Being a long-time reader here, i finally felt the need to register to share my impressions of the ZxR
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I previously owned an Xfi-Gamer and and Essence STX, Headphones have been upgraded in the time being, actually using Phillips Fidelio X1 (which i like quite a lot as a "better DT990" for games and movies...quite funny and bass-heavy, but still very clear sound).
I always liked and used the surround virtualizations for games and movies and recently, reading an few opinions here and on other forums, i had the impression that SBX Surround might actually be better than Dolby HP on the STX.
So i finally bought an ZxR...
1.) Installation/Drivers: No Problems at all and in fact, i like the CP very much. Don´t have any crackles, pops or whatever and dpc latency is very low, no matter what i´m doing. Tbh, i never had any problems in the past with X-Fi/STX drivers, but just wanted to mention it.
2.) Stereo sound with music: Didn´t expect to really notice a difference to the STX, and i didn´t. Of course i didn´t have two PC´s with both cards installed available and i can only compare before (STX) vs. after (ZxR) and probably one might find some minor differences when listening to both card simultanously, but in all in all...both very good sounding cards for listening to music (as to expected).
3.) Surround virtualization with headphones...now this is where i expected the ZxR to perform better than the STX...and it does, and then some more
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When i first fired up some games with SBX Surround activated, i had do double-check its really on...not because i missed positional sounds, but because the sound quality was like was using the STX in stereo mode w/o Dolby HP.
SBX Surround really manages to pull of very clear positional audio with an great feeling of immersion without sacrifing sound quality like CMSS-3D (tin-canned sound) or Dolby HP (reverb all over the place) do.
For the last few days i´ve been listening again and again to my currently installed games (e.g. Borderlands 2, Outlast, Diablo III, Metro:LL, Skyrim, Dishonored, Shadow Warrior) and movies over and over again and (at least for my ears) SBX Surround is way ahead of any other surround virtualization in the sense of combining very good and natural sound with great positional clues and and overall feeling of immersion.
tldr; even if you´re believing in "stereo all day long and all surround virtualisations are evil"..try out SBX Surround
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