This card (too old type) is unsuitable for measurement purposes..If you want to make it serious, try to obtain e.g. ESI Julia, ,or XONAR ST..Not too expensive, but very good results. Card should be order of magnitude better, than measured device. Loopback should be something like attached picture.
Attachments
ASUS Xonar Essence ST/STX soundcards , two types, ST= PCI and STX= PCI express. ESI Julia is also very good.
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BV,
Nice board, priced around $675.00 US dollars from what I see. Not cheap for sure but something that looks like it would be very nice for test purposes if you are using a PC to do that. Actually much cheaper than a dedicated audio analysis setup. Thanks.
PS. I didn't think anybody was making much of anything in a full length PCI slot size these days. most everything has long ago gone to PCIe.
Nice board, priced around $675.00 US dollars from what I see. Not cheap for sure but something that looks like it would be very nice for test purposes if you are using a PC to do that. Actually much cheaper than a dedicated audio analysis setup. Thanks.
PS. I didn't think anybody was making much of anything in a full length PCI slot size these days. most everything has long ago gone to PCIe.
If you look at the graph you posted for the the CXA it's hitting a little over 0.2% at 10kHz, if you extrapolate to 20k, it would hit almost 1%.
Here's the thing ASIO for all is decent, but it's not as complete as a proper ASIO driver for the sound card. ASIO for all wont hard force different sampling frequencies within the hardware. If I use ASIO for all with my Xonar ST I can still manually control the sampling frequency elsewhere. If I use the proper Xonar ST ASIO drivers then the drivers force the sampling frequency to be correct.
In your 192kHz graph it's clear that the software is working at 192, but the hardware is not. This does not automatically mean that the hardware isn't capable, it could simply mean that you need to mess about with a few settings.
First of all you need to go into the windows sound set up. You should have two main panels here, one called 'playback' and one called 'recording'. What you need to do is go to the primary playback device click on properties then go to advanced and make sure that the sampling frequency and bit depth are set to 192/24. Then you must do the same for the primary recording device.
After these two are set, you need to make sure that any Creative software is also set in a similar way. My Xonar card comes with its own control panel. If you've got something similar for the Create card load it up. Have a look through the settings and see if there is one for sampling frequency. If there is one, make sure that it is also set to 192kHz, then you should be good to go.
To recap, when using ASIO for all, to make measurements at 192k what I have to do is this.
1) Set the sampling frequency in ARTA to 192k.
2) Set the playback devices sampling frequency to 192k in the windows control panel.
3) Set the recording devices sampling frequency to 192k in the windows control panel.
4) Set the sampling frequency to 192k in the Xonar control panel.
Only when I've done that does it work correctly.
5th element good guide. Can i add for Vista/Win7/Win8x if soundcard drivers and programs written correct using ASIO or WASAPI from used program force soundcard to settings from program (bitdept/SR) and take control of soundcard thus normal Windows sound are now blocked so the pro program can perform optimal. Unfortunately Xonar Essence ST (have myself) don't follow that and you have to do point 1-4 as 5th element mention for every sound task where you wonna be shure to have controll. I later had a Xonar U7 (USB cheaper than the "Xonar Es. ST" and surprising good specs) that nicely do it right when requested via ASIO or WASAPI. Last i think thimios runs under WinXP and can't remember rules there for audio, but take a look at Xonar U7 cost if it suits better, and if selected hook it up to Win7.
Has anyone here taken a good look at the QA400 Audio Analyzer found here ... QA400 Audio Analyzer
The price is certainly right.
The price is certainly right.
Hi Guys,
Good news, I got the CFA-XH mod BV boards working. Out of frustration I built a second board. Once I got all the parts in correctly it worked. So then my task was to compare the two until I found what was different. I pulled all of the extra parts that attach to the bottom of the board and cleaned everything up and installed new parts. I still had the same issue with this board. I got out the DMM and compared part by part with the working board. Everything measured the same until I got to R2, the resistor that BV had asked me about a week ago. It was a 10R resistor but had gone bad. Measures .884m. I put a new 10R in there and all is good. FINALLY.
Anyway, I posted all that to say that the board shot I posted showing the modifications necessary to achieve BV's latest mod is correct if any of you choose to do that mod. I haven't listened to it yet. Square waves get pretty rounded above 20kHz but I suspect that is due to the big 10uF input cap.
Blessings, Terry
Good news, I got the CFA-XH mod BV boards working. Out of frustration I built a second board. Once I got all the parts in correctly it worked. So then my task was to compare the two until I found what was different. I pulled all of the extra parts that attach to the bottom of the board and cleaned everything up and installed new parts. I still had the same issue with this board. I got out the DMM and compared part by part with the working board. Everything measured the same until I got to R2, the resistor that BV had asked me about a week ago. It was a 10R resistor but had gone bad. Measures .884m. I put a new 10R in there and all is good. FINALLY.
Anyway, I posted all that to say that the board shot I posted showing the modifications necessary to achieve BV's latest mod is correct if any of you choose to do that mod. I haven't listened to it yet. Square waves get pretty rounded above 20kHz but I suspect that is due to the big 10uF input cap.
Blessings, Terry
Which can be annoying, but are you sure you can't get ASIO to work with the Essence ST? The latest drivers for the card certainly work properly with my ST. I use it's ASIO driver with both ARTA/STEPS, Cubase and Cantabile without any issues. They do bypass everything.
It's good that you finally got it working! It can be quite frustrating when a component goes bad and you don't realise it.
The 10u input cap shouldn't affect the high frequency performance of the amplifier.
It does. Same amps, one with 4.7uF input cap and one with 10uF. The one with 4.7uF has squarer 100kHz waves. They look the same at 20kHz.
Admit haven't tried the newer beta drivers and card had a long time resting outside of a PC. Back when used had some trouble playing files native data from Foobar or JRiver via ASIO or WASAPI. Locking at high SR example 192 or 96Khz doesn't mean best sonics in my setup, it means good sonics but not nessesary most natural one, which for my setup is achieved by files native data and leaving PC via light cable. A little annoying drivers mean so much for sonic performance and combability daily use, as a example all three drivers released for Xonar U7 had no program combability problems but the last one certainly perform best sonics.
Weird input caps is blocker at LF only and should make a difference for 50Hz (LF) square waves 4,7uF verse 10uF, the 10uF to be most square, up higher they should be same in my thinking and in sims
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