Asus Xonar AE

Introduction

Asus Xonar AE is an audio card used by some configurations of Bemani PC. Namely:

• IIDX Lightning Model (Heroic Verse and up)
• IIDX old cab (only the ones that installed the PCB upgrade for "J:E:A" kit during IIDX Resident. Resident and up)
• SDVX Valkyrie Model cabinets

It is also used in Konami's consumer gaming PC line, ARESPEAR, marketed for use with Infinitas.

The main purpose of this sound card is to use its ASIO capabilities in 7.1 channel mode.

Before you order one...

Caution

Read this section before purchasing Xonar AE; it's not a good general purpose sound card.

As described here, it will work great with games that officially use this card, which is just IIDX and SDVX for now.

It also seems to work well with PC rhythm games with ASIO support, such as Infinitas, DJMAX, and EZ2ON.

While the card works great for ASIO, it's actually not good for other games that use WASAPI, especially in exclusive mode. For example, Gitadora will result in completely garbled or distorted audio. YMMV how other games will work, but assume the worst (near unplayable)

You will also not be able to directly capture audio when ASIO is in use. You are able to adjust Windows audio volume, however.

Lastly, do not purchase other products in the Xonar line thinking they will work similarly; they will not, as they use completely different chipsets! I repeat, do not buy Xonar DG, Xonar SE, or Xonar DSX and expect it to work the same as the AE.

Set up instructions

Setting up the hardware

The card has the following ports in order:

Mic/LineIn, Headphone, Front, Rear, Center, Side, SPDIF Out(Optical)

The jack configuration depends on the game. For most scenarios, plugging speakers or headphones into Front jacks will work. For game-specific configuration, read the bottom of this page.

Warning

SPDIF (optical out) cannot be used for this scenario, as it is stereo only. If you need optical out, do not buy this card.

Setting up the driver and Sonic Studio software

1. Install the official driver from Asus.
2. Open the Sonic Studio app that was installed. You can enable or disable audio effects, or switch between Speakers and Headphones mode.
3. To adjust ASIO buffer size, right click on Sonic Studio tray icon and click on Open ASIO settings. It's usually fine to leave it at 4ms.

Sonic Studio will attempt to automatically switch between Speakers mode and Headphones mode when headphones are plugged into the headphones jack. You may want to avoid this when the game is running; YMMV.

Game-specific instructions

IIDX

Spice will automatically detect the audio card and use ASIO. Leave -iidxasio as blank, and -iidxsounddevice as the default or asio, NOT wasapi.

Caution

There has been many "dirty" data releases where the bm2dx DLL has been hacked to force the usage of WASAPI, rendering ASIO useless. You need to find a clean source of data or find patches to revert the dirty bits back.

Standard PC setup (LDJ or TDJ)

Plugging into the Headphones jack and putting Sonic Studio Headphones mode will work fine. Plugging speakers (or headphones) into Front jack will also work with Sonic Studio in Speakers mode.

LDJ?

Old LDJ cabs do not have a headphone jack, so the game doesn't have native volume controls. If you saw old cabs with headphone jacks, those are after market modifications with an audio splitter.

Arcade-like experience with speakers + headphones and volume control (TDJ only)

1. Put Sonic Studio into Speakers mode.
2. Plug in speakers to Front.
3. Plug in P1 headphones to Side, and P2 headphones to Rear.
4. In SpiceCfg, bind any unused key to P1 Headphone or P2 Headphone in the Buttons tab. Press Edit, and enable Invert. This effectively tells the game that headphones are always plugged in, without having you press a key down the whole time.
5. Open up the subscreen, go to Sound option, and use the headphone volume buttons at the bottom to change the volume for each player.

Note

Yes, it's true that real LM cabinets use more than just front two channels for speakers (center channel, presumably for the bass platform). Feel free to experiment.

Tip

For the headphone volume controls to work, make sure you do not enable the Increase Game Volume patch, because the point of that hex edit is to bypass any volume limiting done by the game, which makes the headphone volume control not work! The unfortunate downside is that it might be a bit quiet, since a real cabinet uses a custom amplifier for both speakers and headphones. You may need to mess with impedance settings in Sonic Studio for headphones, or get an additional amplifier.

In SDVX

In SpiceCfg, leave -sp2x-sdvxasio as blank. The game will try to use ASIO first, and if that fails, fall back to WASAPI. Both KFC (Nemsys) and UFC (VM) modes will work.

Caution

Plugging into the Headphones jack will not work! ASIO will fail to initialize (due to insufficient number of audio channels), causing the game to switch over to WASAPI Exclusive, which results in distorted audio.

Standard PC setup (both KFC/nemsys and UFC/VM modes)

1. Put Sonic Studio into Speakers mode.
2. Right click on Sonic Studio, and click on Open ASIO. Set Bit-Depth to 24 bits. Issue 122.
3. Plug in speakers to Front.

Arcade-like experience with speakers + headphones and volume control

1. Put Sonic Studio into Speakers mode.
2. Right click on Sonic Studio, and click on Open ASIO. Set Bit-Depth to 24 bits. Issue 122.
3. Plug in speakers to Front.
4. Plug in headphones to Rear.
5. In SpiceCfg, bind any unused key to Headphone in the Buttons tab. Press Edit, and enable Invert. This effectively tells the game that headphones are always plugged in, without having you press a key down the whole time.
6. To adjust headphone volume in-game:
   • For KFC, press 7 to increase the volume and 1 to decrease the volume - the same keys you bound for entering the PIN. This only works after you selected a mode.
   • For UFC, on the subscreen, go to Options, and tap on the volume adjust buttons.

Note

Yes, it's true that real VM cabinets use more than just front two channels for speakers (side, center channels). Feel free to experiment with other output jacks.