Creative X-Fi worth it?

[shaithis]

Well, Windows 7 is Vista with a service pack. So the drivers should work fine, IF they have them working correctly in Vista now.

[Lozza81]

Good to know,
thx

[dangel]

Well, Windows 7 is Vista with a service pack. So the drivers should work fine, IF they have them working correctly in Vista now.

Surely it's with two service packs, given Vista already has one?

Get your wild analogies vaguely right at least

[shaithis]

Surely it's with two service packs, given Vista already has one?

Get your wild analogies vaguely right at least

A service pack is still a service pack, regardless of whether its the first, second or ninety-eighth...surely?

Or to be "precise" and put it in MS terminology, it is Vista R2.

[dangel]

A service pack is still a service pack, regardless of whether its the first, second or ninety-eighth...surely?

Went over thy head, neer mind. Point is, it isn't - it's heavily updated Vista codebase and you know it. It's no more than what XP was to 2000, but certainly more than a "service pack". Although, sure, i'd love a "service pack" from MS to do that much!

Or to be "precise" and put it in MS terminology, it is Vista R2.

Well to be pedantic NT6.1 (_WIN32_WINNT 0x0601)

Win2k 5.0->XP 5.1
Vista 6.0->Seven 6.1

[shaithis]

Went over thy head, neer mind. Point is, it isn't - it's heavily updated Vista codebase and you know it. It's no more than what XP was to 2000, but certainly more than a "service pack". Although, sure, i'd love a "service pack" from MS to do that much!

Well, we must agree to disagree then.

IMO, the changes are minimal, substantially less then 2k > XP was and is nothing less then a marketing "re-branding" to try and increase sales of (what is effectively) the same product.

It could have easily have been a service pack but where would the money have been in that?

[this_is_gav]

I'd like to see a little Netbook running Vista.

[dangel]

Well, we must agree to disagree then.

IMO, the changes are minimal, substantially less then 2k > XP was and is nothing less then a marketing "re-branding" to try and increase sales of (what is effectively) the same product.

It could have easily have been a service pack but where would the money have been in that?

XP was a refined version of 2k - in fact, it was (mostly) the way 2k was intended. MS are repeating the cycle - bring in the big shift (2k/vista) and then refine it in the follow up OS (XP/7). It's pretty clear from where I'm sitting (on Windows 7, as a developer) that it's history repeating itself. There are plenty of changes under the hood (there are new API functions to play with for example) and on the dashboard. You can, of course, choose not to see them..

Service packs (generally) don't add new functionality (the exception being XP SP2 but that was a security fuelled anomaly) but point releases do. What consitutes the difference for you? Apple? MS? And as the nice man said:

I'd like to see a little Netbook running Vista.

So yeah, i'll agree to disagree - but perhaps we can agree than 7 is pretty darn good regardless eh?

[this_is_gav]

Service packs (generally) don't add new functionality (the exception being XP SP2 but that was a security fuelled anomaly)

I disagree. IE4 for Win95 led us to Explorer GUI we have today.

it's just a shame they've not really done much with it since to be honest. ;-)

[Uriel]

Dunno. I'm still scarred from the memory of Windows 98 1st edition. That should have been service packed...

[Thorsson]

LOL. Well we all have different experiences I guess. I had loads of problems with Win95 that disappeared with Win98, which I Beta tested.

[dangel]

I disagree. IE4 for Win95 led us to Explorer GUI we have today.

it's just a shame they've not really done much with it since to be honest. ;-)

Don't get me started on Explorer - without Opus i'd be lost on Windows tbh

[Uriel]

Update on the Prelude. It works in Vista. It also works installed at the same time as my Xonar D2.

Alchemy doesn't like other soundcards though. I can only get it to work with the Xonar Disabled and when the Prelude drivers are installed without the other soundcard.

I think the Xonar's going to be staying though. I would miss Dolby Headphone too much if I got rid of it. CMSS-3D headphone feels like a step backwards.

[TooNice]

Interesting. I will have to give Dolby Headphone a shot. CMSS (for movies only) is the main reason I became a fan of the X-Fi card.

Question: Can Dolby Headphone be enabled with anything you play, or must the source be encoded specially for it? One of the great thing about CMSS is that it can use it with any stereo source.

I am sure that you would get a more refined experience using a system that takes advantage of a source designed for it, but you would also lose some flexibility of being able to use other sources with it.

[Webby]

Dolby Headphone can be enabled for any source you can always try it out if you have a full version of PowerDVD 7 or 8 (though not the basic versions) they include Dolby headphone software support so you can watch DVD's with it running even if you have no hardware support.

So if you want to see if it is better or worse for you than CMSS its probably a good place to start. Certainly cheaper than buying a new sound card as Cyberlink must offer a trial version if you don't have a copy.

[Uriel]

Interesting. I will have to give Dolby Headphone a shot. CMSS (for movies only) is the main reason I became a fan of the X-Fi card.

I guess the following may be of interest then. Posted it over at Head-fi earlier today. Haven't tried CMSS-3D with films on the Prelude yet, although . Dolby Headphone on the Xonar basically simulates listening to speakers, with headphones. It can be set up to simulate anything from stereo up to 7.1 It can simulate pretty much any speaker configuration you tell it to, in 3 different room types.

I was interested to try Dolby Headphone on the Prelude but as you will see below, the software implementation was no match for it running natively on the Xonar. I set it up in foobar2000, but I believe this uses the same software implementation as PowerDVD (which is where I got my dolby headphone dll for the wrapper to work with).

Asus Xonar D2 vs Auzentech Prelude impressions

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After experiencing a few problems with some games and my Xonar D2, I spotted an Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 2nd hand. I thought it would be worth a try. I'm treating this as an audition and though I'd post some early impressions.

So far I've been using both soundcards unamped with Goldring DR50 (open), Goldring NS1000 (closed with active noise reduction) and Creative Aurvana Live! (closed) headphones. Have briefly tried Dolby Digital Live on both cards with speakers just to check it works.

First of all - they both work together in the same machine in Vista - sort of. The trouble is Alchemy doesn't seem to work with some games with a 2nd soundcard installed. It wouldn't allow me to enable EAX in Rome: Total War for example. Also tried this with an X-Fi USB Go! with the same result. For Alchemy to work, the Xonar needs to be disabled and the drivers uninstalled. The Prelude drivers can then be installed and Alchemy will work.

Secondly - gaming with headphones. Tried Bioshock on both. CMSS-3D headphone on the X-Fi and Dolby Headphone on the Xonar are very different. CMSS-3D headphone certainly gives a sense of direction but it doesn't do much for soundstage. Dolby headphone (especially DH3) gives a much more open feel, similar to listening to surround sound speakers. I could almost forget I was wearing headphones with Dolby Headphone. By comparison CMSS-3D headphone sounds very much 'in or close to head' to me. If anything, I would say CMSS-3D gives more directional accuracy behind the listener (i.e. rear left, centre and right) than Dolby Headphone. I could see it giving a real advantage in competitive FPS games. Dolby Headphone does a better job of tying in sounds to what's on the screen. CMSS3D headphone sounds a little too wide, which characters on screen sounding like they're off to the sides. I much prefer Dolby Headphone though, as it artificially creates more of a soundstage. This may be a reflection of the headphones I was using though. I think headphones with an already realistic soundstage could work better with CMSS-3D headphone than the ones I was using.

General sound quality with no dsp enabled is very close between the two. The Xonar is marginally better at driving headphones unamped. The headphones will be slightly louder at the same volume setting with the Xonar and it can drive them to a higher level without distorting.

For music - I tried listening to FLAC rips of a few CDs in Foobar2000, using ASIO drivers on both cards with no dsp enabled. They generally sounded very close. Apart from the above comment about the cards driving headphones, I'd be kidding myself if I claimed I could hear anything more than the placebo effect would allow.

I enjoy Dolby Headphone on the Xonar for music listening so I tried it against a combination of the 3rd party chanel mixer (set up to 2.0 or 2.1 with sound from all chanels diverted to subwoofer) and Dolby Headphone wrappers in foobar2000 on the Prelude. Software Dolby Headphone is simply no match for the Xonar. While the sound was certainly altered on the Xonar, I could not hear any loss of fidelity and all details present and correct, if rather recessed compared to no dsp. Superficially Dolby Headphone on the Prelude gave the a similar sense of space and direction to the Xonar but some detail was clearly going missing and the timbre of instruments was sometimes altered, sounding less realistic.

Based on early impressions, it looks like I'll be keeping the Xonar. It's nice to have EAX back in a few games that weren't working with DS3D-GX though, so it's tempting to keep the Prelude long enough to play through them.