You are viewing comment page 223 of the post. View the post contents here.
Tip: Press Ctrl+F to search for a specific keyword or keyword combination.
We've noticed that you're using an AdBlocker
It's not just you, over 66% of our site's visitors are blocking the ads.
Please disable adblock for this website and refresh this page if you:
find the content useful
want us to create more useful content and software
want tech support through the comment section
The ads are placed so that there is minimal interference with page reading. There are no pop-up, pop-under or sticky ads.
Alternatively, you can support us by making a donation.
Same issue as 'chhagan' back there.
Believe it or not I bought a Xonar STX back in 2013 but I'm only unboxing it now (used a Creative gaming card since then). I'm on a fresh installation of Windows 10 (20H2) and while Device Manager does show my card ("this device is working") and there does appear to be an audio signals being passed to it (tests show the visualizer in the control panel responding), I cannot hear a thing. I have downloaded and installed the Low DPC Latency version of driver 1.80a r3.
Any advice?
Do you have the same problem with the other outputs (headphones, front panel output)?
I just got the STX and and am having the same issue on Windows 10 20H2. I installed the 1.80a R3 drivers and can't hear anything; before I installed the drivers the card wasn't even showing up in Device Manager. I tested the integrated Realtek and that still works.
Unfortunately, the Lenovo desktop I'm using has a proprietary front audio connector, so I can't test that part of it. I'm rebuilding my computer soon with a non-proprietary motherboard though, so I will update once I have that set up.
Check that the op-amps on the card are properly seated. You can see where these are placed by checking this document.
Thanks for your hard work, donated. No support needed so far, just some comments. It may be my imagination, but the sound, and surround experience seems better than I remember. I have Logitech 5.1 surround speaker setup from many years ago.. I have a Xonar DX for many years now. Always just reinstalled the card and the standard drivers with each new system upgrade. This time, the surround test speaker icons produced no test sounds. It *seemed* as though no surround in games. Test games: Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 ( I know same developer, so potentially same sound issues).
I was thrown off by not getting the surround test to work in the Xonar control panel. Looked into Windows 10 sound settings, and 5.1 was already set. Used a Youtube test with only stereo results, and seemed like everything added up to my srround wasn't working for some strange reason. (mistake, I know but I was baffled that someone would post a 5.1 test video that is completely false - cast it later to my living room and there was no surround lol).
Surround worked in the PCs before with this card and their driver. Ultimately I don't think it was an issue with the driver, I think I was just thrown off and it was abnormal that the test speakers made no sound.
I installed your drivers (selected the wrong one a few times first, that didn't help my confusion lol). Once I had it right - and I see the same control panel - also the same issue not being able to test surround. I found the Windows 10 test - yes there is one that tests 5.1 not just stereo - and it worked....
Finally I installed your driver with the C-Media control panel and that test worked, and surround works great now, and I can't help notice that the quality seems even better. And I'm only doing the sound at 44.1 . Who knows, could be my imagination. I'm curious if these custom drivers could have that affect on the sound? Now I'm going to try higher sample rates.
Anyways, thanks!
Thank you for the donation.
From what I understand, the speaker test in ASUS Audio Center did not work for you for all 5.1 speakers but only for the front speakers? Which driver version did you install?
Regarding the improved sound quality. On original drivers, if you would not manually change sample rate from 96kHz to 44.1kHz, just like UNi Xonar drivers do by default, you would definitely have a much worse sound quality. Another thing that would result in a better sound quality or better sound experience in games and 5.1 content is from the fact that with UNi Xonar drivers there are no delays for Rear and Center channels in 5.1 output configuration. Having ASUS Audio Center or C-media Panel as default does not affect the sound quality.
The only way to know for certain there are sound quality differences is if some differences show up in objective benchmarks like with RMAA. Over the years I did RMAA tests between various audio drivers and configurations, I never observed significant differences between any them.
If you haven't done so already, I recommend you read the Xonar best settings guide.
I can't recall exactly but I believe there was no sound whatsoever (no "left front" female voice etc) when I clicked on the speaker icons in both the Asus installed control panel (cp) and the Uni Asus replica cp. But the C Media test interface makes all the right indication sounds for all speakers. It's odd, and as I may have mentioned, the previous installations always gave me correct test indications with Asus cp and drivers. The Asus driver I used is the most recent one.
So I really should just leave the sample rate at 44.1 or 48 because the audio content released in games I'm sure is almost always one of the two. Do you concur? Unless there is good upsampling of some kind but that may not translate in this scenario.
I have my Windows 10 set to 24 bit/48 so I think I'll match that with C media settings.
Kinda off topic but I just started using a Focusrite Red 16line in my home studio (separate PC), and the thing sounds fantastic. I have a Soundcraft Ghost board for all mic inputs I would want (fully miced drum set, keyboards, sax player, vocals, etc) - analog goodness into great A to D converters. I'm a musician but also an audio nerd haha. I can actively record at 192 - no stress on my PC - only hard drive space needed to accommodate that, preamps are on the board, so the Focusrite just swallows it all up and converts it.
Also if you want to get really into the weeds I also have an Outlaw Audio 2.1 receiver for music - and B&W speakers/SW. Sorry I just love this stuff.
Anyhow is Xear 3D an emulation of that Creative EAX thing? I disabled it per your recommendation.
So the Asus drivers actually have latency in the surround channels?
What do you mean by not noticing significant differences among the various configurations? Comparisons of your drivers with Asus for example?
Also what speaker setup/brand do you use for PC gaming?
Quite a few questions, I will respond with multiple replies, some of them later.
I suggest you repeat the speaker tests from time to time, if at some point you get no response or wrong response from a speaker then let me know as there is something else going on.
Regarding the speaker delay with ASUS original drivers. Yes you heard me right. With the original drivers, the Side and Rear speakers have a delay of 10ms and Center speaker has 15ms.
Xear 3D (or GX) is the Creative EAX effects emulation. Keep it off.
Regarding the RMAA tests I did to check the audio quality. I did tests between different audio driver versions (for example 1818, 1822, STXII 11.5, etc.), between panel configurations (Normal - Asus Audio Center, Low DPC latency, C-Media Panel) and between UNi Xonar and ASUS original drivers with the same audio driver versions and with the same sample rate settings.
The problem with the "objective" RMAA criterion is that this program only tests distortion at one static-sounding frequency, and not at all the" whole " sound in the speaker. At the same time, the output of the results in the form of numbers can be misleading, as if this is "the whole truth" about the sound quality. But this is not the case. Not to mention that rmaa does not test jitter. Meanwhile, there is a difference in sound between the drivers. I will not say now that this is a difference in quality. But the difference in the character of the sound is definitely there. Each user should listen to different drivers and choose the appropriate one to their taste. In my opinion, the drivers 1821 (clearer sound and good bass) and 1825 (softer, non-annoying sound) sound good on windows 10.
I talked about the difference in sound for essence st, because other cards might have different sound with these drivers, or there might not be a difference in sound between the drivers. The two above drivers so far I think are the best on win10 x64 for essence st, because they're more natural sounding.
Well again everything is working great for most games, but now I've run into an issue with some older games. Specifically Thief Gold and Thief 2, and getting surround to work. There are many workarounds for EAX and Surround results to function. I tried them and realized I didn't need any of them, all I needed to do was enable XEAR for EAX emulation along with enabling the OpenAL and EAX settings in those games' options.
From there I was able to get 4.1 positional audio and EAX reverb effects. I don't know why no center channel but not necessary. So all was plenty good enough, along with updated textures etc, for a replay of these games from 20 years ago.
But out of nowhere the surround speakers won't play audio in those two games any longer. I had already completed Thief Gold and moved onto the second game, and had positional surround until today, it's just not there any longer. Started trying different things, enabling, disabling options, etc to no avail. Loaded up Cyberpunk 2077 and there is surround sound. And all surround tests (in C-Media panel and Windows 10 test) work correctly for all speakers.
I can't understand what could have changed, I didn't do anything different.
---
Update:
Okay I did some more experimenting.
While I was as certain as I could be that I had used these settings to achieve surround in these games:
Xear enabled in C-Media CP.
In Thief 2 game settings: - Hardware Sound: OpenAL (other settings here are On, Off)
- Eax: On
I was getting 4.1 surround, (maybe also the center channel, maybe not the SW, not important). I'm satisfied as long as there is positional surround from at least 4 speakers, essential for the Thief games, and more I can ask for given the age of the games.
Then the surround in back oddly disappeared (EAX effects remained).
Racking my brain, my solution now was to use Creative Alchemy - You load up this app and add the game's folder so it can add some .dlls and what not in there.
I get EAX and surround (I think it's 5.1 - center ch seems to be working as part of the spectrum) -
In game: - Hardware Sound: On
- Eax: On
And with Xear off (or on makes no difference, so leaving it off).
So I have functional surround for these games again - it's highly possible I missed something before, hard to explain otherwise how it stopped working with those settings...
I am not familiar with setting up EAX on Thief 2.
Is this a new installation of Thief 2 or an existing one? Because I'm thinking that maybe you did these steps that made it work before, and now with the new installation you had to do them again.
Since your on Windows 10, there is the possibility that a Windows update removed some of the required software components from your system (Creative Alchemy, OpenAL). If you want to have control over the Windows 10 update process look here.
Yeah I was thinking something along those lines given the seemingly random change. I had just installed Thief 2 - and set up all the sound parameters pretty much to what I had in Thief Gold, and it was good, until it wasn't out of the blue, and then I went ahead with the Creative Alchemy solution which made it good again. Maybe OpenAL stopped functioning for some reason. Well soon I'll be done with the early Thief games, and once I get on to the third game Deadly Shadows I suspect more modern sound options.
Regarding the sample rate settings. Sorry it took this long to respond. I've had other problems and also wanted to give you a more accurate answer. Here I've written a piece about with the information I know at the moment. If you want to comment further on this topic then please comment on that dedicated page.
Thanks, I took a look and I'll be going through that article from time to time and comparing what I hear in game with different sample rates.
I unisalled the maxedtech xonar unified drivers, and install asus default driver. i can here a sound using default driver but the sound is not comming through unified driver since if i installed unified driver with addons +dll. sound is also come through unified drivers if i unchaked addons. i need dolby plus addons. please help me and sorry for my bad english!
Hello and sorry if this question fell in the wrong thred. You'll see, I'm thinking on buying a microphone that works with 5v exclusively. So I've been researching anywhere (and unsucessfully) for info about the voltage that Xonar DX manage on it'd line-in/mic-in port. So, do you have any idea if this mic would work here? Thanks in advance!
No idea.
Comment moved here.
Please repost this under ASUS Xonar cards and AMD Ryzen AM4 motherboards compatibility report page and we will discuss this there. Mention which Xonar drivers you have installed and your Windows version and build number.
Hi!
I have two DX 7.1 cards in my Win7 computer and would like to run them together to form a 16 channel platform for my orchestral compositions. I tried the oft recommended method with the Record tab in Sound, but it doesn't really work. I get lots of feedback even after blocking the microphone input, making the method useless. Do you have any advice on installing two separate sets of drivers for the card (which I tried but failed, because the driver would only install on C: on top of the first installation), or do you have any driver(s) for my purpose?
Thank you, John.
I'm running a Xonar DGX in my PC and had the Xonar Audio Center set to "Headphones." I'll randomly leave my computer and come back to find the right channel is completely gone. It's just buzzing and screeching noises. I thought the card itself was defunct but after tinkering with the settings, changing the Analog Out to 2 Speakers instead of Headphones will remove the buzzing. Going back to Headphones will resume the buzzing. It seems to be a problem with the Headphone setting. I've tried this with 1.81 and 1.71 versions of UNi Xonar and am on Windows Version 20H2.
1. Did you always had this issue or it started happening recently? If so, how recent?
2. Are you using the Front Panel Headphone output?
3. Does the issue ever occur if you keep the Analog Out to "2 Speakers"?
I built a new PC and so this is my first time using this DGX soundcard. The issue happens somewhat randomly and goes away just as randomly. Restarting the PC doesn't make it go away, reinstalling drivers doesn't make it go away. I even purchased a new card and the problem persisted. It goes away on its own after seeming to leave the PC for an extended period of time. (Overnight/a full day) I am connected directly to the sound card and the issue has yet to happen when using the "2 Speakers" analog out.
Hello,
First of all, thank you for making this so that we can still get value from products Asus no longer want to support.
I am using the Xonar Xense card with the 3.5mm adapter (4 Aux Inputs) and the sound is awesome! But the microphone does not seem to work. I have tried your suggestions on the Microphone Privacy settings but I do not have those options in there.
I am also using the MH630 headphones and the mic works without trouble on the onboard jacks.
I only get a whizzing sound when monitoring the front mic and no other inputs seem to be working.
Any idea what might be causing this?
Sounds like it's a hardware issue with the card. Check the microphone connected to the front panel. Don't forget to switch the microphone to front panel in ASUS/C-Media Panel.
I installed the UNi-Xonar-STXII-11.5-v1.80b-r3 drivers for the STX II solely and installation went fine. Driver cleaning does cause the setup to crash during install though. But the install process works fine without even without having to disable driver signature enforcement.
I however seem to be getting the "Can't find any device" error from the Xonar Audio Center, UNi Xonar Audio and the C-media audio panel. Tried even disabling onboard audio. Nothing seems to work unfortunately. The card is in a PCIe 16x slot currently on my Asrock Taichi X470 with the 4.60 BIOS.
Hello. I upgraded my PC, left only the old asus xonar dx.
Now after reinstalling windows 10, I cannot install the driver for the audio card. When every trying to install, BSOD crashes with the error "driver verifier dma violation".
Windows installed with "cleanliness".
Problem is the same with both the latest official driver and with a driver UNi-Xonar-W10-1825-v1.81a-r2.
My config: asrock b560m-hdv, intel i5 11400, OS win 10 home 20H2 build 19042.964.
Can you help me?
Have the same problem on ASRock B560 Steel Legend.
Try BIOS → Advanced Mode → Advanced → Chipset Configuration → VT-d = Disabled
Works for me.
It works. Thank you!
VT-d should not cause this. It's some sort of bug. I recommend you try the latest BIOS and if it still does not work with VT-d enabled, report the issue to ASRock.
I have same problem on MSI motherboard with i5 11500, but without vt-d not working core isolation/memory integrity from Windows 10 security.
Please provide the motherboard model, if you are using the latest BIOS, which Xonar card you have.
MSI B560M PRO-VDH, tried previous and latest bios, Xonar DX with various version of drivers...
I think the problem in this case is related to disabling IOMMU when you turn on VT-d, probably in these words something I do not understand, but while maintaining the settings uefi writes about it.
I flashed new firmware for my mobo and problem not fixed 😉
Have you contacted MSI motherboard support with the issue?
I can not contact them, because the form they have bastard and enter so much data do not want, and online chat can always wait, when the wait will pass. The letter to the forum of the two languages also did not give anything, except that the English-language version began to be treated by the fact that you can include the built-in sound and with the built-in graphics.
I contacted MSI support and after several weeks released fix in temporal personal use. Now sound with Enabled VT-d is WORKING on my MSI B560M PRO-VDH WIFI.
VT-d was causing Windows 11 BSOD - Driver_Verifier_DMA_Violation error on a Gigabyte z490 Aorus Pro AX BIOS f21. An earlier version of the BIOS f7c worked without the xonar BSOD.. disabling VT-d fixed it - thanks for sharing!!
Hey:)
I cant get any sound on my asus xonar essence stx. my mic works fine. this happen after i re install windows.. how to fix it? can some1 help
If you're have Windows 10, tell me its specific version and build number. I suggest you look at what I wrote as possible issues at "Windows 10 version 20H2 (October 2020 Update) notes" in the page above and see if that resolves the problem.
I got 21h1 now. what verson of the drivers below do i need? for xonar essence stx
ITS WORK NOW! TY MAN
Love these drivers, the 1.80a R3 package is the best IMO just works great. I'm wondering though, given the crap job Asus are doing with drivers for the newer cards such as the Strix SOAR, is there any plans to do uni drivers for them? Feels like some real magic could be worked with them.
I don't have any plans on making modded drivers for Strix SOAR or for any other ASUS sound card.
Hi, Thank you for all this awesome work! I wanted to report on the latest 1.81a drivers which I just uninstalled to reinstall the favourites older 1.80br3.
The 1.81a indeed had noticeably different sound signature. Everything would sound slightly more muffled as if the sound was being filtered by a pipe! Something didn't feel quite right, and upon uninstalling and installing the older 1.80br3 the sound went quite a lot clearer for sure! It feels like in the driver you use in the 1.81a, C-media tried to implement some kind of effect and I can say for certain that the soundstage was sounding more expansive and slightly lifted up. It was an interesting effect but it was far from the crystal clear and precise sound that the older drivers produce.
This is not something somebody would be able to notice on measurement applications, it's something that you can only hear and feel.
One more downside to the newer 1.81a was that I was that the speaker level testing in the c-media control panel was not working so I wasn't able to test the sound level of my subwoofer easily from there... Reverting to the 1.80br3 fixed the issue thankfully 🙂
I'm using an Auzentech Meridian 2G for reference.
Thank you so much again,
Sn4rF
Thank you for the information.
I thought I'd just document how I fixed my 'error 52' driver issue whilst reinstalling windows this morning.
1) Reset BIOS to default
(Optional?)) Clean install windows
2) Install the driver in safe mode (used version UNi-Xonar-1823-v1.80a-r3)
Spec:
Windows 10 21H1
Ryzen 5900X
Asrock X570 Extreme 4 (BIOS 3.70 (latest as of posting))
In the past I had to install in safe mode, so this is not new, but this morning was the first time error 52 was an issue. Resetting the BIOS and another clean install (although that's likely optional) seems to have solved the issue.
I've since restored my BIOS settings to what they were and it still seems to be working.
Note: I was reinstalling windows for an unrelated issue.
1. Which sound card do you have?
2. Did you have this kind of issues with your previous non Ryzen platform? Did you also had Windows 10?
3. Other than this install issue, is your system stable with the Xonar card? As in, you don't encounter any blue screens like I described here.
Today when I sat down at my computer. I noticed it has updated itself, one of those updates was "Update for Microsoft Windows (KB4552952)"
This update has made my Xonar sound card go completely missing from my system. After some trouble shooting, I found that uninstalling 'KB4552952' in my 'Update History' and then restarting has allowed my Xonar device to start operating again.
Hopefully this helps anyone else who has run into this issue.
I'm not really sure if I was just unlucky or this is a problem with the driver or a change in windows that causes problems for the Xonar device.
Which Windows version do you have?
KB4552952 is a "Security Only Update for .NET Framework 4.5.2", which should not cause this kind of problem.
I am using OS Build: 19042.1052
Version: 20H2
It looks like a made a mistake, the update I removed was actually KB4552925.
Sorry about that mistake.
I'm not really sure if this actually did solve my issue or I just conveniently got lucky, but my update history does indicate it was installed today. but when researching that update it is from last year. Weird...
either way things are working for me again.
I don't think KB4552925 caused this issue. That's also a .NET Framework update which should not interfere with the devices and their drivers. In your case, I think there might have been something else and was just a coincidence that the card worked after you uninstalled KB4552925.
It's good that you brought it up, as Windows 10 updates break stuff all time and it's helpful for others if we find which ones cause problems.