Creative Sound Blaster new série Z - Page 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

You can plug the NFB-12 into the Titanium's S/PDIF optical port and try the NFB-12, as the Titanium HD supports gaming features (like headphone surround sound) thru S/PDIF output.

You can then sell off the NFB-12 at anytime in the future.

I was gonna say...all it takes is to check "Play Stereo Mix using Digital Output" in the Titanium HD's control panel. (The location varies depending on whether you use the Audio Control Panel or the Console Launcher.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by NamelessPFG 

 

I was gonna say...all it takes is to check "Play Stereo Mix using Digital Output" in the Titanium HD's control panel. (The location varies depending on whether you use the Audio Control Panel or the Console Launcher.)

I'm happy to report, that after trying several configurations, the one that worked the best for me was.

PC to TiHD spdif to NFB-12 then RCA out to Asgard, Headphones connected to asgard. it just sounds the awesome, also when i change mode to Game all games sounds sound amazing. 

Happy with the setup. asgard gets pretty hot, compared to the NFB-12 which it gets warm. for what i heard the Dac on this NFB-12 is pretty decent. 

thanks for the help guys. 

I hope You do realize that the NFB-12 is also a Amp beside being a Dac. The Asgard isn't needed in the chain. Since the Amp inside the NFB-12 does a good job with powering headphones that need the power. Unless you just don't like the amp thats inside of the NFB-12 and rather just use it as a Dac. To me that just seem like a waste. Since the NFB-12 is both a dac and a hp amp.

Quote:

Originally Posted by genclaymore 

I hope You do realize that the NFB-12 is also a Amp beside being a Dac. The Asgard isn't needed in the chain. Since the Amp inside the NFB-12 does a good job with powering headphones that need the power. Unless you just don't like the amp thats inside of the NFB-12 and rather just use it as a Dac. To me that just seem like a waste. Since the NFB-12 is both a dac and a hp amp.

Yes i Know im testing both at this moment and see the difference between both, i think the asgard sounds a bit more warmer. Once i make my mind on what i would like to keep i will get rid of the rest. 

You guys do realize MS killed hardware audio acceleration back in 2006. There's no way to accelerate the audio without OpenAL and most of today's gamers are software driven. So there's no reason to use X-Fi or any hardware acceleration LSI.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nielo TM 

You guys do realize MS killed hardware audio acceleration back in 2006. There's no way to accelerate the audio without OpenAL and most of today's gamers are software driven. So there's no reason to use X-Fi or any hardware acceleration LSI.

I don't know about you, but I still play a lot of DirectSound3D-and-OpenAL-based games from years past, and ALchemy works pretty well for the former. I'm not giving up the best sound possible for those titles at any cost, especially when a lot of them play much better than most newer games anyway along with sounding much better.

For that matter, I built a retrogaming PC not too long ago. It has THREE sound cards: a Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (to be replaced with an AWE32 when I have a case that can take its massive 14-inch length on the bottom-most slot, so I can have real OPL3 synth and QSound support) for DOS games, a Turtle Beach Montego II for Aureal A3D-based games, and an Auzentech X-Fi Prelude for everything DirectSound3D and OpenAL. I boot it into Win98SE for the first two cards (Aureal Vortex support is dreadful on NT-based Windows, and I need real DOS mode for the AWE cards), and anything that runs on WinXP uses the X-Fi.

All I really need to add is a Roland LA synth like the MT-32 or CM-32L, and I'll have near-maximum PC game audio compatibility on that system, save for anything that sounds best on a Gravis Ultrasound or anything else really exotic that requires an extra ISA slot not present on that system's motherboard.

Yes, that's just how seriously I take my gaming audio.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nielo TM 

I do occasionally play old titles providing my current hardware still support it (the old OpenGL libraries are no longer included with the latest driver so thats a bit of an issue). The fact of the matter is hardware audio acceleration has been dead for 6 years. It's now a novelty item for retro gamers but even that's on the verge of collapse since new motherboards only support XP partially. I certainly don't blame creative for ditching X-Fi in favor of DSPs.
Anyway things have gotten much better since the elimination of hardware audio. No more audio driver related BSODs.

Windows XP lack of support is of little consequence since hardware accelerated audio can be fully used on Windows Vista/7/8, and it's still quite superior to any of the non-accelerated software audio.

The single point that can improve marginally is stability, as sonic performance is significantly inferior.

Not via DirectSound (except in Win8 from what I gather) and you have to use OpenAL, which isn't exactly flawless. Anyway, PC gaming is dead or at least it's not what it used to be. The majority of releases are console ports based around ancient  console audio architecture.

Again, hardware accelerate audio is fully used, with OpenAL being an excellent audio renderer, even for hardware that only supports it through software.

PC gaming audio certainly isn't what it used to be, being now limited to flat 2D sound maps with poor positional cue accuracy.

I'm afraid it's not just audio that's being held back by console gaming.

Tell me about it. These days it's not possible to scale any engine that can function on mobile spec consoles and desktop PC. It's one or the other and most (if not all) have opted for console.

What really bothers me about the whole console gaming having most of the development focus is that the piracy excuse is thrown around, trying to make the idea of PC piracy being rampant when compared to console piracy. The fact is that there is basically as much console piracy as PC piracy, but due to masses not being informed on that, such idea was been somewhat accepted.

Now, I'm all up for cross platform development, as long as it doesn't limit the quality of the content that reaches the PC. From a technical standpoint, the PC is inevitably superior to consoles due to its dynamic hardware nature and precisely because of that, games should be developed first and foremost for that platform, being then cut down for consoles (stationary or handheld), according to each device's specs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

What really bothers me about the whole console gaming having most of the development focus is that the piracy excuse is thrown around, trying to make the idea of PC piracy being rampant when compared to console piracy. The fact is that there is basically as much console piracy as PC piracy, but due to masses not being informed on that, such idea was been somewhat accepted.

 

Now, I'm all up for cross platform development, as long as it doesn't limit the quality of the content that reaches the PC. From a technical standpoint, the PC is inevitably superior to consoles due to its dynamic hardware nature and precisely because of that, games should be developed first and foremost for that platform, being then cut down for consoles (stationary or handheld), according to each device's specs.

Yeah that's pretty annoying for PC games.

Not to mention certain producers like Ubisoft and EA make you jump through so much hoops and DRM layers to play the legitimate copies that it makes the pirated versions the easier version to play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chewy4 

Yeah that's pretty annoying for PC games.

 

Not to mention certain producers like Ubisoft and EA make you jump through so much hoops and DRM layers to play the legitimate copies that it makes the pirated versions the easier version to play.

True. Most DRM implementations go from annoying to intrusive, such as increasing medium wear and requiring a constant internet connection while running games. Even worse, some DRM actually breaks games, which was very controversial when that was discovered, as well as pirated versions being less buggy.

Still, as consoles evolve from single purpose devices to multimedia machines, they are getting increasingly filled with bugs, and that poses quite some problems so users of such hardware since there is no community support whatsoever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

 

Now, I'm all up for cross platform development, as long as it doesn't limit the quality of the content that reaches the PC. From a technical standpoint, the PC is inevitably superior to consoles due to its dynamic hardware nature and precisely because of that, games should be developed first and foremost for that platform, being then cut down for consoles (stationary or handheld), according to each device's specs.

That is not easy and it can't be done if the gap is too wide, which is what we are facing atm. Since 2005, both GPUs and CPUs have undergone tremendous change. We can now run AI, physics, dynamic lighting etc on the GPU or on the GPU side of an APU via DirectCompute or OpenCL. Raw processing power has also vastly increased during the 7 year period. So it's not possible to develop games that take advantage of modern PC hardware and then trim down to fit the consoles (especially when PS3's architecture is so different to PC and 360). That's like developing a game for the HD7870 then trimming it down so it can run on the PowerVR SGX543MP4 found on the iPad 3 hence why developers have chosen a middle-ground but this means high-end PC hardware aren't being utilized or too busy running dirty code.