advice on a sound card?

[un1d3n]

Hey all, with the release of battlefield 2142 coming closer i have decided to make the jump from average sound card to the elite!

iwould appreciate advice on the best bang for your buck

my price range is (max) 150 US dollars

now I know creative's X-Fi are presumably the best, but which one?

thanks in advance

[Smokey21]

Well, if it's for gaming, the the X-Fi range really can't be beaten.

There are 4 versions:
1. XtremeMusic- Basic version. Just the soundcard.
2. Platinum- Same sound card as basic, but it comes with a 5.25" bay, and a remote. Quite useful.
3. Fatality- Same as plat, except it has 64mb of onboard memory.
4. Elite Pro- Top of the range, not really aimed at gamers.

Really your decision. If you don't need or want the front bezel thing, then just get the basic version.

[dave87]

A guy I know in the states (through OC3D forums) swears by this - he said it blew the X-Fi out of the water.

http://www.auzentech.com/products_xplosion.html

[Chunkers]

I have just built a system containing the X-fi Music Extreme and play a lot of BF2.

Compared to the Audigy I had before and the onboard HD sound on my P5B Deluxe it sounds superb. The positional sound enhancements and addtional voices also help you in-game.

My brother came to stay this weekend and had a game or two on my new machine, he will be placing an order for an X-fi today to fit in his!

For £50 seems like good value to me, not so sure about the higher end of the range which seem like a lot on money - the main good thing you get from the higher end cards is the front panel which is nice to have.

Good luck

Chunks

[htid]

I have just built a system containing the X-fi Music Extreme and play a lot of BF2.

Compared to the Audigy I had before and the onboard HD sound on my P5B Deluxe it sounds superb. The positional sound enhancements and addtional voices also help you in-game.

My brother came to stay this weekend and had a game or two on my new machine, he will be placing an order for an X-fi today to fit in his!

For £50 seems like good value to me, not so sure about the higher end of the range which seem like a lot on money - the main good thing you get from the higher end cards is the front panel which is nice to have.

Good luck

Chunks

Just jumping this thread a sec....so you mean buying a better sound card isn't just about the sound quality, it's also about positions of the sound and extra sounds you can't hear wth, say, my current sb live 5.1?

I've never really looked into soundcards and thought that the more expensive ones were just better sound quality, nothing more.

[kalniel]

A guy I know in the states (through OC3D forums) swears by this - he said it blew the X-Fi out of the water.

http://www.auzentech.com/products_xplosion.html

Unfortunately it also has a high CPU usage and no DirectSound3d or EAX support.

review here:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/363/

[Zak33]

Just jumping this thread a sec....so you mean buying a better sound card isn't just about the sound quality, it's also about positions of the sound and extra sounds you can't hear wth, say, my current sb live 5.1?

yes.

I had an Audigy and then moved to my current Revolution 7.1 and it's mouth wateringly better.

Having CPU use is not relevent really, as mine uses CPU cycles too, but with a fairly powerful CPU (Opteron 146) it's fine.

To have good Aureal 3d is good for me too, it's proper 3d spacial awareness on headphones.

So in answer to your question: New sound cards rip Live cards apart and spit them out for breakfast. It's not just the hardware, it's the mathementical caculations that run on the better hardware that make sounds....sound better!

[Clunk]

Unfortunately it also has a high CPU usage and no DirectSound3d or EAX support.

review here:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/363/

No high cpu usage (older drivers were a bit flaky). You dont need EAX because it is designed to be used with a Dolby Digital / DTS surround amplifier. You can play games in DD/DTS and it sounds pretty awesome. It will play your mp3 over the digital connection in either the 5.1 DD/DTS (if thats what you like) or in a choice of different bitrates of stereo, and of course analog, and you can upgrade the opamps on the card to give better analog output.

If you have an AV amp, in my opinion, this is the card to go for.

[Hans Voralberg]

Bit-tech just reviewed a soundcard in ur price range, have a look
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...undcard/1.html

The Sondigo Inferno, again with all the Dolby goodness

[Steyr]

Is it worth going for an X-fi if I only have a 2.1 setup?

[kalniel]

Is it worth going for an X-fi if I only have a 2.1 setup?

Compared to on-board, yes. Compared to an Audigy2/4 class card, nope.

[robj20]

Iv got the xfi pro and find it amazing its great for games and i only went for the pro for the array of inputs its great when im making some music tracks.

[shaithis]

I stick with Creative cards after being burnt a few times before going for cards that were promised as feature and hardware superior....

The bottom line was always that you couldn't tell them apart from a current high0end creative card plus the drivers were always buggy, released late or not released at all (other OSes, new versions of Windows etc)

The creative cards are good enough (probably overkill) for any gamer and have the best support of any soundcard on the market.

Currently using the XFi Fatal1ty here.

[Clunk]

Did they ever get the digital out working properly on the X-Fi?

[shaithis]

Not had any problems with the digital-out on mine.

Occasionally use it for games when freinds are around (mostly use headset for games) and use it when playing downloaded HD material.

I did need to add and configure a control panel app to re-encode discrete channels into a Dolby Digital 5.1 stream for occasions when I want 5.1 but the source isn't already in a DD5.1 or DTS stream.....but otherwise it has worked a charm.

[Clunk]

can yours run 5.1 via a single optical or coaxial cable into an AV amp? I was under the impression that Creative made it so that you had to use all the seperate analog cables to do that? maybe they fixed it?