaster ZX, both cards are still in the system so I could test them side by side. I played a few rounds of BF4. The performance of the ZX is night and day better than the Xonar D2X. I place explosions reliably, I can hear footsteps much better and gunshot positioning is much more reliable and accurate. The ability to position is so much better and it resulted in by far my best K/D by nearly 2x. I also had multiple kill streaks of 13 kills, something I have never achieved before. I attribute this climb to the sound card and to SBX Pro, its amazing in comparison to Dolby Headphone and its not even funny how much better the positioning works when compared to onboard sound. It dramatically improved my situational awareness and my combat effectiveness. I almost always knew where everything was and was happening and its something I have struggled with using the Xonar.
Music is about a the same, I don't notice the difference (my Xonar has a better SNR) really and it doesn't matter all that much considering the point of the card is games. In games there is no doubt in my mind that SBX pro is superior to Dolby Headphone, which in itself is superior to CMSS and that beats Realtek's decisively as well.
To get surround sound to work over headphones well with such a card in BF4 I needed to set the ZX to SBX mode, 30%, turn off the crystallizer and bass boost and other SBX effects, set the card to headphones and then edit BF4 config with the following changes:
PROFSAVE_profile:
GstAudio.AudioQuality 4
GstAudio.SoundSystemSize 51
GstAudio.StereoMode 0
For the Xonar you are better off using GstAudio.SoundSystemSize 71 and its 7.1 to 2.0 setting for DH.
Anyhow wanted to share my thoughts on this card, a definite improvement over my Xonar and Xfi.
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