Hardware Review: Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 - Page 3

durwood · 04-20-2007, 09:20 AM

A fix for ASIO with this card for anyone interested. I was looking for some other info and ran into this. Lots of good info if you feel liek moddign the card.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/print...7&page=4&pp=60

Quote:

No, that can't be true. I can not believe it.
My god, actually the X-Meridian with the updated opamps sounded better than my Arcam AVP700.

The Arcam sounded excellent but the X-Meridian is beyond excellence. I can find the words to describe the analog out of the X-Meridian. The words that come to my mind are purity, finest, crystal clear.

No, No, No. I need more A/B test. But, so far, one thing for sure the $189+14%Taxes (CAD) x-Meridian will put back around $2000CAD in my pocket when I sell my Arcam Processor. :-)

I solve the Asio issue. But it worth mentioning that It is actually a bug in the X-Meridian Asio driver. They have set the asio default bit depth to 24 which is imcompatible with some Asio applications. The solution for now is to find a small utility called AsioCaps in order to set the bit depth to 16-bit and latency to 4ms+

Iceman_jkh · 04-20-2007, 12:17 PM

excellent find - thanks for posting

RedGTiVR6 · 04-23-2007, 08:32 AM

I've been so busy with work and what not that I haven't even touched our car since Daytona Beach and Spring Break Nationals....lol

Iceman_jkh · 05-01-2007, 09:33 PM

Red> Do you have issues with 16 vs 24 bit ASIO depth?
Obviously it would be preferable to utilise 24bit.

swordfishunter · 05-02-2007, 03:28 PM

Asio Caps crashes when trying to open with the x meridian- back to the drawing board.

Iceman_jkh · 05-04-2007, 04:37 AM

Red> have you had any luck with X-Meridian + ASIO + Allocator? My prodigy 7.1LT is giving me a lot of grief and I was planning to upgrade to the X-Meridian.

But there's no point if it doesnt work without LOTS of effort. Do you have audio working from your car pc atm (via ASIO/allocator)? I dont plan to use Winamp ASIO output plugin, rather prefer the idea of DIRECTWIRE which (as you know) captures all PC generated audio into the ASIO driver.

RedGTiVR6 · 05-04-2007, 07:15 AM

honnestly, the car has been put on the far back burner for now.

My husband and I are going through the process to get approved to start building a house.

Not to mention that for some reason, the HDD died on me a few weeks ago. I'm just now, today getting around to replacing it...

This weekend we have to go to Austin to look at the two floor plans we're interested in because they don't have a house we can walk through up here in the D/FW area.

Sorry guys!

durwood · 05-04-2007, 09:35 AM

Iceman-what kind of problems is your audiotrak giving you? Just curious.

Congrats Jan on the whole house building thing but sorry to hear about the car.

Iceman_jkh · 05-04-2007, 10:07 AM

Driver Issues.

Line in mute is still not linked to the mute on the windows mixer.
ASIO latency has problem in the V2 0.978 release - WDM works fine, but I get constant crackles/pops when trying allocator/ASIO streams. This is unfortunate, as I think this version sounds better than 1.07a (which I have been using and am going back to).

All drivers give me BSOD every so often (About 3 per week). Version 1.07a gives me hardly any BSOD (1/month) and the ASIO actually works. All other drivers have pops in the ASIO stream regardless of what latency I tried. I used to think this was an allocator problem - but after more tests, it seems the issue is that its the drivers themselves ....GRRRR...

.

Rather than wait for these 'clowns' to release a better/fixed driver, I wanted to upgrade my card (as I had planned for that anyway - after making sure that my VST/software tuning idea could be done) to the X-Meridian. But I dont want to purchase a fantastic piece of hardware with another bag of software quirks.

swordfishunter · 05-04-2007, 10:33 AM

I got my asio to work without crackles pops...

Was having the same problems as you, as well has hibernate problems... but this has been solved with devcon.

Anyway, the way to solve the asio problems is not with asio caps, but with 2 different plugins for winamp, one is the asio out dll, and the other is the asio plugin. Use the asio plugin to set the asio at 16 bit, 2-3 second latency, then use the asio out as the primary sound driver, and tick only gapless mode.

This has worked fine for a couple of weeks .... with no crackles / pops etc.... it only stutters with too many apps running so i've solved the sound problems, however, now my processor is too slow.

Give it a whirl

Iceman_jkh · 05-04-2007, 10:40 AM

Glad you're winning.

I would prefer to have a solution which doesnt need as much effort, but atleast you have an interim (and potentially sufficient/permanent) solution

I would like less that 2-3 seconds latency lag however. Current I have about 180 milliseconds. That is the most I am willing to put up with, otherwise button presses seem unresponsive.

swordfishunter · 05-04-2007, 10:44 AM

Mine's hooked up to an Ibus, with steering controls

I hardly touch my screen to change songs, menu's yes, songs no. Compared to a stock e46 changer, it's about the same... never noticed that.... Have a go on my workaround... i found it out by luck... trial and error.

Iceman_jkh · 05-04-2007, 10:49 AM

How does it look with movies? lipsync? video lag?

I have a Prodigy 7.1LT which has DIRECTWIRE. This means I dont need ASIO4ALL/ASIO caps/anything like that. The drivers automatically redirect all the audio to ASIO

. Problem is, the driver's sound quality/functionality is slightly lacking and I want better hardware DAC/OPAMPs on the card than what I currently have. Hence the desire for the X-Meridian.

swordfishunter · 05-04-2007, 10:52 AM

Hmm

I haven't tried... I guess for movies the 7,1 dolby should be sufficient afterall my asio is only for winamp and music...

Don't watch too much movies on a 7 inch monitor...
i'll test some music videos and let you know

Iceman_jkh · 05-04-2007, 11:11 AM

Swordfish> What Pc do you have? specs?