[aug1516]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rempert It would probably be worth the hassle to use a splitter or even make the switch manually for long gaming sessions. It's bad enough that Creative is forcing you to use their DAC, but having to then go through both ADC and DAC on the other card will surely make things worse.

Why would an analog signal go through the ADC and DAC on the EMU if it was already analog from the Audigy?

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aug1516 Why would an analog signal go through the ADC and DAC on the EMU if it was already analog from the Audigy?

Yes, but EMU cards have good quality ADC's and DAC's.

 

[Rempert]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can send an analog signal untouched from the line-in to the line-out on any of these cards. Line-in to line-out has a very dramatic (bad) effect on my Audigy2, but as Mr. Radar said of course it would be much less noticeable on the EMU.

It would still be nice if someone here can test this digital out issue firsthand. There are several people here who have both cards, surely one of them must have a cable to make the internal connection. Once set up, it would just be a matter of playing a sound through the audigy with and without some effect on, and seeing if there is a difference listening through the other card. I don't have the equipment to test this personally.

This got me thinking about whether these affects would even show up on a recorded .wav file, so I did some testing. Everything done with speaker setting on headphones, of course. CMSS affects do show up (or at least they make some sort of difference. It's quite noticeable if you turn CMSS on/off in the middle of recording). EAX affects that can be heard in stereo do show up. Interesting. So then I tried to record a DVD-A playback

Nothing. So then I tried playing something through line-in and a DVD-A at the same time. The second I turn on DVD-A playback, everything else gets cut out of recording too. Again interesting.

 

[kalzone]

i was thinking that when using an audigy 1/2 you lose EAX effects when going digital but after some testing i have to disagree.

i have an Audigy 2 connected to my EMU 1212M via digital in/out.

i brought up the EAX console for the audigy 2 and played a wav file.

played the wav file: sounded fine

selected one of the effects and hit play: guess what???

i heard the effect.

i tried another effect and heard it too.... i tried a few others and all of them
i was able to hear.

so let the myth die now. EAX/Direct-Sound3d.. works over digital out.

 

[Dixie Flatline]

kalzone, now that's very interesting. Can you try this out with a game to confirm that there's a difference with EAX switched on or off?

I assume you've seen the discussion in this thread: http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=79448

Also, I'm not familiar with the Audigy software since I've only got a SB Live, but I've got a "Surround Mixer" on my desktop which lets me set up the card (and EAX/CMSS effects) for headphones, two speakers, or four speakers. How do you have your Audigy configured?

I'm starting to think the case may be this: if you have the card set up to use more than two speakers for EAX/CMSS (in which case it's taking stereo sound and processing it for a multispeaker setup), then you can't send those multiple channels over the S/PDIF link. You can't tell it you've got four speakers, then connect the S/PDIF to a multichannel receiver and get four speakers worth of sound out of it -- you'll only get the front left and right channels.

However, EAX also does processing for two-channel setups (dual speakers or headphones). It sounds like if you tell it you only have two channels, then it will happily do effects processing on those two channels before it sends them out the S/PDIF connector.

Does this make sense to people? And more importantly, can we get other folks to verify that it actually works for them?

 

[kalzone]

dixie, i think the sb live also has a similar panel that allows you to turn various effects but it's integrated in the audiohq applet inside the control panel unless you did a drivers only install.

anyway, i read through that thread and posted my comment but i am going to try a few games and see what happens.

i've heard a lot of talk about not being able to get eax, 3d audio, etc... over digital but just recently on the www.3dss.com forum i was told otherwise and so far it seems to be true.
now if only someone would do soem proper test. i only have headphones so i can't do too much testing.

 

[Solude]

Hi ya Mash. Windows uses whatever card is selected in the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel. If you had both cards and FPS was your primary concern then you would select the A2 for games and 1212m for music. The performance gap isn't huge, about 5% overall so in games where it would matter we're talking about 2-4FPS. I think we can agree that if you are getting 100FPS+ a 5% drop doesn't matter. But if you are in the 30-60FPS range then it does but I think better audio is worth getting 28FPS instead of 30FPS or say 57FPS instead of 60FPS. You aren't likely to notice a few frames but the audio drop, should be obvious.

My E-Mu 1212m comes in very soon I should be able to tell you the drop in Final Fantasy XI between the 2.

 

[Dixie Flatline]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalzone anyway, i read through that thread and posted my comment but i am going to try a few games and see what happens. i've heard a lot of talk about not being able to get eax, 3d audio, etc... over digital but just recently on the www.3dss.com forum i was told otherwise and so far it seems to be true. now if only someone would do soem proper test. i only have headphones so i can't do too much testing.

Thanks -- I just found that thread on the 3dss forums. I don't know about other folks here, but I'd probably be playing games through headphones as well as music. All I really care about is if I can get EAX processing with two-channel audio to my headphones, since I'm not inclined to mess with the elaborate 4.1/5.1/whatever speaker systems.

 

[aug1516]

You don't need anything more than headphones to perform a proper test. EAX is not the same thing as multi-channel audio. If the digital out will output EAX then you should be getting EAX effects in your games with just your headphones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalzone dixie, i think the sb live also has a similar panel that allows you to turn various effects but it's integrated in the audiohq applet inside the control panel unless you did a drivers only install. anyway, i read through that thread and posted my comment but i am going to try a few games and see what happens. i've heard a lot of talk about not being able to get eax, 3d audio, etc... over digital but just recently on the www.3dss.com forum i was told otherwise and so far it seems to be true. now if only someone would do soem proper test. i only have headphones so i can't do too much testing.

 

[Solude]

Card came in this weekend and here are some numbers for you...

Final Fantasy XI Bench 2

No Audio 3900 average or about 39FPS
nForce MCP 3789 average or about 38FPS
E-Mu 1212m 3746 average or about 37FPS

This is on an Athlon 2400 with 1GB DDR and ATi 9600PRO. Keep in mind the nForce is faster than the Audigy and the .43FPS difference shrinks some more. Is .43FPS worth the difference in sound quality? I sure think so.