HDA Mystique Dolby Digital Encoding Card Info

GodsMadClown said:
Sell the sub and get something with an integrated parametric EQ? On my Rocket UFW-10 Subwoofer, the parametric was a godsend for mellowing a nasty peak around 40 htz.
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hell no, i love this baby. also i can use it when i move into a larger place. thats the idea anyway.

now that i got everything setup right, everything sounds teriffic! miles beyond the audigy. games are a blast to play with it!!
 
so this thing does live up to all the hype? also whats a crossover? srry, i total newb. maybe just a link to a guide would help me
 
EchoMatrix said:
so this thing does live up to all the hype? also whats a crossover? srry, i total newb. maybe just a link to a guide would help me
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the crossover is the frequency at which the satellite speakers stop sound and send all the frequencies below it to the subwoofer.

so lets say your crossover was set to 40 Hz, as it is for me. to simplify it as much as possible, generally my main speakers play sound from 40Hz and higher while the subwoofer plays sound from 40Hz and below.

Not to complicate things, but its not like a solid boundary where they stop playing sound, but thats at the point where it begins to rolloff, to make it sound continuous.

This is a good read:
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/settingcrossoverLFE.php

BTW did you get your velodyne speakers yet?
 
does anyone notice any major changes with the optical spdif cable for mp3s?

does it upconvert everything to surround sound? i'm wondering if this is really worth the 100$, if so i'll buy it. but not if its going to sound near identical to anything else we already have.
 
i'd recommend it if you want surround in games but you dont want a big bundle of cables to go with it. by the way, whats your speaker setup?
 
onkyo 6.1 resciever (the one for hdtv and stuffe)
4, THX klipsch speakers (the 60w ones from their pc 4.1 series)
1, yamaha center speaker (might need replacing if its not good enough)
 
jroe52 said:
onkyo 6.1 resciever (the one for hdtv and stuffe)
4, THX klipsch speakers (the 60w ones from their pc 4.1 series)
1, yamaha center speaker (might need replacing if its not good enough)
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well since you have a receiver, the HDA is a great card for you. just use either the coax or optical connection. i noticed that when playing music, it seems to upmix it to play in all your speakers, but somehow, it doesnt degrade the quality like you might expect.
 
So anyone try out any microphone recording yet with their cards?
I've noticed with my card I have to crank the microphone recording volume all the way to maximum and enable mic boost just to have only 3 bars show up in the mixer page when I talk normally. Also when I'm voice testing with ventrillo I have this loud buzz/hum play back with my voice. Doing a voice test with Teamspeak has an unintended voice echo added for some odd reason along with a buzz.
I'm just wondering if I got a bum card or if this is a widespread problem with the card.
(Note: I've used 3 different mics and used the newer drivers and the problem is still there)
 
Did anyone else have problems with the new drivers? I ended up having to uninstall all my codecs and the driver, reinstalling the old drivers and codecs to fix it. Basically anytime I jumped forward or started a new audio or video file I got a loud popping sound through the speakers that didn't go away short of going back to the old drivers. different codecs and such made absolutly no difference. Just thought I'd let you know in case someone has similar problems witht the new drivers.

I use the kazza lite codec pack
a64 [email protected] ghz
msi k8n neo2 platinum w/the onboard audio disabled and driver removed
6800gt with latest driver
 
wtiger i didn't really have any sort of issue like that but i know that BrianG over at nvnews said he had a popping sound with the new drivers..

i guess that is why they are beta drivers..
 
Just thought I'd post the issues I had so anyone else who has them could comment and maybe help out the others on the forum.
 
I received mine today from pcalchemy.com and was very excited. I am running WinXP Pro x64 and had been using the onboard Realtek ALC850 audio.

I was sure to uninstall that from the remove application applet (to avoid startup conflicts), rebooted, disabled onboard sound in BIOS, installed the card, hooked up both coax and optical output, and loaded windows. I cancelled the 'detected new hardware' thingy, browsed to where I had unpacked the current x64 beta drivers downloaded from here as listed above and ran setup. It went fine, asked to reboot, did that and expected sound. No sound from either output.

I checked the MS multimedia applet, set speakers to 5.1 and checked that the right sound was mapped. Nothing was muted, all looked well. Still no sound from either output.

I found the c-media control applet, in the 32bit control panel section, and attempted to set the output there. However it does not show everything that the pictures of said applet show. There is nothing in the smart jack section, S/PDIF section only shows a drop down for 96 or 48 KHz (tried both), but no Dolby Digital Live and PCM 2CH radio buttons. DSP Mode has nothing of use.

I've tried downloading from http://www.hidiaudio.com/download/index.html however it is the exact same package, down to every file version and size, as the forum package. So that did not help. I have no way of trying the multichannel analog outputs to see if they work currently. It was the digital and dolby live and availability of x64 drivers that prompted me to buy this card anywho.

If anyone has any suggestions or can at least post an x64 success story with the digital outputs, I would greatly appreciate it.
 
Joffi said:
I received mine today from pcalchemy.com and was very excited. I am running WinXP Pro x64 and had been using the onboard Realtek ALC850 audio.

I was sure to uninstall that from the remove application applet (to avoid startup conflicts), rebooted, disabled onboard sound in BIOS, installed the card, hooked up both coax and optical output, and loaded windows. I cancelled the 'detected new hardware' thingy, browsed to where I had unpacked the current x64 beta drivers downloaded from here as listed above and ran setup. It went fine, asked to reboot, did that and expected sound. No sound from either output.

I checked the MS multimedia applet, set speakers to 5.1 and checked that the right sound was mapped. Nothing was muted, all looked well. Still no sound from either output.

I found the c-media control applet, in the 32bit control panel section, and attempted to set the output there. However it does not show everything that the pictures of said applet show. There is nothing in the smart jack section, S/PDIF section only shows a drop down for 96 or 48 KHz (tried both), but no Dolby Digital Live and PCM 2CH radio buttons. DSP Mode has nothing of use.

I've tried downloading from http://www.hidiaudio.com/download/index.html however it is the exact same package, down to every file version and size, as the forum package. So that did not help. I have no way of trying the multichannel analog outputs to see if they work currently. It was the digital and dolby live and availability of x64 drivers that prompted me to buy this card anywho.

If anyone has any suggestions or can at least post an x64 success story with the digital outputs, I would greatly appreciate it.
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Tell us what you have it hooked up to and through what connection, you don't need both opti and coax for it to work, it's one or the other.
 
from the sound of, the DDL Enabling function isn't there..

there should be 2 options for output..


1 is the analogue

2 is SPDIF

under the SPDIF there should be..

Dolby Digital Live 5.1
and
PCM 2.1

under the PCM there is the 44/96 drop down selection box..


the way the X32 drivers work is you just have to select SPDIF and then select DDL and it is enabled..
 
H-street said:
from the sound of, the DDL Enabling function isn't there..

there should be 2 options for output..


1 is the analogue

2 is SPDIF

under the SPDIF there should be..

Dolby Digital Live 5.1
and
PCM 2.1

under the PCM there is the 44/96 drop down selection box..


the way the X32 drivers work is you just have to select SPDIF and then select DDL and it is enabled..
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Exactly - those are not showing in the applet. There seems to be no way of enabling digital output.

I did find my 3 plug 6ch analog cable and have hooked that up. Sound does exist through analog, however, it only works correctly under 4speaker setting. I tried swapping Center/Bass in 6 speaker as well as switching the plug to the sideband output, but the speaker test has them all mixed up no matter what I try. 4 speaker at least gets the speakers right.

I'm using Logitech Z-5500 speakers; really nice, worked well with the old soundstorm enabled nForce2 motherboard. That was why I hooked both coax and optical (and now analog), because I can choose the input on the logitech control box, easily testing what outputs are working correctly.

Anywho, I'm thinking the x64 driver package is still a bit lacking atm... With the incomplete 32bit control panel applet as the only way to interface with it, and it missing S/PDIF output enabling.
 
I checked C-Media's site directly for anything but they have very little on site and nothing at all downloadable for the chip used on this board and no x64 info whatsoever.

I also sent an email to [email protected] listed on the w32 driver post of the HiTec Support Forums. That email basically consisted of a cleaned up repost of the last few posts here. Hopefully I will hear something from the source.
 
hmmm.. i don't know how i missed this before..

but it appears these new beta drivers also increase the # of buffers..

CD drivers only provided 16
new beta drivers are increased to 64..

can anyone confirm this outside of my newbness?

i am using TRAOD's sound utility to view the # of buffers..
 
Joffi said:
I checked C-Media's site directly for anything but they have very little on site and nothing at all downloadable for the chip used on this board and no x64 info whatsoever.

I also sent an email to [email protected] listed on the w32 driver post of the HiTec Support Forums. That email basically consisted of a cleaned up repost of the last few posts here. Hopefully I will hear something from the source.
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I'ts a brand new product. Just like a MOBO or otherwise. It is in Beta stage and you guys are beta testers :D Once all the kinks get worked out, thanks to feedback from users like you to the company....I will probably get one myself.
 
so no ways of ddl in x64 yet? that kind of sucks. *goes back to stupid 32bit mode* lol


*edit*

new drivers again! the last x64 drivers (yesterday 5/24) were dated for april, these are now may 6th! the x32 were may, but i dont' know if they have changed (forgot the dates)

http://www.hidiaudio.com/support/index1.html
 
JL_Audio_User:
Oh, I am no stranger to beta, pre-beta, alpha, and whatever testing *chuckle* I wouldn't have moved to x64 otherwise. I just sorta expected basic card features to work in a public BETA. This is more like inhouse alpha quality.

jroe52:
Yeppers, those be the ones I have been using. Though, check out the file versions and dates in both packages ;)
 
Looking into possibly getting this card. Would really love it if anyone could do a comparisson between this card and a Revo 7.1 sound quality wise.
 
no linux drivers. i have a feeling we all got dealt a big sinker. i bet these will be the last drivers we ever see, like every other cmedia sound card:(

which really sucks! why is the audio industry so horrible? lol
 
jroe52 said:
no linux drivers. i have a feeling we all got dealt a big sinker. i bet these will be the last drivers we ever see, like every other cmedia sound card:(

which really sucks! why is the audio industry so horrible? lol
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Because sites like hardocp are unwilling to really do any reveiws or be real critics about audio... I talked to kyle about this a lil ways back and he basically said no one cares about audio and that they didn't have anyone who could review it.

in your average review audio is grossly overlooked
 
Syndicated_Death said:
Because sites like hardocp are unwilling to really do any reveiws or be real critics about audio... I talked to kyle about this a lil ways back and he basically said no one cares about audio and that they didn't have anyone who could review it.

in your average review audio is grossly overlooked
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That really suprises me. Audio is such a big part of a gaming experience and vitally important to the emerging HTPC market.
 
wtiger said:
That really suprises me. Audio is such a big part of a gaming experience and vitally important to the emerging HTPC market.
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yeah it sorta ticked me off too, but hey what can I say or do I'm sure the guy is busy enough as it is.

only time they put any effort into talkin about audio is when they have a mobo (which is most of the time now) that has onboard audio. out side of that there are no audio reviews what so ever
 
Just got my X-Mystique the other day.

The amount of bass missing from music and games and anything while using the Audigy 2zs compared to this card is ridiculous. I deffinately needed an upgrade in sound quality for my speakers, and dolby digital is great. I haven't had a great amount of time yet to really test it out and use it in games, I just messed around in call of duty for a bit and noticed explosions actually had bass and the signal seperation was outstanding.

I'm using the drivers that came on the CD. I'm going to try the Beta's today.

I've noticed the default to desktop stereo speakers in windows on reboot bug.

Windows XP x64 would not give me digital output, so those drivers are useless. So I'm using 32-bit now.
 
Droban said:
Just got my X-Mystique the other day.

The amount of bass missing from music and games and anything while using the Audigy 2zs compared to this card is ridiculous. I deffinately needed an upgrade in sound quality for my speakers, and dolby digital is great. I haven't had a great amount of time yet to really test it out and use it in games, I just messed around in call of duty for a bit and noticed explosions actually had bass and the signal seperation was outstanding.

I'm using the drivers that came on the CD. I'm going to try the Beta's today.

I've noticed the default to desktop stereo speakers in windows on reboot bug.

Windows XP x64 would not give me digital output, so those drivers are useless. So I'm using 32-bit now.
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i felt the same way. With the audigy, i was trying to max out the bass slider in the sound blaster equalizer, but due to creative's sucky drivers, the bass would just distort without getting louder. With the x-mystique, at default settings, the bass is so high-impact, i had to set the subwoofer settings in the HDA drivers to minus 5db just for it to be tolerable. good improvement :)

Also, i like having just one cable going into my receiver :D
 
Good to hear that HDA knows how to implement some reasonable bass management =]

My question is this: Can you get good, impactful bass for games and nice, proper bass for music without having to adjust sliders every time? That is my big beef with Creative's setup, you can only get one or the other at a time, and neither is perfect, as I'd much rather have the soundcard just pass the audio without molesting the bass frequencies, but I don't think I can, even when foobar is passing audio via ASIO.
 
GodsMadClown said:
What is your speaker rig?
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Yamaha HTR5660 Receiver
4xHarman Kardon BK6's
1xHarman Kardon Dual 5" Center
1xVelodyne CHT 10 inch Sub
 
BO(V)BZ said:
Good to hear that HDA knows how to implement some reasonable bass management =]

My question is this: Can you get good, impactful bass for games and nice, proper bass for music without having to adjust sliders every time? That is my big beef with Creative's setup, you can only get one or the other at a time, and neither is perfect, as I'd much rather have the soundcard just pass the audio without molesting the bass frequencies, but I don't think I can, even when foobar is passing audio via ASIO.
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Once I test more games I can let you know, but the only adjustment I made was turning down my subwoofer a LOT(on the amplifier for it) from what it was set on for my audigy 2zs. Call of Duty sounded great though without adjusting from what I had for music.

But for music I have the card run out PCM2.0 on the spdif and on my receiver there are plenty of settings for 2.0 digital signals, and I have it on Pro Logic II: Music. Then for games I just switch the card to dolby digital live encoding and my receiver just gets the Dolby Digital signal automatically without any adjusting.
 
BO(V)BZ said:
Good to hear that HDA knows how to implement some reasonable bass management =]

My question is this: Can you get good, impactful bass for games and nice, proper bass for music without having to adjust sliders every time? That is my big beef with Creative's setup, you can only get one or the other at a time, and neither is perfect, as I'd much rather have the soundcard just pass the audio without molesting the bass frequencies, but I don't think I can, even when foobar is passing audio via ASIO.
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with the audigy 2 zs, i didnt really like the sound of games nor music, but with the HDA, each sounds great :)
 
I just had a good laugh when I just now got an email from Bluegears saying the card is available at certain sites! A little late huh? Heres what the email said:

Dear Chris,

BlueGears, Inc. (www.bluegears.com) has officially announced today the long-awaited BlueGears/HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold via the Market Wire. We promise that BlueGears will do our best to provide not only the best quality of sound but also higher quality of services.



BlueGears/HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold is now available at http://www.bluegears.com/wheretobuy.html . As of today, 6 online resellers are selling our product and TigerDirect, ZipZoomfly, CompUSA and few retail stores will start to sell in shortly. The add-on products, Digital I/O HDA-X10 S/PDIF Input Extension board and MIDI port bracket, will be available in early June.



Thanks again for your interest in our products.


Edit: Rule (11) Do not post PERSONAL INFORMATION (i.e. addresses, phone numbers, passwords, personal identification numbers, images) or any other information considered private without the express permission of the individual.
PM sent. ;)
 
so i'm assuming that this card, though good, w/o the proper driver support will/does not live up to its full potential? if so, damn you creative....grrrr!!!
 
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