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Topic: Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo (Read 3661 times) previous topic - next topic
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Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo

Hi,

I'm using a Asus Xonar Essence One external DAC to power my Sennheiser HD 650 which I use for my desktop computer. And because I'm gaming quite a lot, watching movies and whatnot on my desktop and the Asus Xonar Essence One completely lacks any kind of surround mixing / virtualisation of any sort I decided to keep using my dedicated audio card (Creative Titanium HD) and use SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) to the DAC in order to get DPS from the Creative software providing me with surround mixing / virtualisation using Creatives own CMSS:3D for gaming and THX TrueStudio for movies and music (I don't use mixing / virtualisation for music though).

It's all working great, but I have this annoying problem with audio drop-outs when using SPDIF (Optical / Toslink) from into the Asus Xonar Essence One. I have verified the problem using another audio card, as well has re-installing both the drivers and the operating system and the problem keeps existing.

It's rather hard to describe the problem, but audio like the typical default Windows notification sound you'd get every time you receive a notification telling you that you have got a new e-mail in Outlook, or a new message in Skype etc.. The very same audio you get when you are in the volume mixer in Windows and click the volume bar to check the volume levels will skip and have audio drop-outs. I will hear the first portion of the notification, but very noise and the middle portion of the notification sound I can't hear at all and then I suddenly hear the last part of the notification sound clearly.


I have no issues with audio playback while gaming, while Skyping or anything. It's just that when I have these small burst of audio and nothing else playing it's almost like the DAC is struggling to grab and playback the audio for some awkward reason. I have tried with different optical cables but the problem will simply not go away.



Do you have any clue what might cause this problem and how to deal with it?

Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo

Reply #1 –
Depending on your operating system/selected driver API it's possible that the (S/PDIF) audio path is closed automatically when no audio available ... when you then play a short system sound through S/PDIF port, the sender (X-Fi) and receiver (Xonar) needs to be opened, initalized and synchronized ... which may lead to temporary issues in playback.

Have you tried by putting the global playback system to use, lets say, ASIO device for output? I'm not 100% sure if Creative ASIO works differently in this but worth to try. You could try this software http://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Voicemeeter/banana.htm for the job.

Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo

Reply #2 –
Using the Creative ASIO driver seems to cause all kinds of various glitches in the audio. Using Game Mode + Creative ASIO in VoiceMeter causes all kinds of glitchy noises during testing, but changing to Entertianment Mode or Audio Creation Mode makes things much better but without bit-matching activated in the Creative settings there is a lot of "halo" on the audio, it's pretty much useless and activating bit-matching makes the audio go all glitchy like when using game mode.

I have no clue why the Creative ASIO solution is behaving like this, testing with the Asus Xonar ASIO drivers using USB directly to the Xonar Essence One is working perfectly. All the drop-outs are gone though, but that doesn't really help when the audio is going haywire when utilising the Creative ASIO drivers.

Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo

Reply #3 –
I played around with the VoiceMeter Banana settings and switched from Float32LSB to Int32LSB on the "Virtual ASIO Type" and now it seems to be working with Creative ASIO.


EDIT:

Nevermind. It worked using the Windows Audio test but as soon as I tried to playback anything on my system the audio went haywire again.

Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo

Reply #4 –
I suppose you could find the settings for ASIO (do you need bit-matched mode with ASIO, buffer sizes (ASIO control panel), samplerate matching, etc) but you also could try how's it with WDM/KS or with other available modes available in Banana ?

Why I suggested this software is just that it might help to keep the audio path open.

Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo

Reply #5 –
It works with WDM, but it seems like it eliminates all DPS like CMSS:3D.

Using SPDIF (Optical/Toslink) between Creative Titanium HD and Asus Xo

Reply #6 –
Quote from: RamGuy on
It works with WDM, but it seems like it eliminates all DPS like CMSS:3D.


That's possible an issue because of WDM is kind of an old API which was replaced by WASAPI after Windows XP. My integrated VIA HD Audio (1828S) gives error when trying WDM output device in Banana.

When using kernel mode drivers (WDM/KS, WASAPI Exclusive/ASIO) you usually loose the DSP processing features (example: old Creative Audigy 2 ASIO driver allowed output through DSP FX but only when special FX channels were used).