Sound card upgrade? - Page 9

Yep, very true. I'd have to agree 100%, games come and go with new and old technology with various developers. I'm currently going for the ASUS Xonar Essence ST ver, whenever I can get a hold of the ST rather than the STX as I only have one available PCI slot. Not sure when Australia will get them, found one on a EU site however I doubt they'd ship overseas and I've never heard of them before. Currently using onboard audio, yea, big step indeed.

That's a CREATIVE chipset, for ya. Typical issues, no matter what third parties try with them.

ASUS Xonar Essence has an in built headphone amplifier.

Auzentech uses a few x-fi chipsets made by creative to better design the card & drivers.

Creative has bad driver support for vista, bloatware and I've read of many issues in sound such as static and pops in audio, etc. Blue screens of death is the signature of a creative card =p

If your very worried about EAX then choose creative or auzentech with x-fi chipsets. If your not too worried then get yourself an ASUS Xonar which has software to emulate EAX however is sometimes a hit and miss in games until it's been patched. Emulates well so I've read, but not 100% - obviously.

Besides, EAX is getting old and really should be dying at this moment to make way for OpenAL's EFX and so on which ASUS Supports just fine.

EAX = Enviromental audio extensions for games.

Then Creative allows you to hear 5.1/7.1 around you with CMSS-3D on headphones, I'm using that now. When in games, spin your character around and you can hear like the audio is going from one speaker to another in 5.1/7.1 rather than actually fully surround & around you.

Not ALL ASUS Xonar's support this, but the ones that do have 5.1/7.1 technology with Dolby Headphone. This is supposedly more natural than CMSS-3D And sounds more realistic. According to ROBSCIX, Dolby HP sounds exactly like how his speakers are set up around him.

Also read that CMSS-3D loses some quality and detail whereas Dolby HP keeps all that.

According to what I've read, all ASUS Xonar's have the GX 2.0/2.5 engine to emulate EAX. They all support Dolby headphone, too, except for the Xonar DS.

Just get whatever meets your needs I suppose. I was basing mine upon:
*I have EAX 2.0 now, it's just reverb, Since I've never experience x-fi fidelity EAX I'll just go to ASUS's emulated one as they are similar anyway

*Music is timeless, games come and go with new and old technology, they aren't always going to support some crappy EAX - which is deemed to be dying for things such as EFX.

*Dolby headphone works for both Dolby 5.1 DVD's, something my mother definitely wanted. Can switch to 7.1 for games. Right now I'm using CMSS-3D, apparently Dolby HP has better detail and sounds more natural.

*Versatile for all 3, Games - Music & Movies.

*A headphone amplifier with my current headphones apparently gives a bigger impact, richer, tighter bass response.

For me - I'm going for the ASUS Xonar Essence ST. Seems to be the BEST audio card for a long time and will be a great flagship for my system.

Now, ASUS - Ship the ST around the US & Aus faster! Can't wait forever, you got the rest of this year and maybe 3months at maximum next year then I'll get the D2 or something.