Begging and in desprate need of help with Xonar D2X + Z5500. Sound is terrible.

D

djwhitfield

New member
Hello,

I am having alot of trouble with my new soundcard and speakers. I been studying music at college for 3 or 4 years and I know that higher sound qualitys can be achived beyond onboard audio from the motherboard. I brought my Z5500's a few years ago and they have been amazing in the onaboard audio with Realtek. I also brought the Creative Soundblaster X-FI Champion and found it to be terrible and awful so I sent it back the same day I got it. It sounded worse that the onaboard audio from Realtek.

I have been begging for a brilliant surround sound experiance that I can use for my movies, music and gaming. So I looked at the Xonar D2X because of all the possitive reviews, so I brought one a week ago. Unforunately after hours and hours of tweaking and setting up, the audio is still not as good as the Realtek audio. It was from that point that I desided I must be doing something wrong, and I am in desprate need of help to get this problem resolved. I had a number of problems such as: The surround sound speakers not working, the center or subwoofer not working.

Its getting extremely stressful having to judge so meny settings from three different areas, 1) Windows 7 Audio Setup 2) Xonar D2X Audio Center 3) The Z5500's Decoder.

I don't know what setting to put my Z5500 in, Direct 6? Dolby Movie or Dolby Music? Its so confusing because each of them have problems with surround sound speakers, some days they work, some days they don't.

I have disabled onboard audio and uninstalled Realtek and installed the lastest drivers for Xonar D2X and I am using the direct audio connection. Also I checked inside the manual for the Xonar D2X and it said I have to plug my Rear speakers into the Side speaker port on the soundcard. This really confused me so I been swapping them back and forth between the rear and side ports on the soundcard and it still hasent made a difference.

Please help me :'(!

- Dave
 
I have a DX and the speaker plug-ins also confused me. Turned out the first time I tried them I ahd the orange and the black the wrong way round.

Honestly though, I don't know how to help, sorry. I am not a music student and I only bought a sound card because, to be perfectly honest, I felt like I needed it when I probably didn't. I haven't been able to tell the difference that much, but I don't think it's worse by any means. I just need to use a custom EQ with a bit more bass in it.
 
wow... that's must be PITA!

hopefully through this forum you find the answer
smile.png
 
The Z5500s are not very nice sounding speakers they are actually very muddy but a dedicated sound card is always better than onboard so your doing something wrong. Also I think the Z5500s have it's own built in DAC/Amp so they will most likely sound the same no matter what source you hook them up to.
 
Last edited:
My z5500's are connected via an optical cable and i have no issues whatsoever and i have had mine connected to realtek and soundblaster with no issues so how do you connect yours and it is also dependent on the source so can you give a liitle more info
 
have you tried the xonar unified drivers. I use them for both cards i have and they sort all the problems relating to my sound card.

Hope it helps
 
Excalabur50 said:
My z5500's are connected via an optical cable and i have no issues whatsoever and i have had mine connected to realtek and soundblaster with no issues so how do you connect yours and it is also dependent on the source so can you give a liitle more info
Click to expand...
As I stated before mate when speakers are hooked up via "optical" cable it is up to the DAC which is built into the Z5500s that render the quality of sound no matter what the source it will sound the same via "Optical".
 
Headspin said:
As I stated before mate when speakers are hooked up via "optical" cable it is up to the DAC which is built into the Z5500s that render the quality of sound no matter what the source it will sound the same via "Optical".
Click to expand...
From what I can tell your not the person having the issues djwhitfield is and it is important to find out how he connects as he my have issues with individual cables if he is connecting analog instead of digitally
 
Excalabur50 said:
From what I can tell your not the person having the issues djwhitfield is and it is important to find out how he connects as he my have issues with individual cables if he is connecting analog instead of digitally
Click to expand...

+1 check cables, check your sound system for faults plug in your ipod or something to ensure it's not the speakers at fault. Completely reinstall your sound card and its drivers. Again check cables and connections.

can you describe the sound? whats making it terrible?

And a tip, let all the signal processing happen inside the speakers. Basically just turn everything you possibly can off in your pc. Ensure all possible eq settings are either turned off or set to flat. Turn off any THX sound enhancemets, basically everything. You may need to keep some of the surround sound settings im not sure. The reason for doing this is to minimise the amount of times the sound signal is processed and ultimately degraded. I would never use PC based audio for serious listening sessions. The quality just isnt there, although by minimising the amount of times your pc messes with the music things can be improved.
 
SlowBarless said:
+1 check cables, check your sound system for faults plug in your ipod or something to ensure it's not the speakers at fault. Completely reinstall your sound card and its drivers. Again check cables and connections.

can you describe the sound? whats making it terrible?

And a tip, let all the signal processing happen inside the speakers. Basically just turn everything you possibly can off in your pc. Ensure all possible eq settings are either turned off or set to flat. Turn off any THX sound enhancemets, basically everything. You may need to keep some of the surround sound settings im not sure. The reason for doing this is to minimise the amount of times the sound signal is processed and ultimately degraded. I would never use PC based audio for serious listening sessions. The quality just isnt there, although by minimising the amount of times your pc messes with the music things can be improved.
Click to expand...

thats a proper troubleshooting guide mate
 
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