Configuring Asus Xonar Essence ST for best results

[Bing Crosby]

Hello, this is my first post! This is a great forum and opened my mind as to how to create a high end source from your computer without spending much. Some people in Hi-Fi stores don't believe me!

 

I have the above card installed with the 7.12.8.17731 beta Bit-Perfect Driver on Windows 7 64 bit. I use Foobar with EAC ripped flac files. I wish to set this up for best sound quality and have the ability to play back files of different sample rates and bit depth, such as those offered by HRx. I would also like to avoid software re-sampling, but I don't mind hardware re-sampling or up/over-sampling. I am using Sennheiser HD 650s with this card.

 

At the moment, I have Asus control center set to 96 kHz Sample rate and the highest headphone gain setting, Foobar output device set to Speakers 'Asus Xonar Essence St Audio Device', and Windows Control Panel/HardwareandSound/.../Advanced/Default Format set to 24bit/96 kHz. With this Windows setting all of the Asus control centre equalizers and sound effects don't work (which I guess is a good thing), but they do with the 16bit/44.1kHz setting.

 

When playing music, sometimes the music skips a bit. When booting up or resuming from sleep or when changing settings in the Asus control center, a white noise click is heard, even if the volume control is set to zero.

 

Initially, I was able to blindly tell the difference between 24 bit/ 16 bit and 320 mp3, but now I can't for some reason?!

 

Do I need to install ASIO or is that included in the driver?

 

What other steps should I take to ensure that no/minimal software re-sampling occurs and to maximise sound quality and minimise skips and clicks?

 

Thanks and kind regards,

 

Peter.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bing Crosby]

Sorry - I forgot to say that I am using the bs2b crossfeed plugin in Foobar.

 

And should this topic be in general?

 

[audiofilodigital]

Hi Peter,

 

As far as I know ASIO is the standard driver included.

 

 

Best wishes,