But it's cheaper than the Xonar :\
But it's cheaper than the Xonar :\
Yer not wrong...god knows which one I looked up yesterday, it was in the 80 quid region. In which case I'd go Prelude too with that budget.
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"Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice: Pull down your pants and slide on the ice"
I'm taking a look right now, but what exactly is a breakout box and how would I connect my speakers to this?
Where can you even purchase that card?
So which card is everyone saying is the best out of all the options so far or which is THE BEST CARD for the best price?
A box that fits in a 5.25" drive bay or a separate box to connect headphones and various other connections to. Better than fiddling around the back of the case (pre XFI cards also came with a Firewire connector, though that's disappeared since :|) . None of the cards mentioned here have one, though the XFI Platinum Fatal1ty Champion does (similar price to the Prelude and Xonar). The Audigy 4 Pro and XFI Elite Pro came/come with a box which sits outside of the PC case and can be moved around as desired (within the limits of the cable of course).
An XFI breakout box pic
The first of the decent shops I checked, Kustom PCs have it in stock. Ebuyer have a few left too. Unfortunately Scan are a good £7 cheaper than Kustom, but don't have stock at the moment.
In my opinion
Best card: Auzentech Prelude in my opinion.
Best card for the price: XFI Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional
Best card with breakout boxness: XFI Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series thingy.
Surely the AuzenTech X-FI Prelude 7.1 is just a more expensive XFI Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional soundcard, seems that way scanning through that information provided. I am worried I will have the same problem with this sound card that I currently have with my XFI Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional sound card.
Given you have Vista I'd go with the Xonar every time.
If you're worried about price then use an onboard HD chip.
I have the same speaker setup, and they are a good match for the X-Fi series in XP. I have none of the choppiness described, but I have heard that the X-Fi do not play nice under Vista (without some sort of driver fix?) and even some motherboards.
Creative renamed their line since the original release. The Xtreme Music was basically the base card and will *sound* the same as the Platinum (same card with an I/O internal bay) and the Fatal1ty edition (same card with internal bay + 64MB of X-RAM - which does nothing from a SQ perspective). The Xtreme Gamer is basically the same card with a lower profile, XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro is, ironically, a cut down version of the original Fatal1ty version (minus the I/O bay box). All of those cards should sound the same. As MadduckUK stated, the Xtreme Audio as is pretty much a 'fake' X-Fi (to be avoided).
The X-Fi Elite Pro is a little different. It comes with an external I/O box (irrelevant from a sound perspective), but it is uses the same DAC/Op-amp as the EMU1212 series, which effectively mean better sound quality (only really noticeable with music, and chances are, more so with a good pair of headphones than the Gigaworks). Azuentech's X-Fi DAC is not as good but you gain the flexibility of changing op-amp of the L/R channel (again, offering the possibility of improved sound).
In my opinion:
Best card (especially for music/high end headphone use): Elite Pro
Best budget conscious enthusiast card: Azuentech's Prelude
If you don't need an I/O box and will settle for something that's still reasonable: Grab an Xtreme Music from Ebay or the Xtreme gamer. Yes, the Fatal1ty is a little better, but the 62MB X-RAM is not worth £30 IMO. It should not hold back the Gigaworks.
Last edited by TooNice; 29-01-2008 at 06:33 PM.
Some interesting points have been made, now even more confused with the additional choice.
Looking at the Elite Pro now.
Looking for eveyone's vote of confidence on this card, please tell me whether or not you think this is the card for me.
The Prelude and Elite Pro are superior cards, but your current card should not be holding the Gigaworks back (not that the later is bad - basically, your setup should not have obvious flaws unless compared directly next to a good Hi-Fi setup). Could you tell me how loud you playing when you are getting the choppiness. Say, the system/application volume is at 100%, which 'bar' are you using on your Gigaworks receiver?
Well I have everything on the receiver now at max minus the bass (which is at it's minimum volume because it's too loud). It depends which artist's music I play, as it seems that different genres of music make it occur at different volumes.
Basically, anything over 65% volume is almost guarenteed to cause this choppiness.
I am not going to try your volume at this time of the day. But I don't think I have ever had to play any music that loud (some movies requires that occasionally, but that's usually an issue with the recording).
When I am just in front of my PC, I tend to listen at 4 squares overall except Rear and Sides which are maxed with Foobar 2k is only at 35%. Granted, this is more for long time listening, if I feel like jumping around the room I'll raise the 35% to max.. but that's still at 4 bar (probably 60%). Anyway, have you tried plugging some other players to your speakers, or headphones to your sound card. It's worth trying to isolate the issue to the sound card first.
I tried plugging in an iPod before, but that didn't play very loud. I use headphones, those sound fine. Both were played at their maximum volume.
having looked back over this thread, I am more convinced that the simple problem is that you are overdriving the speakers. I'd expect thye choppiness to me more pronounced at high volumes, particularly with the bass turned up, as that will be discharging the smoothing/reservoir capacitors in the amlifier power supply, causing the souind to break up. If the problem was with the drivers (ie, in the digital domain, this would occurr at all sound levels when playing back a PCM or other digital source.
Basically computer sound systems are not built to the same standards as Hi-Fi sound systems - the power outputs are probably quoted in "peak music pwer" rather than RMS so it is a question of setting up the optimum balance between the volume on the speakers and the volume in the control panel, as I suggested earlier.
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