Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe Analog thread

Since the main Official thread seems more orientated to to HDMI bitstreaming capability of the card which is great but that's only part of it's capability.

So I am starting this thread for those of us that purchased this card to use the Analog outputs to supplement our older AVR's which don't have any support for the new HD audio formats.

Here let's report what works, what doesn't and what is needed to fully support our needs.

Please, No bashing!

I suggest listing the following in the posts:

CPU and speed
Motherboard or computer brand & model
Installed memory
Graphics Card
Graphic driver version
OS 32 or 64 bit & Service pack level
HD-ROM Drive used for playback
HDAV driver version
TMT Version

Here is my take:

1. Xonar HDAV Center should have under "Analog Out" drop-down
- 6.1 speakers

2. Some positive "Feedback Indicator" as to what "Audio Format and Sample Rate" is being decoded.

3. Automatic selection of the best "Sample Rate" based on stream being decoded. But leave manual controls to override if necessary.

4. Ideally complete HD DVD support for True-HD and DTS-MA but at the very least a more graceful way to playback audio via analog outputs. As it stands
now you must select Digital Output and use spdif out to playback.
No analog output support at all!

Yes, I know it's the loosing format but it is one of the reasons I purchased the TMT retail version, to have dual format support. But now having to use Asus TMT version in order to use the Xonar; this unnecessarily limits and complicates TMT's HD DVD playback.

I for one have some HD DVD's and don't see the need to have to replace them for BD versions as their HD video quality is certainly as good as any BD I have watched and the sound formats are the same.

As far as BD is concerned the disk's I have played seem to decode quite well; I put it this way as I can only subjectively say it sounds a lot better seeming fuller and much richer than before. "NEED Decoding Format Indicator" as one would get on a AVR to validate.

DVD formats of DD, EX and DTS 5.1 / ES seem to work.

At this time I do not use the HDMI In/Out for video, as it interferes with several other apps I use by making my system read as a dual monitor system at all times. The two apps are DirecTV2PC and PDVD8.

Instead I still use my mon2 to feed my VisionHDP scalier and then the MITS HD4000 PJ. Which works very well. No lip-sync errors so far.

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E8400 @3.8Ghz
Asus P5E
4Gb Ram
VisionTek ATI HD3850
Cat 8.11
Vista 32 Ultimate SP1
LG GGC-H20L
HDAV - R1757 RC01
TMT - 20081129

One more very important thing is a "Speaker Delay Setup" section in the HDAV Driver Control Panel.

This should be settable either in Feet or Meters with at least a 0.1 resolution.
And is very important for proper analog playback.

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Watched 'Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" last night. IT has a DTD-MA sound track which was very good sound effect wise but a little hard to understand the dialog at times due to the Brit and Spanish accents. Will have to watch them both again but it was pretty good.

Main thread has a post indicating Asus Team has responded over on the Asus forum; it sounds promising.

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Another useful feature would be:

Separate Equalizers Settings for each Speaker!
It could be implemented using existing display just have a Speaker selection drop-down box and store each speakers settings.

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I agree, I have the analog outs feeding my Denon AVR-3805 and it certainly is as good as my 3805 for older formats and of course the bounus is the new formats which also sound very good.

Driver still need some honing for analog, that is specifically Speaker Delay settings and hopefully individual speaker equalizer settings would put the icing on the cake.

I don't think anyone has worked with different op-amps yet.

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Assuming you have not read the threads on HDAV it only works for the new Audio formats using Asus version of TMT.

It does seem to work in PDVD for the older Audio formats, just not the HD ones.

Sometime in the the (hopefully) near future, Arcsoft has indicated they may include support for HDAV in the retail version.

My guess is when the HDAV driver is finalized and stable.

Will PDVD? Not sure but I hope so.

Are you using Vista or XP? Vista seems to work better for me. Xp has proved to have some issue.

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If you are playing BD's on your present computer via TMT and it works well for you I would say the HDAV is a good solution.

Upgrading your AVR would cost more then the HDAV and there is no garentee it will work any better for the new audio formats.

You did not mention what you are displaying your HD video on.

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I think if you read the spec's listed below you will find it will more than fulfill your quest. It at least matches most receivers whether they are AVR's or dedicated Pre-Amps. Anything else is subjective based on the listener.

Audio Performance Output Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-Weighted):
Up to 120 dB for all channels dB dB
Output THD+N at 1kHz:
Up to 0.0004% (-108dB)
Frequency Response (-3dB, 24-bit/96kHz input):
<10Hz to 46kHz
Sample Rate Conversion Quality:
Almost lossless, high-fidelity floating-point filters, with:
-140dB THD+N (typical value for 44.1K->48KHz, 24bit)
145dB Dynamic Range (typical value for 44.1K->48KHz, 24bit)

Beyond that I think you will have to try it for yourself to really answer your question.

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No, windows volume control still works and if I understand correctly it is really the HDAV's volume / mixer that is being controlled.

Set it to 50 and it is supposed to be about 0db out on the analog outputs.

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