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Wait a sec, you mean CMMS when listening to music?
Hope you meant gaming :P
No I mean for listening to music. When listening to music for pleasure there is one standard that matters and only one standard: What sounds the best to you. Period. There is no artifical standard of purity to meet, and nobody is right in telling you that you are wrong in what you like.
To me, CMMS sounds great, though I'm using it on 4 speakers rather than headphones normally. It expands the soundstage in a pleasing way. If you don't like it, fine, but don't think that you are somehow getting a "better" sound by listening to in unprocessed. Listening to music is about enjoyment, not pretention.
For that matter, I don't see the point in trying to meet a purity standard with modern music since it's all heavily processed anyhow. You are listening to something that was recorded by multiple microphones in isolated studios, mixed and processed on computer later, then laid to disc. This is not a pure recording, it's processed in such a way that the engineer thinks make it sound good on a wide range of equipment. Why shouldn't I apply processing of my own, if I like it?
The only sort of recordings that I think should be listened to as unprocessed as possible are binaural ones. Here the idea is to recreate the experience of listening to live music, and it's recorded in a simple way to make that possible. Thus there is a benefit, if using headphones, to not playing with the signal.
I refuse to give in to the pretentious attitude of artifical purity people have, and I encourage others to do the same. Do what sounds good to YOU. If you aren't listening for production, who cares? You like headphones that have crushing, unbalanced bass? Go for it, don't let anyone tell you that's the wrong way. Rock out, enjoy your music, don't worry about impressing others.
If you had a choice between the X-fi or an E-mu 1820 what would you buy?
Depends. In my case, the Elite Pro. That's what I did get. I had an Audigy 2 and an M-Audio Firewire 410, both of which I dumped in favour of the X-Fi Elite Pro. The reason is that I am a gamre and so need a game card, however I also do audio production, so need a pro card and some additonal inputs. The Audigy 2 didn't work largely because of it's built-in resampling, but the Elite Pro does. In game mode it works like the Audigy but better, in Audio Creation mode it's got plenty of inputs for all my synthesizers and works just like I'd want for a pro card. This way, I don't need a mixer.
I refuse to give in to the pretentious attitude of artifical purity people have, and I encourage others to do the same. Do what sounds good to YOU.
Fair enough, I didn't notice that big of a difference with CMSS speaker mode, though Headphone mode sounds absolutely horrible to me. It is bad enough in games that I wouldn't want it on with music. The Crystalizer really does expand the soundstage on some music but nothing I would really get worked up about.
EDIT: As a side note, my current favorite genre of music is Ambient, and I have noticed sometimes I actually perfer the 56k versions of some ambient songs to their cd quality counterparts, and many ambient fans have tried all sorts of ways to add a little something extra to their music, and the musicians generally support this, so I am also not saying all music has to be "pure".
However CMSS is designed to make 3D audio better in gaming and just messes up music too much.
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if u dont have a silent PC u dont know what u r missin'
I just want to warn all the head-fiers out there to not all get X-Fi Elites at once just for the sound quality. It's honestly not for "regular" audiophiles and the reason it's so expensive is because of its external box annd the 64MB of X-RAM that only benefits hardcore gamers. The external I/O drive costs like $200+ separately and that's because it has a high-resistance input jack to minimize low-frequency loss for high impedence devices like electric guitars/basses, and a pre-amp to boost that signal to normal levels. Every single other port on that external box is more or less the same as the internal i/o drive found with the Platinum and Fatal1ty models, and the knobs and crap are easily changeable software settings.
Gamers honestly don't benefit too much from the extra 64MB of RAM and even if you want it, get the Fatal1ty instead of the Elite Pro and save $100+.
Well, that's weird. I have to keep it at 60-80%. And sometimes that's not enough. 26-31 and it's pretty darn quiet.
Maybe theres a default on your card or you forgot to set the wave volume. Some programs likes to change this setting without asking.I also have friends with xfi and they are about as loud so i dont think this volume problem is coming from my end.
My setting looks like this.
On this one master volume is set to 27 and the main wave control to 100.
I just want to warn all the head-fiers out there to not all get X-Fi Elites at once just for the sound quality. It's honestly not for "regular" audiophiles and the reason it's so expensive is because of its external box annd the 64MB of X-RAM that only benefits hardcore gamers. The external I/O drive costs like $200+ separately and that's because it has a high-resistance input jack to minimize low-frequency loss for high impedence devices like electric guitars/basses, and a pre-amp to boost that signal to normal levels. Every single other port on that external box is more or less the same as the internal i/o drive found with the Platinum and Fatal1ty models, and the knobs and crap are easily changeable software settings.
Gamers honestly don't benefit too much from the extra 64MB of RAM and even if you want it, get the Fatal1ty instead of the Elite Pro and save $100+.
You forgot the better dac on the pro when you use the line out directly from the card.
Contributor Headphoneus Supremus Thought the last line in Citizen Kane was "nosebud."
Originally Posted by hawat
You forgot the better dac on the pro when you use the line out directly from the card.
Actually, that's four very good dacs instead of one good multichannel dac. And the opamps are also a tad better.
ObiHuang: It's not that hi-z input, that makes the Elite Pro box expensive. But several BB PCM1804 adcs alone sure have their price. Another plus is the mm phono stage. And the AKM adc on the card is also better than the standard Wolfson, btw.
Greetings from Hannover!
Manfred / lini
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No p/hun intended! :D
Bavarian headphone barbarian and professional computer journalist, suffering from bad consumer electronics collectitis. ;)
Favs: AKG K240S - "The new Groovalizer" as well as Beyerdynamic DT531 & DT440 - "The old Groovalizer" & "The Funkalizer"
Bumping this since it is a decent thread for asking Elite Pro related questions.
Is there any benefit from using the resampler in Foobar? PPHS/SRC.
Since the benefit of audio creation mode is that it doesn't resample to 48khz, and all my music (lossy to lossless) uses a samplerate of 44.1khz does it make sense to not use any resampler at all?
Linear Mode
