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Yoda_Blues (263)     Feb 09, 2009 - 09:35 am | Edited on Feb 09, 2009 - 09:52 am

Because the only X-Fi I have will not do Dolby Digital Live. The Xonar Essence does the same thing as CMSS3D with it's Game Mode enabled and GX2.5. Tie that in with DDL and you have true 5.1 over optical as opposed virtual 5.1 over analog. Also, the Xonar is a superior card when it comes to analog headphone with its independent powered amplifier and OpAMPs. Tom » Login to reply to this  sbuckler (28)   Feb 10, 2009 - 03:08 am But I don't want to have to spend > $100 on a mix amp if my sound card can do the mix for me. Why output DD5.1 to a box that then applies effects to make stereo headphones (which is what A40 has) sound like 5.1 when my sound card could already do that. Also I don't care if it's "really" Dolby Digital, what I want is 3d audio positioning in my games, I don't care how it's done, but the winner is the one that does it best. Hence my original request to compare to the most common gaming sound card - the creative Xfi. If start up L4D and can't tell whether it's the A40 mix amp, or the Xfi CMSS3D then why should I buy the mix amp? Remember too the A40 headphones are not meant to be as good as equivalently priced audiophile ones ... » Login to reply to this  Yoda_Blues (263)     Feb 10, 2009 - 03:21 am That's a valid point, I won't contend that. We were going to try to get a headset round-up together anyway after we got a few more sets on-board and I will do my best to include a comparison such as you described. And the most common sound card is actually on-board. X-Fi/Add-in's have lost alot of the market, even the hardcore one, in the past few years as on-board solutions have caught up in terms of audio quality. And you should buy the Mixamp if you want a surround headset that works with all 3 major platforms (PC/360/PS3). If you aren't interested in that, or only game on PC, then it's probably not in your interest to look into it. » Login to reply to this

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froggz (643)    Feb 07, 2009 - 02:41 pm

I recently purchased the Turtle beach HPA2 which sounds like what you're looking for. They are very comfortable and they sound great. You can actually feel the bass during explosions and they vibrate pretty good too, helping in the total immersion of the games I played. Not to mention these are cheaper than the ones on this review. Link: http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/efhpa2/home.aspx » Login to reply to this  Grayskull (8)   Feb 08, 2009 - 02:58 am | Edited on Feb 08, 2009 - 12:36 pm one problem though... unless the source is in DD/DTS 5.1, you'd get DD/DTS 5.1 sound via analog. the cards from Auzentech ( www.auzentech.com ) encode any stereo source into DD or DTS 5.1 sound, but this only works via Optical/Coax. think Nvidia's Soundstorm back with the nForce 2 motherboards, same idea so in order for the turtlebeach and Zalman headphones to work with the soundcard i have, i have to connect the card to a DD/DTS decoder that then outputs via ana log, such as a home theater reciever that has preouts, which then go to the Zalman headphone amp, then to the zalman headphones ... » Login to reply to this

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