PC pcie soundcard

[julian_hughes]

When the only problems are awful drivers and low impedance gain.....those are serious issues! Another point not mentioned so far is that Xonar sound cards only support a very limited range of sample rates. These days your audio stream (or even disc) can be 44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192/352.8 kHz etc. etc. Other values are possible (especially lower ones with streaming voice audio). But Xonar cards support, at best, 44.1, 48, 96, 192 and force everything else through sample rate conversion.

 

[AnalogSteph]

But Xonar cards support, at best, 44.1, 48, 96, 192 and force everything else through sample rate conversion.

And 44.1 is not ideal since it degrades dynamic range. The resampling is pretty good though.

In my Xonar days (primarily with the D1) I eventually settled on shared mode. Plenty of quirks to be had for sure.