My PC sound is terrible

pete_conrad · Aug 31, 2014

I had an I/O failure, so I upgraded the Core ( CPU,MoBo,Ram). The old but still fantastic sound card will no longer work with the new equipment due to interface, so I bought an ASUS Xonar. I get clipping and garbled noises. In looking at replacements I'm faced with no good choices in PCI Express interface, thus I have started looking at External solutions. I'm having trouble telling if an internet ready stereo receiver like the Onkyo TX-NR626 or Yamaha RX-V777BT will take all sounds from the computer. I have also looked at Sonos but it wasn't clear from the support response if it will out put all sounds. I am running Windows 7 64bit Pro, on an Asus Sabertooth Z77.
Update: When I hooked my Vinyl Record player to the line IN of the motherboard audio chipset, the resultant was flat. I also had intermittent garbled noises. I chased drivers and software to no avail. The pre-amp built into the turntable checks out good. A friend has one of those USB Vinyl players so I shipped them off; but, her converter only makes MP3 thus all the fidelity is gone.
I checked to insure I have the card in a PCI-E slot. The slot is the x1, Northbound of the first x16 slot. Omega HTC at one time made a PCI-E sound card, but, it no longer appears to be for sale anywhere reputable. I have thought about other sound cards and was left with more questions than answers.

wildfire707 · Aug 31, 2014

You can run into trouble if the Xonar card you got is PCI and not PCI Express or the PCI Express slot that it is plugged into does not have enough bandwidth available (you can try a different slot).

The on board sound for the Sabertooth Z77 isn't stellar, but it is still has acceptable output.

Basically, the question is why do you need better sound than the motherboard provides? I use a USB connected Bose speaker system myself, which is its own sound device - but I like it for watching movies and playing games

pete_conrad · Sep 1, 2014

wildfire707 :

I want to feed in signal from the Vinyl record player. I have tried the USB variants with limited success. Also when I play my nicer audio files (24 and 192 bit) the sound isn't so good. I resolved some trouble with the video card taking audio to send up the HDMI cord to the monitor, but, the sound still isn't where I would like.

wildfire707 · Sep 1, 2014

Okay, there is a guide on how to digitize records at B&H (they have done audio equipment for a long time):

http

/www.bhphotovideo.com/find/newsLetter/vinyl-records.jsp

pete_conrad · Sep 2, 2014

wildfire707 :

Thank you for the article. I have done further troubleshooting. It now appears the sound card and the motherboard audio chipset can't doing anything better than 16 bit sound. iTunes and VLC player both clip badly when playing a 96KHz/24bit audio files from HDtracks. To isolate I played a ALAC converted from a CD in both VLC and iTunes to nearly the same result. What card or reciever should I use ( but not break the bank) to solve the bad outputs?

wildfire707 · Sep 3, 2014

pete_conrad :

Your best sound quality would probably be from an ASUS Sonar STX, but that is a $180 sound card. You can get almost as good quality from the ASUS Sonar DX for $80 at:

http

/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132006

The technical page about this card is at:

http

/www.asus.com/Sound_Cards_and_DigitaltoAnalog_Converters/Xonar_DX/specifications/

Basically, it can record up to 192KHz audio at 24 bit sampling. It has a 116 SNR rating, which is much better than the built in audio on your motherboard. I don't normally try and digitize at above 192Khz / 16 bit rate myself, so I can't say for certain that this will work - but it looks like it should.

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