X-Fi cards any better than Audigy 2 ?

[Oreo]

All i can say is after hours of use. the bass is HUGE considering there supposed to be flat. And the SQ is like none other..

 

[Wildside]

now if only i could find a sound card that supports Dolby TrueHD n DTS-HD MA then i would be happy, lol.

hey i can dream but that is what i really want in a sound card.

 

[111sins]

What's the BS with Dolby TrueHD n DTS-HD MA?

Digital sound is 8, 16 or 24 bit samples taken 44100, 48000 or 96000 times a second. The higher both numbers are the better => more accurate and indistinguishable from the original analog sound.

All current sound cards can do that.

Except for sleek marketing logos on future sound cards (?) there is no point to bother about compressed formats such as Dolby and DTS..

 

[Apokalipse]

I run a Audigy 2ZS and have not even thought about getting rid of it. The X-Fi are great cards. If you run XP. The drivers for that card on Vista have been known to be a bit buggy.

It's because Vista got rid of DirectSound (which the X-Fi's use), and now only uses OpenAL

Creative had to make some software (called Alchemy) to convert the DirectSound calls to OpenAL.

Anyway, one of the biggest advantages to the X-Fi is it's surround sound capabilities in gaming.
Basically, the X-Fi processor, has more processing power than any other commercially available SPU in existence so far. It uses that processing power to process up to 128 individual sounds, with up to 4 effects per sound. So you can hear where a particular sound is coming from.

There are a few things that creative didn't pay a lot of attention to: two of them are the quality of capacitors, and Operational Amplifiers.
The ones they put on the X-Fi's are okay, but they could be better.

There are people (myself included) who have modified their X-Fi cards with better OpAmps (such as LM4562's and LME49720's) and better capacitors

 

[pts2800]

I think I just found the Mother of all sound cards.

well if you got 200 to spend on a sound card its good

 

[EricB]

well if you got 200 to spend on a sound card its good

that's cheap for that card

 

[Oreo]

It's because Vista got rid of DirectSound (which the X-Fi's use), and now only uses OpenAL

Creative had to make some software (called Alchemy) to convert the DirectSound calls to OpenAL.

Anyway, one of the biggest advantages to the X-Fi is it's surround sound capabilities in gaming.
Basically, the X-Fi processor, has more processing power than any other commercially available SPU in existence so far. It uses that processing power to process up to 128 individual sounds, with up to 4 effects per sound. So you can hear where a particular sound is coming from.

There are a few things that creative didn't pay a lot of attention to: two of them are the quality of capacitors, and Operational Amplifiers.
The ones they put on the X-Fi's are okay, but they could be better.

There are people (myself included) who have modified their X-Fi cards with better OpAmps (such as LM4562's and LME49720's) and better capacitors

And what improvement did that produce ?

 

[Apokalipse]

And what improvement did that produce ?

better power smoothing, lower distortion sound

 

[mack]

I rma'ed my X-Fi XtremeMusic 4 times... yes, that's right. FOUR TIMES.

They randomly crapped out on me. After the 5th time, I sold it on Ebay.

I would just randomly get a blue screen. I even went as far as trying it on a different PC under Linux. It even crashed UBUNTU (PSOD [pengiun screen of death [].)...

I tried everything, PC wouldn't boot. Same result on all the cards I owned. Old, new, beta drivers. Did everything creative asked. Went into safe mode, disabled X-Fi. Wham. XP booted up no issue.

Not sure if my PC doesn't like X-Fi, but I'm fed up with Creative. Their products aren't that good of quality anymore, it seems.. I'm going to get myself a Turtle Beach card that has optical out for my speakers.

That's my experience with X-Fi.

 

[Apokalipse]

I rma'ed my X-Fi XtremeMusic 4 times... yes, that's right. FOUR TIMES.

They randomly crapped out on me. After the 5th time, I sold it on Ebay.

I would just randomly get a blue screen. I even went as far as trying it on a different PC under Linux. It even crashed UBUNTU (PSOD [pengiun screen of death [].)...

I tried everything, PC wouldn't boot. Same result on all the cards I owned. Old, new, beta drivers. Did everything creative asked. Went into safe mode, disabled X-Fi. Wham. XP booted up no issue.

Not sure if my PC doesn't like X-Fi, but I'm fed up with Creative. Their products aren't that good of quality anymore, it seems.. I'm going to get myself a Turtle Beach card that has optical out for my speakers.

That's my experience with X-Fi.

so, you were using it under Linux?
From what I've seen, X-Fi Linux drivers are very buggy, and don't always work properly.

If you use XP, then drivers should not really be a problem.