on board sound vs creative x-fi?

[Pob255]

Comparing onboard sound to an X-Fi is a bit like comparing a Ford Feista to a Subaru Impreza.

especailly true when you factor the running cost of the subaru when all you use it for is to pop down to shops every week.

Given that lodore is talking about running his sound through a Hifi system with 2 speakers then talking about 4.1 up to 7.1 is pointless as he doesn't have the speakers to suport it.

My advice is to run it trough the onboard sound, then if you don't think the quality is good enough you should consider getting a sound card.

[aidanjt]

The surround sound support is a tiny part of audio quality, there's a huge difference between the DSP on an onboard chip and a discrete soundcard like the Audigy 2 ZS and X-Fi.

[Mad-Max]

Hello Mad-Max,
i will be using it for the following.
1. music
2. movies music videos and trailers.
3. games.
for music i eiether play cd's or play music using sonicstage in atrac3 format.
with my new pc i might make a separate partition just for music.
lodore

Well I have the X-Fi Xtreme Music and for what I do (same as yours) the sound is excellent the only problems I have are driver problems but then again thats Creative for you or you could get a Audigy 2 card which are still good cards for cheap nowadays.

[CrazyMonkey]

Hello Mad-Max,
i will be using it for the following.
1. music
2. movies music videos and trailers.
3. games.
for music i eiether play cd's or play music using sonicstage in atrac3 format.
with my new pc i might make a separate partition just for music.
lodore

If you are using it for all this then i would recommend an X-Fi, make sure you get one of the better models that has full EAX support so you wont miss out in games that have this option.

As for music and movies the 24bit crystaliser works lovely, i am currently not using any soundcard or onboard as my headset has a built in amp (Didnt know when i bought it )
But i have 2 X-Fi's in my box of bits that are awaiting my new speaker setup.

[Kilmatead]

I'm using the on-board daughter-board sound off an ASUS Commando (which conveniently offers an optical S/PDIF on the back), and while the drivers "seem" to work fine in vista, there are no ultilties to control the sound - just volume. No neat little 5.1 room balancing tricks or anything. Anyone know where to get these things?