Asus Xonar DX and Windows 7 system sounds not playing starting part of an audio file

I recently purchased Asus Xonar DX sound card for my computer. I attached it and it is working fine. It is generating all the Dolby sounds and other effects. But it has only one problem, whenever I play any audio file from any other application except from Windows application, the beginning part of the audio is not audible. For example, if I play any song in Winamp, then starting part of the song, that is for some five to six seconds, I can’t hear a single sound even if the song has large sound to begin with. After this time, the audio plays as it should play normally. There is no other problem like fluctuating of intensity of sound or loss of bandwidth. I have tried changing options like crossfading or managing intensity of sound at the beginning and ending of audio file, but nothing helped. Can anyone tell me what the problem can be?

As you are saying that this problem occurs only in softwares that are not manufactured or inbuilt feature of Windows Operating System. So that means that this error occurs in applications that use PlaySound () API function. It does not play the sound in the beginning but rather keeps the sound very low that it actually can’t be heard. Try updating the drivers of the sound card to the latest version. Also try disabling ‘GX mode’ which can be found under ‘Menu Command’. When you have installed graphic card and its drivers, make sure that you have uninstalled all the drivers of the onboard sound card. Also disable the onboard sound card from the BIOS; you can activate it later on if you need it. Also keep the sampling rate to 44.1 Khz for normal sounds like games and basic application sounds. You can change it to your custom value if you need sound for audio related tasks like sound editing, music composing or audio synchronization with video.

This problem is found usually in sound cards due to mismatching audio drivers it uses. For solving this issue, you can disable the unwanted codecs from the list of the sound cards list. To do it, you can go in ffdshow audio decoder configuration which can be found in CCCP entry created in the start menu. There you will find a list of formats of the audio that can be played by your sound card. Deselect the unwanted formats while keeping the most need active.

Deactivating the unwanted formats might create problems in some games. Many games need audio formats that can be dynamically changed during its play time. So it might cause inconvenience in some games. At that time you will need to find which audio format is useful and you’ll need to activate it back. Also you can deactivate certain decoders that won’t be used much. Some decoders can decode more than one format, so you can disable the unwanted decoders that can only decode one format.

You can try disabling AC3 and DTS FFdshow encoding. Also, liba52 and libavcodec decoders to solve your problem. You will also need to enable left DTS/AAC passthrough and AC3 5.1 encoding enabled at 96. You will see a ‘24 bit integer’ option enabled by the card by default, you will need to disable it. If you take a look in output type of the sound card in Control Panel then it will be shown as regular Asus Xonar DX. This should be changed to S/PDIF Asus Xonar DX output. This is to be done because, in Windows Vista and Windows 7 produce a sound abstraction as it cannot resolve the conflicts between the drivers of the onboard graphic card and external sound card. Many operating systems do not work properly with S/PDIF formats of audio, but they work fine in Windows Vista and Windows 7. It does not work properly in Windows XP.

While working on the settings of the sound, use Media player classic for testing the sounds by doing playback on CCCP. Play a soft song which will provide you high intensity sounds as well as low. During testing start with AC3/DTS as it works best with 2 channels output. Work on first two channels and then proceed with other channels, this will ensure stability and will allow you to roll back if any setting goes wrong.