Xonar DGX, Other Soundly Linux Enhancements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Xonar DGX, Other Soundly Linux Enhancements

The sound pull request for the Linux 3.5 kernel has went in this week. Aside from Linux now finally supporting Creative Sound Core3D sound cards, there's also some other interesting audio-related work for the kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTEwNjg

[uid313]

105dB SNR

105dB SNR is not impressive.

But the card is probably good if you run it over S/PDIF.

[Adriano ML]

Really? Even though you need a lossy codec, that is just as good as MP3, to overcome the small bandwidth obtained with S/PDIF?

This kind of equipment is generally only good for it's analogue plugs, and 105 SNR is quite good as far as I know. Of course, that doesn't tell the whole story, But if you plan on hearing music with good headphones and don't have any good digital receiver this will sure beat any integrated sound solution.

Even though almost every other feature is crap - you can do it all in software and almost always with better quality, my Jack DSP stack is a testament to that - Having nice analogue input/output isn't something to be dismissed.

[uid313]

This kind of equipment is generally only good for it's analogue plugs, and 105 SNR is quite good as far as I know.

Creative doesn't sell anything with 105 SNR anymore.
The Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD is 122 dB.
The other cards from Creative are 109 dB except Elite Pro which is 116 dB.

[Osmodivs]

Hello.
Does anyone knows if its smaller brother the XONAR DG (PCI) works with Linux?
I have an empty PCI slot and need to upgrade from onboard audio, this is a good brand and is cheap. I will
mainly use it for gaming and play
some .mp3 .flac files.
I use Lubuntu 14.04 64 bit.

[Guest]

Hello.
Does anyone knows if its smaller brother the XONAR DG (PCI) works with Linux?
I have an empty PCI slot and need to upgrade from onboard audio, this is a good brand and is cheap. I will
mainly use it for gaming and play
some .mp3 .flac files.
I use Lubuntu 14.04 64 bit.

It does, but I've had mixed results with it under a few distros.

Under Ubuntu and Fedora, the card works fine. Under openSUSE, it seems to not work at all for anything that accesses the card via straight ALSA under KDE, regardless of disabling PulseAudio. Not sure on the reasoning for this, and I ddin't really bother trying to compare stuff between that distro and another, so it might be possible to make it work "properly" under openSUSE, and it could also be possible it works fine since I've last tried it (I tried it I think back on 13.1).

If you use the back headphone/speaker jacks, you'll have to set the right setting from alsamixer after a clean distro install or else it won't work (I think it's set to use front panel by default). I don't think you can set individual power levels for the rear jacks like you can in Windows, at least from alsamixer, but the Headphones setting does operate at a higher level than Multichannel. I haven't tried anything higher than Stereo channel-wise under Linux nor Windows, so I have no idea how 5.1 audio would work.

Overall, it works fine most of the time (I'd say much better under Linux than Windows). For under $30, it's a nice card. If where ever you buy it from has it higher than that though, I'd suggest looking for another card. I eventually switched to my motherboard's onboard Realtek ALC882 chip and haven't noticed any sound quality difference, but on the other hand, I don't have to worry about any issues.