Originally Posted by
Uriel
I'll put it this way. I was happy with Xonar until I did A/B comparisons with X-Fi in a number of different games.
Hardware acceleration / processing of game audio is still widely used in OpenAL and FMOD games. In these X-Fis are often an audible improvement over Xonar. When Xonar emulation of X-Fi works it can be excellent. The trouble is it often does't work properly. There are frequently missing, broken or inferior effects. What's worst is where it introduces instability.
Now this is the kicker - when you turn off DS3D-GX, you are turning off effects that even onboard audio codecs can manage.