Audigy 4 Pro....

[Swafe]

I like parrots

ummm whiskey tango foxtrot ?

[GAteKeeper]

I would go out and buy the first sound card with 3 ports:

Mic in
Optical IN
Co-ax/optical out DD/DTS encoded

Or A64 nForceX with soundstorm

I love the fact that its 1 cable to connect up and the DAC is in my amp and away from all that EMF noise.

GAteKeeper

[unrealrocks]

Saw this on a japanise site (very badly babelfished) a few months back, it doesn't look like any real improvment on the Audig2.

What did happen to the Audigy 3?

Same as GateKeeper, I use one coax cable to my decoder and the DD encoding really seems to help (try switching it on and off while listening to something - just increases the depth and hiss reduction). Untill other companies cotton onto the DD/DTS encoding idea like Nvidia I'm sticking with my SoundStorm board.

[SilentDeath]

Creative products, all of them (that I know of) only sell becuase they mislead the consumer in several ways, and are also generally crap with lots of advertising.Its the sort of stuff that sellsVERY well in pcworld... (I assume, never worked there..).

The one example I can be bothered to note is that the DACs on the audigiy2 are as good as the box says, BUT the other chips on there down sample the signal anyway. I myself would call that misleading... and no I cba to find the link to back it up, I read it several months ago but iirc, its widly known (andI probably got someof the details wrong anyway).

[Thorsson]

Soundstorm is good, but I read it's not going to be put on any more mobos, as not enough people thought the xtra cost was worth it. The Realtek chips eat a fair amount of CPU cycles. Other soundcards are nice, but don't have creative's game support. So despite all the probs, there are benefits to buying an Audigy. But this new card sounds like a waste of money. As for that mythical improvement in STN - I read an article which explained how the last claimed improvement was more hype than substance.

And 5.1 is plenty enough speakers in my study. Speakers are breeding like bloody rabbits - where will it stop? 20.1 anyone?

[Agent]

Soundstorm is good, but I read it's not going to be put on any more mobos, as not enough people thought the xtra cost was worth it.

Your correct that it wont be on any of the nforce 4 range, but the reason certainly isnt nothing to do with people not wanting to pay the extra. (see here 2 3 4).
People would much rather pay the extra and not having to fork out for a seperate soundcard : which would cost them more in the long run.

And im afraid i dont know the real reason either. Many people put it down to the finite amount of space the nforce 4 silicon has, other put it down to licencing issues (creative....again...), maybe both, or maybe somthing we havnt even thought of, but the fact still remains that it wont be in, which sucks

[TooNice]

Well, technically, a separate sound card can save cost.. Everytime you buy a mobo, you need to pay a premium to get the sound feature you want.. Whereas with a sound card, you could just pick whatever is good without the whistles, knowing that what you really want can simply be added on with your exisiting card. I don't know whats the typical cycle of sound card (esp. with the announcement of this Audigy 4), but it used to take a while before Creative release a new card..

[Mblaster]

But what are the alternatives to Creative for a high end sound card?

Looking through a few retailers i found Terratec and M-Audio, and i have barely heard of either of them.

[Apex]

Thats cos they are high end cards and they where not aimed at the normal users.

They have now started to aim there cards at the end user and so we see more of there cards around.

Thorsson

"Creative's Game support"

What support ? EAX you mean ?

It is vastle lacking in compared to A3D (RIP) which sadly was baught by creative and killed off cos they knew eax sucked.

A3D Used less system resources. Gave a much clear definition to the sound. Depth percetion is better with A3D.

Threw out the history of creative labs with there live range of cards, they have missled us all.

To start with the first creative cards where what they said they where but then the monkey boys got in on the act and they started to cut corners and now look at us.

PC sound systems are way behind the rest of the system. Every thing else has moved fwd yet sound seems to be taking a back seat.

When sound storm came out it kicked creative where it hurt and still can.

I was looking fwd to NF4 based shuttle but now that SS is not going to be on it i doubt i will upgrade till at least a SS level card comes out. This SN45G v2 will serve me for some time only the gfx needs updating.

So for me creative can go to hell for all i care.

[Howard]

8.1??? Hardly anything, if anything, supports 7.1, so what the hell is the point of 8.1? Blimey...

[TooNice]

Interesting. A3D is still mentioned. Were they so ahead of their time?
(I was going to get one but by the time I was going to buy it, it was killed and I thought support would be too scarce)

Surely EAX2 HD (Never tried/heard) can compare to it.. or not?

[Agent]

It is vastle lacking in compared to A3D (RIP) which sadly was baught by creative and killed off cos they knew eax sucked.

A3D Used less system resources. Gave a much clear definition to the sound. Depth percetion is better with A3D.

Yup, but do you know why ?
A3D was a "true" form of sound. It calculated where the sound was coming from, and adjusted accordingly.

EAX ?, EAX doesnt have anything to do with positional infomation !
2.1...5.1...7.1 ?, nope, thats not EAX, thats D3D doing all the hard work. EAX add's "enviromental" effects on after the sound has been produced by another source (either via D3D, or dolby digital if you have soundstorm and UT2004).

EAX is a usfull thing to have, but it really isnt that good. Its just marketed well.

edit - btw apex, this really had nothing to do with your post bud, i was just agreeing and extending on it a bit

[Apex]

Interesting. A3D is still mentioned. Were they so ahead of their time?
(I was going to get one but by the time I was going to buy it, it was killed and I thought support would be too scarce)

Surely EAX2 HD (Never tried/heard) can compare to it.. or not?

Ahead...they where miles in front with it.

EAX has it's place and imho at the mo it's in the wrong place.