Lol, that going to take a while, I'm not at home on weekday, and only back on weekends. I just got this card few hours ago and I'm not in the mood of modding it now I got some component but I need to finalize what I'm going to use

EDIT: Weird thing is, the Elite Pro analog output and filter is similar to XtremeMusic, they put the capacitor to block DC before the opamp, contrary to on the datasheet, I wonder why, they just double up the capacitor for no reason. Maybe some DIY sensei can lighten things up, littleghost you hear me? I been thinking of making my own output stage on separate PCB following closely to datasheet

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 3 2009, 12:11 AM

Finaly home at last to do some mods

Some componetes I change is LME49720 opamp, Nichicon MUSE caps for opamp supply and Sanyo OS-CON on digital part of the card. The only thing lacking is I only have 2 Rubycon Blackgate NX HQ 47uF for coupling, but I do change the non inverting signal that go to the opamp, I can just short the caps but I afraid of DC offset

I spend 1 week reading datsheets and look at the card, looks like there are one caps that Creative put the wrong values on it, and it's on Vref of the DAC. They cut corners I guess

Initial impression, the vocal is still stands out but the background detail improves, the high isn't piercing on the ear thankfuly. But its more picky this time, mp3 sounds awfully flat as it reveals all its flaws. It was tonally accurate, I guess thats why people say its analytical and a bit dry I might add. I will took some time for me to adjust for this sound

EDIT: So much typo, I guess I'm too excited

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 7 2009, 11:54 PM

I have the AD8066, I totally forgot about that I bought it

I managed to reduce the dry sound, on the stock coupling caps I put some mylar 0.1uF caps as bypass, it sounded more musical

Picture time!

You can't blame him, modding soundcard is hard, because of its multilayer PCB. Its hard to even to melt the solder on the card.

CS4398 is one great DAC! Especially the vocals, although it seems a bit too much of it, but it does shows how good vocal can sound. I absolutely can't sleep last night, listening to Katie Melua at 3 with light and fan off, its just sound so sweet!

The LME has been used before, with all other caps. I have my own technique removing SOIC without damaging them, most people just cut them out but I keep all of them just in case I needed them back, no matter how bad they were. I never really believe in burn-in in solid state devices

EDIT: I have bypass the coupling caps after the DAC just by using solder while the caps still there just for testing, it seems that it have no ill effect unlike I got from XtremeMusic

EDIT2: I properly short the coupling caps, removed them and just use a wire to connect them, and I removed the big orange tantalum 33uF caps because I afraid it might blow up if it fails. I truly love how it sounds now, its more revealing and detailed than before!

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 9 2009, 01:54 PM

No, I expected a huge DC offset too (maybe on 1 or 2V) but no, there is mere 100-200mV on each channel, not too much. I plugged in old Philips SBC HP200 headphone, it sings very well, and lasted me half an hour, I never put headphone that long before

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 14 2009, 03:49 AM

Got some more time for some mods, so I decided NOT to use any opamps at all since this is voltage-out DACs, just solder wire from one of the output to 47uF Rubycon Blackgate NX HQ and 1k ohm resistor (to filter out out-of band frequency) to RCA out on each channel and its done. It sounded awesome this way! So natural, so clean, with amazing clarity and imaging!

One of the STUPIDEST, most IDIOTIC thing I done, is I accidentally put the mono mode ON all this time! Its been about a months I think, I've detected anomaly long ago but I thought the soundcard can't output pure stereo out like external DACs do, instead its done in in mixed mode, well it was my stupid mistakes, now I know what human factor means! I smacked my head half past 3 in the morning. So all of this time I was using MONO!

I been thinking of buying new crystal clock for my X-Fi. Anyone knows where to buy one? Octave don't have them. I'm looking for audio-gd stuff, something like this, I hope they won't costs a bomb though.

My other aim is to change resistor to a better one, since my analog out is very simple, one resistor and one capacitor so getting the best is a must

What are the value of those 4 caps? The Audigy are hard to trace, you need to know what you are replacing. The 5216 is front channel obviously, the 4558 is for surround, and its for microphone in too

Its important to know the caps value because its easier to identify whether they for coupling (some say decoupling, but DC decoupling is the correct term for me) or for something else. Its weird, maybe those extra opamp are for front panel audio?

I just use some 0.1uF mylar caps I found on old CRT monitor

What kind of trouble you faced? And you use digital or analog out?

Crysis and Crysis Warhead have its own sound engine, and have no support for EAX. Check here for supported games

Oh no, not this s*** again, will you stop posting POS like this? If EAX is sooo dead why do ASUS sells their card say thet can do EAX emulation in the first place? There is still new games that comes out still using EAX, like Cryostasis and Assasin Creed. You just say 'EAX and OpenAL' is dead because you hate them, sad but true

Assasin Creed launch last year on PC, so its reasonably new.

So why you stating the same old thing over and over again? Whats your point?

I buy Creative cards NOT just because it have EAX or I'm a fanboy, its the easiest card for me to mod, its cheap to buy, my Elite Pro only costs RM250 2nd hand, reasonable good driver support and it can do bit-perfect out for music which ALL ASUS cards can't do, even the Xonar STX/ST

King of Lowyat.Net, yeah right. Keep your whining to yourself. Nobody mention EAX support, what games does it support, or is there any new games supporting it in the first place.

This post has been edited by Najmods: Sep 11 2009, 11:17 AM

Its my PC, its my choice to mod or not. I'm here to support Creative user and not bashing people. You can continue this useless POS, and you can continue bashing Creative with their lack of EAX and OpenAL is dead. This is YOUR thread to begin with

Let him be, maybe he forgot he is the one who making this club

Well, I guess its the same as XtremeMusic, when the caps are shorted the DC offset is off the scale.
Maybe they need to pay Creative some sort of royalty for each every game they sold?

What Windows did you use? If Vista or 7 have you tried using latest driver and ALchemy? If ALchemy still don't detect the game you can manually put them in. One more thing, EAX won't work if you have 2nd soundcard even after you put Creative cards to be primary cards, that is from what I experienced

Its not me who done the modding service, its xtreme

Its OK

Finally, my very own analog line out from DAC I'm very happy with it, this is the 2nd prototype. The 1st one have imbalanced volume because sketchy layout and improper grounding. After senior lecture about circuit 101 and 2 days of hard work thinking of proper layout, this is the result. Its not without pain, first the left channel is silent, because of one trace is disconnected. Only tested with NE5534, but I have LT1363 and LT1677 to test Powered by unused PC PSU but modded with better caps