The last poster wins

[Thor.]

With his setup i could do multi display with out having to worry with hooking it up to my Video cards, main is the monitor secondary would be the tv. mostly used for gaming and movies.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Thor.

[M48A5]

:mellow:

[Thor.]

check out he review on the Xonar slim, its very similar to the deluxe, but the review says it all.

 

http://www.amazon.ca/ASUS-Xonar-HDAV1-3-Interface-Blu-ray/dp/B002DH3IKM/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1362704008&sr=1-2-spell

 

This review is going to be Home Theater PC focused since lets face it, if you're not building or using an HTPC this isn't a part you're looking for. If you're like me you bought a video card that supported HDCP for your HTPC that also supported 8 channel audio, bought your bluray drive, setup your HTPC and then found out you were watching great HD video but the equivalent of SD audio. Why current video cards don't support protected audio pathway so they can produce the new lossless DTSHD-MA or Dolby TrueHD without down sampling them to DVD quality is beyond me. But it is nonetheless the current situation in the HTPC arena so the solution is to drop another $150 bucks into your HTPC if you want to match your HD video with HD audio as well.

There are now two whole cards on the market that can add HD audio to your HTPC which is no doubt why the prices are insane. I think this audio card is now the most expensive part of my HTPC which just seems wrong. I went with the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim because it's been on the market longest, is cheaper than the other card and uses a standard PCI slot and the other more expensive competitor uses the mini-PCIe slot which I don't have a spare one of.

Installation seems basic, you take the HDMI video output of your video card and plug that into the IN jack of the Xonar, then plug your HDMI cable from the OUT port of the Xonar to your receiver. Pretty straight forward and I appreciated a small HDMI cable coming bundled. The problem was that once I did this i had no video on the screen, no BIOS bootup screen and no Vista screen but the OS was running, just no video. So i messed around with the plugs with the system, i first reversed the cables which produced a new video blue screen on my TV but when i put them back the right way suddenly I had video.

Next up was to update the BIOS for anything and everything in my system that had new bios, updated the ATI Catalyst video drivers as well and finally installed the Xonar driver. The Xonar driver runs a program in the background that you can access through the system tray. Honestly though i found this program to be pointless for doing anything other than telling it you want to use HDMI as your jack and not Toslink which it defaults to that I didn't realize at first and was wondering why i had no audio now. The last thing you need to do is go into vista's sound player control panel and make sure you enable DTS and TrueHD and 192khz audio support and make sure the Xonar is your default audio device.

The Xonar comes with Total Media Theater 2 which is old, however if you go to the Asus website for support on the Xonar Slim, you will find a downloads page and TMT3 is there for download under the Utilities category and it will accept your TMT2 installation key. With TMT3 installed, i just had to go into the audio options and pick HDMI-PassThru to hand off audio processing to my receiver which now comes up and displays DTSHD-MA and TrueHD when it is suppose to, before it was doing LPCM down sampling.

So this wasn't what I would have called an easy install, but after some tinkering in various audio based configuration screens, it's all working now and it sounds fantastic. I finally can match my HD video with equally stunning HD audio.

Now if you are someone trying to decide if you want to build an HTPC or not, i would say if you only want to do it for BluRay playback, don't. Just the cost of the BluRay Rom, the Xonar and Video card, you're already past the cost of a low end model BluRay player and you still haven't bought your motherboard, cpu, ram, hard drive, case or power supply. If on the other hand you want to consolidate your DVR, Media Streaming and BluRay/DVD playback and MP3 player into one device, there still may be some justification there to go the route of an HTPC. This one audio card though is the most expensive component in my HTPC, I sure wish ATI would release some video cards that have 8 channel protected audio pathway support for HD audio bitstreaming. But until they do, the Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim is your cheapest option.

 

Edited March 8, 2013 by Thor.

[brokenergy]

I win

[M48A5]

:mellow:

[billyro]

#38786

[Werne]

check out he review on the Xonar slim, its very similar to the deluxe, but the review says it all.

 

http://www.amazon.ca/ASUS-Xonar-HDAV1-3-Interface-Blu-ray/dp/B002DH3IKM/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1362704008&sr=1-2-spell

 

 

This review is going to be Home Theater PC focused since lets face it, if you're not building or using an HTPC this isn't a part you're looking for. If you're like me you bought a video card that supported HDCP for your HTPC that also supported 8 channel audio, bought your bluray drive, setup your HTPC and then found out you were watching great HD video but the equivalent of SD audio. Why current video cards don't support protected audio pathway so they can produce the new lossless DTSHD-MA or Dolby TrueHD without down sampling them to DVD quality is beyond me. But it is nonetheless the current situation in the HTPC arena so the solution is to drop another $150 bucks into your HTPC if you want to match your HD video with HD audio as well.

 

There are now two whole cards on the market that can add HD audio to your HTPC which is no doubt why the prices are insane. I think this audio card is now the most expensive part of my HTPC which just seems wrong. I went with the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim because it's been on the market longest, is cheaper than the other card and uses a standard PCI slot and the other more expensive competitor uses the mini-PCIe slot which I don't have a spare one of.

 

Installation seems basic, you take the HDMI video output of your video card and plug that into the IN jack of the Xonar, then plug your HDMI cable from the OUT port of the Xonar to your receiver. Pretty straight forward and I appreciated a small HDMI cable coming bundled. The problem was that once I did this i had no video on the screen, no BIOS bootup screen and no Vista screen but the OS was running, just no video. So i messed around with the plugs with the system, i first reversed the cables which produced a new video blue screen on my TV but when i put them back the right way suddenly I had video.

 

Next up was to update the BIOS for anything and everything in my system that had new bios, updated the ATI Catalyst video drivers as well and finally installed the Xonar driver. The Xonar driver runs a program in the background that you can access through the system tray. Honestly though i found this program to be pointless for doing anything other than telling it you want to use HDMI as your jack and not Toslink which it defaults to that I didn't realize at first and was wondering why i had no audio now. The last thing you need to do is go into vista's sound player control panel and make sure you enable DTS and TrueHD and 192khz audio support and make sure the Xonar is your default audio device.

 

The Xonar comes with Total Media Theater 2 which is old, however if you go to the Asus website for support on the Xonar Slim, you will find a downloads page and TMT3 is there for download under the Utilities category and it will accept your TMT2 installation key. With TMT3 installed, i just had to go into the audio options and pick HDMI-PassThru to hand off audio processing to my receiver which now comes up and displays DTSHD-MA and TrueHD when it is suppose to, before it was doing LPCM down sampling.

 

So this wasn't what I would have called an easy install, but after some tinkering in various audio based configuration screens, it's all working now and it sounds fantastic. I finally can match my HD video with equally stunning HD audio.

 

Now if you are someone trying to decide if you want to build an HTPC or not, i would say if you only want to do it for BluRay playback, don't. Just the cost of the BluRay Rom, the Xonar and Video card, you're already past the cost of a low end model BluRay player and you still haven't bought your motherboard, cpu, ram, hard drive, case or power supply. If on the other hand you want to consolidate your DVR, Media Streaming and BluRay/DVD playback and MP3 player into one device, there still may be some justification there to go the route of an HTPC. This one audio card though is the most expensive component in my HTPC, I sure wish ATI would release some video cards that have 8 channel protected audio pathway support for HD audio bitstreaming. But until they do, the Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim is your cheapest option.

 

 

Ok, so let me get this straight...

 

This guy gave 170$ for a sound card (which, in itself, is an idiocy), nearly f**ked up his PC while installing it and spent all day trying to get it running.

 

And all that to raise audio output quality from 128kbps to 192kbps. :mellow:

 

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/genius-meme.jpg

[Thor.]

Hmmm what do you have against blu ray bit streaming ???

 

strange???

 

oh and you think thats bad, try looking at some of the creative products, its cheap in comparison, the hdmi out is a big seller.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Thor.

[brokenergy]

:devil:

[slayerpaul]

:cool: