Asus Xonar Essence vs Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD - Page 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thoth 

 ATH-AD700 Open-air Dynamic Headphones 

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/567089b73c33056f/index.html/

 

or ATH-AD500

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/d2dafc5d2d7d1498/index.html/

 

yea going Titanium HD is probally best

i ask my wallet and see hat i can do

if not i probaly go for gaming extreme for now

 

 

Well, all people seem to enjoy AD700 a lot when it comes to gaming.

And you'll be more than pleased with the Titanium HD. If you find yourself slightly short on money to get both the headphones and the soundcard, I'd advise on waiting a little time, saving some more money and getting both. You won't be disappointed.

@powerlifter450: Turtle Beach? Games? With all due respect... No.

First of all, EAX is not hardware supported since Windows XP. Creative uses Alchemy to "Emulate" the EAX effect, and it does so very badly in some games (so bad i have to turn it off or i go mad at the lack of good sounds).

Also creative has some crackling problems with some motherboards. I managed to fix my problem, and it only appears once in 6 months by now, but at the begining it was a real pain in the ass to have to keep trying bios versions of my Motherboard to see if this time it will work.

As far as i know, ASUS sound cards are very high quality, but since i only own a X-Fi titanium, i can tell you that once u "manage" to fix all its problems, it sounds quite good.

The crystalizer really improves sound, and other effects are noticibly good. I have it connected to a Z-5500 for about 2 years now, and it still is able to drop tears from me sometimes on how good it sounds.

Only problem so far:it seems very quiet if u plug the earphones to the soundcard itself. I mean, not like dead quiet, but my mp3 player can punch more than this soundcard...

Quote:

Originally Posted by catspaw 

First of all, EAX is not hardware supported since Windows XP. Creative uses Alchemy to "Emulate" the EAX effect, and it does so very badly in some games (so bad i have to turn it off or i go mad at the lack of good sounds).

Also creative has some crackling problems with some motherboards. I managed to fix my problem, and it only appears once in 6 months by now, but at the begining it was a real pain in the ass to have to keep trying bios versions of my Motherboard to see if this time it will work.

As far as i know, ASUS sound cards are very high quality, but since i only own a X-Fi titanium, i can tell you that once u "manage" to fix all its problems, it sounds quite good.

The crystalizer really improves sound, and other effects are noticibly good. I have it connected to a Z-5500 for about 2 years now, and it still is able to drop tears from me sometimes on how good it sounds.

Only problem so far:it seems very quiet if u plug the earphones to the soundcard itself. I mean, not like dead quiet, but my mp3 player can punch more than this soundcard...

The fact that you use and prefer crystalizer already tells me a lot. Besides the fact that ALchemy is the only solution that provides exact results on Vista/7 than were had on XP, and on rare cases almost as good, the known issues with motherboards are usually with nForce chipsets, that either have to get an updated BIOS or at least updated chipset drivers. Oh, ALchemy doesn't emulate anything, it converts all the DS3D API calls to OpenAL, therefore enabling hardware acceleration, but since you think it emulates things, you wouldn't know anything about that.

As far as you know, the X-Fi Titanium HD matches the Essence STX with ease, AND has all the bells and whistles to make games sound sweeter and more accurate, because that GX tech that Asus boasts is awfully bad.

I cringe to think what settings you might have on your system.

EDIT: There have been more systems working flawlessly with Creative soundcards than systems with issues, and installing a Creative soundcard of the current gen is not like installing other devices, there are guidelines for that, and when people just mindlessly install things, then get surprised of being unable to get it to work.