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Thanks for the update. I moved you comment to your initial report. If you have other things you want to add that relate to your initial report please reply to that comment.
Asrock Taichi X570(BIOS v2.7)+3900X+ASUS STX II in the last PCIe slot;onboard audio R1120 is not disabled
Windows 10 64 bits(up to date) --> no issue
Linux LMDE4 --> even easier, no need to install driver, ALSA is working just excellent, y must change only the output device.
It works fine unless you enable DMA remapping support (required for Kernel DMA protection, an optional feature in newer versions of Windows). Then it seems to be working fine, except there's no sound being produced.
Please provide your motherboard, sound card and in which PCIe slot you've placed the sound card.
Asus Prime B450 (BIOS 0604) Xubuntu 19.10 linux. Onboard audio disabled. System restarts when Audacity runs about 50% of the time. Can hear the input or output select relay click right before system restarts. No restart with Windows 10 / Adobe Audition or when not using Audacity.
What Xonar card do you have? What CPU? Have you tried any of the possible solutions, particularly 3, 4 and 7 (idea adapted to Linux of course)?
Sorry for the lack of detail. Xonar Essence STX II, Ryzen 2600.
I have tried updating BIOS to ASUS' latest for this mobo, no change.
I tried setting the PCIEX to Gen 2. Only options on this BIOS are 2 or 4, and it set the mode across all slots. Still reboots system about 1 time in 4.
I will try moving to a different slot - it will be hit-or-miss, since I don't have details about hardware layout.
I do not want to disable recording. I bought this card primarily for the better recording capability than either onboard sound or the older card I previously used. I do a *lot* of recording.
I am suggesting disabling only the recording devices that you don't use. Keep only Microphone or Line In depending on which one you use.
Thanks for the clarification. In Linux, there does not appear to be a way to disable individual inputs (or hide them from the OS/applications) so I think I'm hosed in that department, also.
For others with this motherboard, an Anadtech review notes that only the top PCIe x16 slot is directly connected to the CPU. All other slots are routed through the B450 chipset. This is likely due to an NVMe slot using the other CPU connection lanes, and the budget nature of this system board.
I hate to say it, but I'm about to throw in the towel and look for another sound device. Asus has spent a lot of attention on giving good DAC performance and sound quality on the outputs but maybe recording is just an afterthought. That it is so thoroughly incompatible with one of their own mainboards just adds to the frustration.
For disabling the recording devices, maybe this would work.
There is another way, which has a chance of success on your system. If you don't use the M.2 slot, you could buy a M.2 to PCIe adapter and plug the card there. Some info regarding this here.
I've used the PulseAudio mixer to select/enable Line In recording - it's the only way Audacity actually gets audio in. Pulse only lets you select one recording source, so the others are "disabled". One problem happens when Audacity tries to take direct control of the hardware using ALSA. It doesn't work, but it does cause the system to try to select an input, which causes the system to reboot.
And of course, I use an M.2 NVMe SSD... 😐
Maybe you can try an m.2 -> adapter for your sound card an an pci-e -> m.2 adapter for your nvme, maybe not the finest solution, it is a try to keep the D2X working.
I tried a lot of sound cards, nothing sounds like the D2X or STX II, it is terrible. The drivers are very old too, hope they keep working in future.
I'm using it under Linux, so old drivers are rarely depricated; even when removed from the kernel, adventurous people tend to keep them alive as add-ins.
Not thrilled with the idea of swapping NVMe and sound card. I may just have to suffer, or try to find some really good, professional audio ADC instead.
I've reached out to ASUS USA to see if they can be of any help. I've tried two x1 slots and the second x4 slot but have not swapped video to put it in a CPU (non-chipset) slot. I did find that hard-setting mode 2 in BIOS, and disabling the serial port, has helped some but it's still not stable in any real sense of the word.
Well, here's ASUS's take on the issue: "STXII/STXII 7.1 is not compatible with X370/B350/X470/B450/X399/X570 series MB."
https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1036071
ASUS has elected to bury this in a FAQ instead of stating on the product information page. Sounds like anything we do is, at best, a workaround. I wish I had enough smarts to understand the underlying issue.
Well that is just super ain't it! I have the Essence STX II box right here and it lists AMD Athlon 1400 or faster CPU as it's requirements. I spent a lot of money on the card, and the requirements are incorrectly stated? Are there any lawyers in here? Is this grounds for a CAL against Asus for misleading consumers ?
I had exactly the same thought. FWIW, it *does* work with Athlon / AM3 systems, or at least it did on mine. I only discovered the problem when upgrading to an ASUS AM4 B450 motherboard. I gotta think, in our litiginous society, there's a law firm somewhere that would take this case. Please save your box...
Lol I have all my product boxes, much to my wife's chagrin... I will certainly keep the sound card box!
Asus has stayed engaged on Twitter. Now that I've demonstrated the compatibility issue (no problem in Prime B450-Plus with EVGA Nu audio, no problem with Essence STX II in MSI 970-G45 motherboard) they've offered to "escalate" and asked for my email. It'll be fun to see where this goes.
Good for you for insisting. I wanted to write to you to suggest that you insist because it seems like a motherboard problem and other motherboards do not have issues (generally speaking about this reboot issues, at least in case of other AM4 motherboards we don't know how they perform in this specific instance).
Let us know how it goes.
Btw, how pathetic it is, that more and more we have to contact the companies on Twitter to actually get some support.
I've submitted a detailed description of the environment and issue, in a form they provided. Now we wait for their support team to figure out what's happening.
Asus Support was... unsupportive. Their response would have been hilarious if it wasn't so sad. We *know* there's an incompatibility. We want to know how to work around it. If the sales literature, web site, *anything*, indicated to a potential customer about a compatibility problem, then it's our fault if we buy things that can't work together. But they don't. The only mention I can ever find is in a post-sales/support web site. I've seen class-action law suits triggered for less than this.
After two weeks of wrestling with Asus tech support via email and Twitter DMs, here is a summary of their response:
"I do apologize if you have proactively asked for update. I am writing this email to provide you an update about your ongoing case. In accordance to the recommendation of our engineers: Please advise the customer that there's a compatibility issue and may share the FAQ below:
[Audio Card] System may reboot when switching the output of STX II/STX II 7.1 on X370/B350/X470/B450/X399/X570 series motherboard.
https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1036071/"
And
"Unfortunately, if the products aren't compatible we'd be unable to make them work together. What we would advise that you return the card."
I bought the Essence STX II in 2016, and the incompatible motherboard last year. Neither are returnable, and returning the motherboard is not feasible in any case, because it appears Asus themselves say the Essence STX II is incompatible with pretty much all Ryzen chipsets (see the FAQ). I would strongly recommend we amend this post to indicate that even Asus says we shouldn't use the two things together, and that if people want to use the Essence STX II, they should avoid Ryzen (and vice-versa.)
We should at least do what we can to help others avoid this dilemma.
First, instead of writing new comments please use the reply button when replying to an existing discussion thread. I had to manually move 3 of your last 4 comments. The other one is this which is fine as a new comment.
Sorry to hear that. Guess with ASUS it was a long shot anyway.
Since the start of the post, I mention that pairing a Xonar card and a Ryzen motherboard might not work. I will see if I can change "Other info & ASUS's response to these compatibility issues" section a bit to reflect how badly ASUS doesn't want anyone to buy their motherboards. Unfortunately, there are too many people that just buy new ASUS products even if they personally had problems and are disappointed by the lack of support of their previous ASUS products.
Please accept my apologies for mis-threading. I'm thinking I'll not spend too much more time here, since I won't be using the Essence any more, but I thank you and the other members of the forum who are fighting this issue. I wish you only the best.
No problem. Sorry could not do more. Thanks for sharing your experience. All the best to you too.
and the final word from Asus: "I understand how you feel. We wouldn't want this single experience to have you lose your trust in our brand, however we are unable to grant your request of a refund. For a refund you may try to contact your place of purchase to initiate a return if its still within its return period."
If you use Ryzen, DON'T BUY THIS SOUND CARD. (take a look at the EVGA Nu audio card as an alternative that does work, at least with Windows, and can work with Ubuntu with correct firmware.)
I have an MSI B450 GAMING PLUS MAX/Ryzen 5 3600 and Asus Xonar D2X with the latest BIOS and although I can get the sound to work the volume seems to be capped to a maximum of maybe 5% of the normal total. Has anyone had the same issue? Has anyone been able to fix it?
The sound works, it's just very, very, terribly low.
Make sure the card is properly seated in the PCIe slot and check that the power connector is properly plugged into the card and to the PSU if you have modular cables.
asus tuf x570 wifi bios 1407 work fine with W10 1825 v1.81a r2! 1816/1823 v1.80a r3 instant reboot and dont install.
Admin edit: Xonar D2X
Original report here.
today unluckily my pc reboot when play video from steam site.
I moved your comment from a new comment to a reply to the original discussion. Please use the REPLY button on the right of the comment you are replying to.
You still haven't told us which of the possible solutions have you tried, particularly in your case 3, 7 and maybe 4.
I've learned more about the Essence STX II under Windows 10 and why it might be stable for some people. It seems that as long as the card is not asked to change modes (input select, output select, change sample rate) then it's relatively stable. So if, in your installation, the card is set to one operating mode and stays that way, it is less likely to crash. I've also discovered that with current drivers, the Essence STX II will only record at 44.1 KHz sample rate. It does not matter what sample rate is selected in the Xonar control panel. It also does not matter what sample rate or bit depth is selected in my recording software (I've tried using Adobe Audition 1.5) The file is properly sized, but the incoming stream is brick-walled at 22KHz. This might also explain why some people see fewer errors - the card may not be changing modes as requested. In Ubuntu Linux, using Pulse Audio, it *is* possible to change sample rate by editing the Pulse audio daemon.conf default entries. About 50% of the time, my system reboots when this mode-set happens. When it doesn't , the line out has audible "crackles" during the mode-set activity. I'm not sure if this helps the discussion but maybe if someone from Asus is tracking this thread, the added info will help.
GIGABYTE X570 UD rev 1.0
Xonar DGX and onboard LAN (Realtek GBE ) won't work together, tested with different BIOSes, fresh W10 install. Tested with the latest drivers (1.81a r2)
Please provide more details. Like what happens when you have both installed? How did you figure out that they don't work together? Have you tried downloading the latest Realtek network drivers from the Realtek website? Did you installed the UNi Xonar drivers with Normal, Low DPC Latency or C-Media Panel configuration?
I have X370-A and I've never had issues with the original drivers and I don't have issues with latest custom(1.81a) as well.
The motherboard is ASUS Prime X370-A? Which Xonar card do you have? Which CPU?
Yes, that's my mobo.
Sorry forgot to mention I have Xonar DGX.
Oh and Ryzen 5 1600.
Windows 10 1909(18363.836), probably will upgrade to 2004 pretty soon, if it doesn't have some stupid bugs.
Do you need any other specs? I can probably provide you with whatever you require and do some testing if necessary.
Asus Essence STX II ver. 8.1.11.5, Windows 10 x64 ver. 1909, MSI MEG X570 ACE ver. E7C35AMS 1.80, AMD 3900X.
I made the following changes in the BIOS last week:
Settings\Advanced\PCI Subsystem Settings
PCI-E1 - Max Link Speed > Gen 3
PCI-E3 - Max Link Speed > Gen 3
Chipset Gen Switch > Gen 3
Above 4G memory/Crypto Currency mining > Enabled
I have not had a soundcard induced reboot since, as of right now. Discord was almost guaranteed to cause a reboot, but has not done so since these changes were made.
I wish there was an option to upload images here, I suck at typing...lol
I hope this info can help others with a similar hardware setup. I would appreciate any feed back should you decide to try the settings.
You can probably use links to external img host servers like imgbb (like this https://ibb.co/WWsjbdW + I don't think wordpress allows embedding)
Thanks for the tip!
That's the way.
In which PCIe slot is the STX II card plugged in?
Thank you for the information. I also want to thank you for the donation. I've put so much time into this page, it's nice to know that there are at least some that really appreciate my efforts.
My Essence STX II is in the bottom slot, which is on my MOBO, PCI-E5. It is a full length slot, but it is the only slot available as my 2 GPUs cover the other available slots. Still haven't had any reboots since making the changes listed above.
You are very welcome for the donation. Sorry I couldn't do more. Tough times for a lot of folks nowadays. But I do greatly appreciate the info you have gathered here.
In your case I think it's safe to revert the PCIe version to Gen 4 for PCI-E1 and PCI-E3 slots. Of course this would be only useful if you have PCIe Gen 4 video cards.
If you haven't done anything else, the solution in your case could be either from "Chipset Gen Switch > Gen 3" or "Above 4G memory/Crypto Currency mining > Enabled" settings. Of the two, "Chipset Gen Switch > Gen 3" is most likely. Let us know if you try reverting all those other settings.
AMD recently released AGESA 1.0.0.5 which supposed to improve PCIe card compatibility, but they did not mention what this improved compatibility meant or addressed. When you will update to a new BIOS with AGESA 1.0.0.5 or newer you could try reverting "Chipset Gen Switch" to Gen4 and see how your system behaves. But if you now have a perfectly working system, you should not rush into updating the BIOS. Particularly when it comes to AGESA 1.0.0.5, it seems it might have some other issues which are now being worked upon.
No one has Gen 4 GPU's as of right now, including me! lol I will of course change it, if and when i get Gen 4 cards, but for now I'll leave it the way it is. Still no reboots. I think the chipset gen switch was likely the culprit. I changed the Above 4G memory/crypto setting just because i have way more tan 4GB of RAM, so I figured what the heck! As for the BIOS, yeah, I tried MSi's current beta with the 1.0.0.5 microcode. It was an absolute mess! Caused all kinds of issues, aside from the ongoing sound card reboots. Never again will I install another Beta BIOS. But, as always thanks again for your input and time. It is greatly appreciated.
You're welcome.
The Radeon 5000 series are PCIe gen 4. Cards like Radeon 5500 and 5500XT actually benefit from it because they are wired at only PCIe x8 thus having limited bandwidth when operating in PCIe Gen 3 mode. While cards like Radeon 5700 may only benefit in certain scenarios like when you use more than the available GPU memory.
When you have some free time maybe you can test with "Above 4G memory/Crypto Currency mining" disabled, as it would be nice to know if it has anything to do with this issue. This setting was intended for different a differnt purpuse.
Thanks for sharing your experience with the AGESA 1.0.0.5 beta BIOS.
I was not aware that the 5000 series were Gen 4.Thanks for clarifying.
I do realize what the Above 4G memory setting is for, I just enabled it to see what if any change it would make in how windows manages memory.
I will be happy to disable it. I have noticed no difference in anything since enabling it. I'll report back after a few sessions of heavy use.
No change from disabling the above 4G memory setting. I did have a sound card induced instant reboot when I switched the output from DDL to headphones. Once rebooted, I was able to switch back to DDL without a reboot. Have not tried to switch to HP again since.
A little update on the compatibility issues with Ryzen boards and Essence STX II: I contacted ASUS around the end of March 2020, spent a week talking to their support to be slapped with the message posted circa October 2019 stating that the card is not compatible with Ryzen boards (you know which post I'm talking about I hope, I don't have the link handy atm). This is after I gave them all my specs, serial numbers etc... to their engineering team which very quickly responded with that message. So, bummer, i bought this card a little over a year ago and I'm stuck with it and I can't stand playing music without since onboard sound has very low gain compared to it, so all my music/movies/games just sound so damn quiet in comparison.
This is when my lightbulb idea came out of nowhere... There was a discussion about how the ASMEDIA PCI bridge on the card may be the culprit on how it's communicating with the Ryzen boards.... So I went on a limb here, I had a PCI extender board sitting around for a while which I was going to use on another video card but I ended up just never using it. I slotted the STX II to that board, and hooked it up to my PCI-E port (my video card has a massive backplate block which doesn't leave enough space between card and CPU cooler so I have to slot it elsewhere)....
On first boot, it booted fine, no crashes, I did adjust the sample rate to the max setting 24bit , 192k and after fiddiling around a discord for a minute it crashed the system. So I rebooted, with a long and face thinking this won't work, and left the sample rate at 24 bit 48k. It's been over a month and a half where I haven't had a system reboot/crash or the double clicking sound happening with the audio switch crap, this problem would almost guaranteed happen twice a week to me, mostly triggered by using communication software such as discord, even happen with zoom a few times.
I use discord daily, I spent over 2hrs just flipping channels on purpose trying to crash the system, having another person speaking in the channel while doing it, everything I tried, I did not manage to crash it.
This included:
1. Playing a video while switching channels in discord, speaking queueing mic while switching channels, hopping channels.
2. Playing video + playing a game + moving channels in discord as well.
3. Playing more than 3 video windows + game + discord + skype, etc....
No crashes, system has been stable since.
To clarify I'm just running the latest ASUS drivers which are ancient not the UNI xonar drivers.
As far as settings go in the ASUS panel:
SVN is enabled
Sample rate = 192 - channel
Analog out: Headphones
Dolby Headphone is on
gain is set to 64-300 ohms.
The PCI-E extender cost me around $10 on ebay, not sure about make or model but it's a PCI-E to a USB connection to the extender board.
I think this is a promising fairly cheap solution to those suffering from this or wanting to smash the sound card into a surface for satisfaction, it's worth a try. I haven't contacted ASUS tech support about it yet, but if more people end up having success with this I might ask them if they can try it in their lab settings and see if it is a solution.
Even if this ends up crashing again eventually, I went from weekly crashes to almost 2 months of no crashes soooooo who knows, I'm happy with the results.
As for my system: ASRock X470 Taichi, Ryzen 2700x, Radeon 390x gpu
Everything else is probably irrelevant,
Cheers!
That is some great info! Thanks for posting!
That's some good info, I almost bought a used STX II earlier this year, but somebody grabbed it before me, so I guess I was lucky I didn't need to encounter these bugs...
PCIe extender is something like this? If not, please search for a picture and provide the link to it.
In which PCIe slot the PCIe extender is plugged in?
Yup same thing pretty much, I have it on PCIE_1 ideally my GPU would be there but it isn't.
What you've did is basically what I've written about in possible solution 4 but you've also used the PCIe extender. The PCIE_1 and PCIE_3 slots are the ones directly connected to the CPU. I think the fact that you use that PCIe slot is the sole fact responsible for the STX II card working.
Was there a problem with plugging the card directly into the PCIE_1 slot?
Yeah, I had the card in the same slot the whole time, I can't really use any other slots. My guess is the ASMEDIA pci bridge communicates differently with the extender, it doesn't trigger the audio switch it does on the mainboard directly. weird solution but if i'll take it if it works.
1. So when you had the card in the PCIe 1 slot, it did not worked correctly and once you've connected the card to the PCIe extender it worked fine?
2. In this time between these 2 configurations, haven't you by any chance updated the BIOS or changed the PCIe gen version to 3/2/1?
3. When you had the card connect directly to the PCIe 1 slot, did you try setting the PCIe gen version to 3/2/1?
I'm not sure what's going on, the PCIe extender does not have a chip on it that could intermediate or alter the connection.
Thank you for the information.
That's what I thought too. Previously for the past year I tried every configuration of the PCI GEN settings in the BIOS starting from the initial BIOS i had the board on 2.00. or something to the latest I'm running it on 3.5 now, i never went beyond 3.5 since the latest ones are for matisse cpus. None of the configuration for PCIE_1 worked or the GEN switch settings. The card always worked from the get go, as in, it loads, it plays that's fine, but the audio switch bug that causes reboots was always there, sometimes it didn't happen for a few days, other times it just repeat itself on reboot constantly everytime i'd switch a channel in discord, it would go out of control and then after a few reboots back to normal for a few days maybe. There was no consistency with the matter other than it would at least crash 1-2 times a week guaranteed when it was "stable".
When I switched to the PCI extender i did not do any other changes to the BIOS or where the card would slot itself, it's same stuff, which I decided to share it, I'm still surprised myself, if it keeps going for another 2 months without a crash then I can safely say it's probably working for sure. My guess it's not so much the chip but the amount of power it may draw off the board at x point in time which the board itself seems to not like, since the PCI extender has its own power source, that may be the culprit, as to what exactly is happening, i have no idea, and neither does ASUS it seems like, whether they want to dedicate man power to testing it further I don't know either.
Little update on this note. I have had no crashes since April ~20th until today which was triggered by Discord (as it would normally happen for me). The solution doesn't seem to be permanent but I did enjoy months of a crash free system thanks to the extender. Now, I don't know if part of this has to do with the new Windows update that came out recently which is when I started noticing very strong half second noises coming out my headphones after joining discord channels (the notification for joining/leaving channels felt like a bang in the headphones instead of an actual sound and it only started after the 2nd to last big windows update, I had another big update a couple days ago). In the end, it feels like this whole situation is a combination of driver level issues + hardware compatibility, I don't think we can point the figure exactly at one issue.
Thank you for the update. Recent Windows 10 updates could be the cause of the recent crash. If you want to uninstall recent Windows 10 updates and block them maybe this article I wrote is helpful. Let us know if you find which updates exactly are responsible either the Discord crash or those unusual Discord notification sounds or anything else worth sharing.
Great info – thanks for posting. I think it’s my day to be slow, though: I cannot visualize the setup. I understand the STX II PCIe plugs into the extender board. From the extender, does it connect to the system via USB? Or does the extender just plug into a PCIe slot on the mobo?
The extender just has a PCI end and a USB end. The PCI end goes into your PCIE/PCI slot and the USB end goes into the extender board, you slot the sound card into the extender board.
LE: To visualize what I'm saying, here is my temporary solution, i need to do some modding, I'd like to place an aluminum panel to sit this on right over the psu, but overall if you're not moving it this works lol.
https://imgur.com/a/CuiD9B4
Just an update on my case using the extender on the STX II , the crashes are back to about once a week randomly, mostly discord triggering. I do notice it's because of the relay switch to front panel or since I started playing with the ASUS software forcing the relay switch, and when discord is open it's almost a 100% reboot. Is there no way to disable the front panel relay at all on the card through drivers? In my case I only need the headphones. I haven't tried connecting the front panel audio connector to the actual card and triggering the switch to see if that would do anything yet either. In part i'm concerned the problems arose again because of some windows updates since i had 6 months + of no crashes on the normal drivers. I did give in and ended up buying a Fiio k5 pro at this point since the crashes are hurting my workflow :/
Just adding to let everyone know that the Asus XONAR DGX works well with my Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE WIFI motherboard. I am running the latest Uni Xonar Drivers on BIOS F11. Thanks for the drivers and support, CarvedInside!
P.S. I am running the sound card in the second to last PCIe x1 slot which runs off the chipset and supports PCIe 4.0 standard.
Thank you for sharing the information.
https://wccftech.com/msi-rolls-out-agesa-1-0-0-6-bios-firmware-for-amd-300-400-motherboards/amp/
MSI is releasing some fixes for USB sound cards, might be worth exploring if there are any improvements for PCIe sound cards as well
I have a ASUS ROG Strix X570-F GAMING with ASUS Essence STX II, I have finaly got it to be stable with bios update 2203. Other things i have done that may not be important longer but have improved it earlier:
1. Installing ASIO4ALL before the driver installation
2. Setting the PCIe port to GEN 1
I can now change audio settings and outport without crahes .... for now, will update if the status changes.
When I optimize the CPU and Memory settings it becomes unstable again....
Stabilized again, actions:
1. Card in slot PCIE_X1_2
2. All PCIEX16 set to Gen 3
3. All PCIE_X1 set to Gen 1
Can change audio output without reboot and have optimized RAM and CPU settings
Thank you for the info. I think setting PCIE_X1 to Gen 1 did the job. Let us know if situation changes in the future.
Happy to help, i now am on all PCIE_X1 set to Gen 2 that has improved the sound card capability
What to you mean by has improved the sound card capability?
Xonar cards are PCIe Gen 1 and do not benefit from the additional bandwidth that PCIe Gen 2 offers.
Xonar DX working fine here on an ASUS X370 Crosshair VI Hero for over three years, all BIOS/AGESA versions, in combination with a 1700 and a 3900x.
Ryzen 5 3600
5700 XT
STX II (ASUS drivers) working on B450 Tomahawk Max with latest BIOS