[skoiboy]

I have an extigy which I really like, even though people on this board aren't fans of the company. I think it has a pretty good DAC but I'm curious if anyone has a comparison of the Extigy and another DAC such as the ART DI/O. I'm thinking about picking on up if the difference would be worth it.

Those who haven't tried the extigy, try not to insult it so much, because I think people might be more impressed when using it than judging it by the reputation of the company.

(I don't like creative either, by the way...but I have a laptop and its the best I could do since I needed some of the outputs.)

skoiboy

 

[dd3mon]

creative products automatically resample any input to 16/48, so their digital outputs are not "clean". The only USB product (for use with a laptop) that provides a clean digital out that I know of is an M-Audio sonica, but unfortunately this only has an optical out (ART DI/O only accepts coax). So either you'd have to find a optical->coax converter (availalble starting at $70 I believe) or find another product with a coax out. I would not recommend using the digital out on any creative product (nor the analog for that matter

).

-dd3mon

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally posted by dd3mon creative products automatically resample any input to 16/48, so their digital outputs are not "clean". The only USB product (for use with a laptop) that provides a clean digital out that I know of is an M-Audio sonica, but unfortunately this only has an optical out (ART DI/O only accepts coax). So either you'd have to find a optical->coax converter (availalble starting at $70 I believe) or find another product with a coax out. I would not recommend using the digital out on any creative product (nor the analog for that matter ).

You might as well say I don't recommend any Creative Labs products

optical <-> coax convertors. there's a $49 one at audio cubes. One of these + Sonica is about same price as Extigy. I use a M-Audio CO3 which has some jitter correction but it's a bit more pricey.

Going from Extigy's resampled digital out to ART DI/O won't be that great.

 

[skoiboy]

<<creative products automatically resample any input to 16/48>>

dd3mon - I've heard these rumors but they seem to be based on older creative products...do you have a link or some more info to confirm this?



<<Going from Extigy's resampled digital out to ART DI/O won't be that great.>>

Ian, I thought that by using the digital out, or the optical out on the extigy would completly bypass the Extigy's DI/O therefore making it so whatever the extigy usually does to the sound wouldn't matter.

 

[markjia]

Quote:

Originally posted by skoiboy <<creative products automatically resample any input to 16/48>> dd3mon - I've heard these rumors but they seem to be based on older creative products...do you have a link or some more info to confirm this?

I don't have any proof of this, but I am quite sure that the Extigy resamples it's output as well.

Quote:

<<Going from Extigy's resampled digital out to ART DI/O won't be that great.>> Ian, I thought that by using the digital out, or the optical out on the extigy would completly bypass the Extigy's DI/O therefore making it so whatever the extigy usually does to the sound wouldn't matter.

Just because an output is digital, it doesn't mean that it isn't resampled. You still have to convert the data stored on the computer (eg. WAV, MP3, etc) into a format understandable by a DAC.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally posted by skoiboy <<creative products automatically resample any input to 16/48>> dd3mon - I've heard these rumors but they seem to be based on older creative products...do you have a link or some more info to confirm this? <<Going from Extigy's resampled digital out to ART DI/O won't be that great.>> Ian, I thought that by using the digital out, or the optical out on the extigy would completly bypass the Extigy's DI/O therefore making it so whatever the extigy usually does to the sound wouldn't matter.

Well for Audigy 2 there's still bad resampling:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/creativeaudigy2/
http://www.io.com/~kazushi/audiocard/audigy2/

So I don't believe the Extigy is an exception.

That's one unavoidable problem. The other is windows software mixer (kmixer). This can only be bypassed by using ASIO hardware/drivers (which extigy isn't) or kernel streaming mode (in WinXP) but you need to use an audio program which supports this (foobar2000 w/ output plugin). You can also use SSRC in foobar to do better resampling that the one built in hardware.

These get put into the digital out also.

The best thing is to have a soundcard which doesn't do resampling to begin with and use ASIO or kernal streaming.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally posted by lan Well for Audigy 2 there's still bad resampling: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/creativeaudigy2/ http://www.io.com/~kazushi/audiocard/audigy2/ So I don't believe the Extigy is an exception. That's one unavoidable problem. The other is windows software mixer (kmixer). This can only be bypassed by using ASIO hardware/drivers (which extigy isn't) or kernel streaming mode (in WinXP) but you need to use an audio program which supports this (foobar2000 w/ output plugin). You can also use SSRC in foobar to do better resampling that the one built in hardware. These get put into the digital out also. The best thing is to have a soundcard which doesn't do resampling to begin with and use ASIO or kernal streaming.

That's right, lan. But you'll also need the correct version of Windows in order to even use ASIO or kernel streaming. Unfortunately, Windows 98, 98SE or Me supports neither - so you're stuck with audio resampling with those OSes in playback no matter what. Only Windows 2000 and XP support ASIO, and only Windows XP supports kernel streaming.

 

[lan]

True. There are limited audio capabilities in older OSes. Even WinXP original can't do 192khz, you need to install Service Pack 1.

 

[erickoh]

Sorry, I just had to add my 2 cents about the Extigy here..

I bought the extigy hoping it could act as a external DAC/Headamp unit for my PC audio driving my SR60/HD590. I figured there should be big gains in sound quality since the unit is external and its' DAC/headphone jack should be of a higher quality than my in-built motherboard's.

Unfortunately, the sound quality was simply atrocious. It sounded worse than the in-built sound system of my nForce-1 motherboard. The digital out on the nForce board was noticably better as well. (I connected both to my hifi via a cambridge audio dac) There seem to be latency issues with the USB link as well. I end up using it now with my office PC via the digital out from my old soundblaster gold card, simply because the soundblaster gold card only had 2 RCA out (I needed the headphone jack)

The consolation was that the whole issue got me rather pissed, and I shorted creative stock and covered back the same day after I got back the price I paid for the Extigy.

 

[evil-zen]

i am using foobar and m-audio revo on win2k sp3. both asio and kernel streaming works fine here. so it is not limited to winxp only.

 

[azwr]

actually ... kernal streaming and ASIO are dependent more upon the soundcard supporting them than the OS. Well, especially ASIO, kernal streaming is a bit of a different story (i think). I have the kxDrivers (www.kxproject.com) for my shoddy soundblaster live that came with the computer, and they support ASIO quite well. a lot of other home recordists on different forums i go to use ASIO with different os's, it just depends on the soundcard and its drivers. but actually, with most creative cards, if you try to use the ASIO drivers, then you have to use the 48khz rate ... you have direct access over the card with ASIO, but are then locked into whatever defaults it allows you to use. but take all of this with a grain of salt, this is just little bits and peices of info i've gathered and i may not be putting them together correctly.

and the more i think about it, i think you're right about the kernal streaming. but i'd check out the foobar forums ( http://foobar2000.hydrogenaudio.org) or the forums and faq's on the kxproject site (http://www.kxproject.com) if you want more reliable info. good luck!

~andrew