Going off topic .... Those were the days right? I remember playing counter strike alphas and betas up to 1.5 and guys on the servers thought I was hacking when it just superior 3d audio positioning giving them away (walking helps to sneak up on people, not running). I was hoping modern sound cards would actually do some "real" 3d game sound positioning but not many still gets close to A3D. Some EAX 4.0 specific games can get close but nothing as good as A3D. Now I hope AMD would get their TrueAudio 3D HRTF sound technology working and widely supported so we can have a 3D audio Renaissance.

+1. I still have an Aureal Vortex SQ2500 card for A3D games and my main rig is fitted with a PCI X-Fi Fatal1ty Champion with 64mb x-ram for proper hardware EAX. Reason I'm still on those old cards is lack of alternative. There is NO proper HARDWARE alternative for PC gamers. They are focussing sooo hard on sound quality (which is as subjective as it can get) and do abslutely nothing in the 3D positional aspect, nor immersive sound effects. Running Half-life or Tourney 99 on A3D, or Doom 3 on EAX HD4.0 is an experience unlike any other. Newer generation PC gamers missed that and don't know any better.

on mY Wooden 5.1 600W -> My Dad tells me after Movie: "son its like Home Cinema" 🙂

So which brand and model are those speakers?

So... How this card sounds compared to the good old Essence STX? Should be pretty similar isn't it?

Good review. Might be next hardware i'll buy.

Good review. Might be next hardware i'll buy.

yes it was^....love my dx with vista driver 🙂

It's a shame that modern game developers spend so little time on sound, particularly 3d positioning and environmental effects. Everything i've played since the end of hardware directsound has been crap. While wearing headphones, even EAX 4.0 gave a you a good idea of of direction and distance of sounds like gunshots, footsteps, and voices. Some games like Ark Survival Evolved are so bad in the sound department that half the time they can't even do stereo correctly and a sound that comes from behind you and to the left is played equally in both channels. A great example in ARK is to have a dodo near you but not in your field of view. Try and figure out based on sound where it is. You can't. Old games still work using creative alchemy and OpenAL, and more and more old school games are becoming available through GOG that use EAX. I know there are better solutions to sound positioning, but nobody is using those either. Edit/ And while A3D was good, it wasn't GREAT. What i really want is for this technology to be used in games. https://youtu.be/MQt1jtDBNK4

It's a shame that modern game developers spend so little time on sound, particularly 3d positioning and environmental effects. Everything i've played since the end of hardware directsound has been crap. While wearing headphones, even EAX 4.0 gave a you a good idea of of direction and distance of sounds like gunshots, footsteps, and voices. Some games like Ark Survival Evolved are so bad in the sound department that half the time they can't even do stereo correctly and a sound that comes from behind you and to the left is played equally in both channels. A great example in ARK is to have a dodo near you but not in your field of view. Try and figure out based on sound where it is. You can't. Old games still work using creative alchemy and OpenAL, and more and more old school games are becoming available through GOG that use EAX. I know there are better solutions to sound positioning, but nobody is using those either. Edit/ And while A3D was good, it wasn't GREAT. What i really want is for this technology to be used in games. https://youtu.be/MQt1jtDBNK4

That link was pretty good for software 3D audio engine. I would love to see it released or patched into older games / game engines, and newer games. But I think the commercial will be with AMD TrueAudio / Astound Sound due to the user base being built in the hardware on the PS4, newer AMD GPUs, and maybe XBoxOne. But the killer app will be VR. VR with hardware 3D audio or really good 3D audio is going to kick the game experience up another notch or two. Checkout these audio demos in upcoming games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb57qpc0RD0&list=PL_0EBFw_May87kiqfcaGT07Y0BIkuvJQe Remember to turn off any 3D positional sound on your system so not distort these demos. Its too bad Intel and Nvidia probably won't join the fray or offer competing standard to segment the market again.

I hate to Necro the thread but I have some feedback from brann (the reviewer): ------ Aditional notes based on some of the article comments: ------ First the omission of RMAA tests is intentional. The outputs of these sound cards is getting so good that it far exceeds the ability to measure accurately with the on board ADC. I saw evidence of ADC's masking the true fidelity of the DAC portion around the SB X-Fi days. Yep, you need an Audio Precision audio analyzer to get started these days. Ain't nobody got time for that. So, based on that, I prefer to use my ears, and A/B with my reference DAC/Amp and note the differences. However, that should have been made abundantly clear in the article. Our readers are a pretty sharp bunch, and that's a compliment. One comment about the Nichicon MUSE capacitors is on point. After looking at the pictures of the card, the Devil HDX does not use Nichicon MUSE, but Nichicon FW type audio capacitors. Now that I've been schooled, I learned. 🙂. Just for reference Nichicon MUSE start at ES (in green color), KZ (look the same as FW type, but say 'MUSE' on them), and culminate with the FG (fine gold) series. For benchmarks, it is interesting to see about CPU usage with DVD and video playback versus onboard audio. I stopped providing numbers in games and DVD playback simply because the difference was around 2-3% (going back to the Sound Blaster X-Audio). It makes pretty graphs, but statistically nonsense. I think benchmarks, or measuring the efficiency of the drivers, was very practical back in the Windows XP days, before Microsoft killed off DirectSound3D. However, I am interested in doing some benchmarks, so I'll get those underway! The AKG K701 headphones I used are indeed 62 Ohm, and not 32 Ohm as I had stated. My mistake, I humbly offer a correction. As far as I'm aware, the headphone output will have enough juice to drive a 600 Ohm load. I didn't test that, naturally. I'm not flush with enough cash to purchase headphones with that kind of impedance 🙂. The AKG K701 do provide a high enough impedance to weed out wimpy audio cards, however. One commenter, has some good points, though. The basic block diagram, which I'm not really qualified to make up (I'm a techie musician, not an electrical engineer!), has some interesting qualities. Namely, it drives only two channels, either headphone out or the RCA with the Wolfson DAC. I believe I noted that in the review, including that the 5.1/7.1 outputs are driven by another CMI codec. I wanted to limit the scope of the review to just the headphone outputs, since I believe the output of the surround will be amplified by another device, and/or have room effects and so be non meaningful. That is, we can be assured that the CMI codec is much more than capable of making great sound before amplification and room acoustics muddy the sound. His other comments about, ASIO and SPDIF passthrough. I did not test ASIO, but I can do that. SPDIF passthrough was excellent, however. I was able to run my little Audio-gd at 192KHz/24bit and it worked great. The first Win10 driver that I used would revert to headphone output upon reboot, but not with the revised driver, thankfully. I regret the omission from the review. Other than the >48KHz distortion, the Devil HDX is capable of bit-matched playback using Foobar2K (v1.38) all the way up to 192/24. In regards to Noisiv's comment, RMAA is great for testing the electrical characteristics of the card, but as I said, the analog to digital conversion masks the true performance of the DAC. These are objective measurements. Done. RMAA doesn't do the subjective measurements, and I think we'll all agree, it's really hard to listen to a graph with your eyes. I also state that at the top of the listening tests, these are subjective listening tests. I exhaustively A/B the sound cards and duly note the differences using very familiar music against the reference. This goes on for days and weeks. There is the problem of seeming to be selling snake oil with subjective reviews. Basically, it's all about the reference. The reference could be an iPod, a TV, a toilet paper roll, anything. The subjective review is based on the sound compared to the reference.

Indeed. There is such a problem with the perception of subjective tests these days, and especially with audio devices reviews. They are beyond ridiculous sometimes. And seeing this review was not a half-assed hit piece, but a 10-page review and yet no numbers(RMAA), some members simply had had enough and blew up 🙂 Its true that for a typical device on board ADC is lagging behind DAC, and that RMAA results "mask the true performance of the DAC". What we get is indicative of the performance of the whole DA/AD chain. Whether using onboard ADC, or an external reference one. Which frankly is not such a bad deal. For a simple straightforward procedure that gets you pretty graphs in a reproducible manner. And also seeing manufacturers are skipping on ADC. Why not hold them accountable for the entire product.

I exhaustively A/B the sound cards and duly note the differences using very familiar music against the reference. This goes on for days and weeks.

This is really good to know. It instills confidence. I'll keep it in mind in future audio reviews. Cheers!

a few folks here (dont worry im not being snarky to you, noisiv) needed to read that. thanks for the post, hilbert, & to brann for staying professional

A bit late to the party but I picked up this card a few weeks/months back and replaced by ASUS DG with it. Overall I'm more than pleased outside of some common issues (i.e card not being found after a boot and computer needs a reboot). Since the card does not come with a mic boost, or if so, with a not-so-potent-one my voice in voice chats (Mod Mic 4) is rather low. This can be partially remedied by others boosting my volume but that's rather, well, inconvenient. I myself am running ATH M50x with a Mod Mic 4 on a Devil HDX but I am by now means someone that'd be particularly knowledgable in the sound/audiophile field/devices. So I wondered, since the Mic gain on the card is too low, are external mic boosts a thing I could put between the Line-In of my card and my Mic? Most stuff I find in that regard relate to actual music production and dynamic microphones. Couldn't find a whole lot that'd not leave me utterly confused. Cheers!

Nice review. i have been looking around for this sound card review and it is very hard to find. I know this already quite late but ummm..... does this review still relevant in middle 2021? Does dedicated Sound Card will always better than onboard sound card? Saw most review that sound card will get "obsolete" due in time, windows update, new generation motherboard with sound onboard, computer specs, unsupported driver etc.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

Actually after reading the comments here we will never review a sound card again. Why spend days on a review if people only bitch, moan and complain. There's just no respect left from some of you guys.

I am quite sad to read this.... but appreciate the time and effort spend days on review this sound card. If there is comparison between 1 sound card to another sound card, it will be very nice and yes i know that sound is quite subjective to each person. Having comparison would help for 'common people' like me to select sound card. I have take my time reading this review word to word until the end of comments. "Xear effects that distorted above 48KHz sample rates" and "the need for a molex power connector" is well noted. Also "It’s very neutral sounding" and "very clean sound quality" is what type sound card i have been looking for. Currently i am using speaker Altec Lansing Vs2621 and stereo headphones Sony MDR-1Am2. I have been hearing music from qobuz with my headphones and it is eye opener.