[obobskivich]

The hostile response is your interpretation, not my intention. 

And I'm not here to debate what electronics the Teac is using as it's beyond my field of expertise.  I simply replied with what I thought was pertinent info pertaining to the discussion here. Had I known I was going to get into an electronics debate I would have done my homework before posting :bigsmile_face:

At any rate the "hostility" is perceived, not real

Peace

Fair enough - we're good mate.

source games can use directsound3d with console commands. snd_legacy_surround in combination with a surround sound setting. You would need alchemy or asus gx to get this to work properly, though I'm not sure what advantages there would really be. One assumes hardware acceleration would be superior somehow.

To quote a great Ryan Reynolds bit - "but...WHY?"

[VIDEO]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEZWYXPvmS8[/VIDEO]

Source games have touted their software audio since Half-Life 2 came out, and it works very well. Why force it into a legacy mode that isn't supported without shims in newer versions of Windows? Hardware acceleration was only ever a "thing" because of limited computational resources in older machines - in a way its similar to wanting an old MPEG card in your shiny new machine; its anachronistic.

I read the last 3-4 pages of this thread but I'm confused now. Looking at some other threads, I read that low impedance headphones could be a problem with the SB-Z because I would have to put the volume at like 5% and wouldn't be able to find quite a good volume since 6% would be too loud already (this is an example). Is that fixed (with some settings in the software) or I still need to be careful on what headphones to use?

I currently have bad HyperX Cloud headset that I plan to upgrade either for some cheap M50x or some expansive MMX300 cans (I will see with my budget this summer) but could have a good deal on a SB-Z right now and just want to make sure I won't have any problem. Is that (usually) a good bang for the buck for a non-audiophile gamer?

Also I currently have a E10k but I really want an internal sound card for many reasons, should I expect any improvement (over time with better cans)?

Thank you!

No it won't damage anything, as multiple people have said. To add to the list of "low impedance stuff" that I've plugged into Recon3D and ZxR, go view my profile (everything in there that can be plugged into either of those cards, has been) - there's no problem. Now you won't be running at 100% volume, but either way you'll have usable volume control range even with very sensitive, low impedance cans (like the AT ESW9).

Have you actually heard the ATH M50/X?  

Anyway it really comes down to what one is looking for in music, gaming, or both. Example - since I don't do multiplayer gaming I don't need headphones with a built in mic so any headphone in that category wouldn't interest me.  Also since I prioritize my headphones towards music more so than gaming that also influences my headphone decision. That said, I found the M50's to be very good for gaming since they also do an excellent job of blocking out outside noise. However, I found that the Sennheiser HD700's to be even better because of their wide soundstage and airy sound. This makes the game's environment sound more open and in-depth. They also pick up the smallest detail in sound which allows you to easily hear enemies creeping up behind you. And yes, they can also drop the bass notes for that explosive sound. That said, the HD700's are $500+, where the ATH M50's are currently less than $120 bucks.

And yes, either of these phones can be plugged directly into the SB-Z/ZXR without issue of fear of damage.

To me, the best bang for the buck is what your ear wants to hear and enjoy - whether a $50 pair of headphones or a $1000 dollar pair.

My two cents.

I haven't heard the Kingston, but I've heard the original M50. I think they're over-hyped. They aren't bad or anything, but I think they're too often built into a giant; years ago when the AKG K701 were FOTM a poster made a comment along the lines of "these are often the first high-end headphone many listeners experience, and they get built into a giant because they sound great next to cheap junk; after folks have heard other high end cans, do they come back to the K701? That's more telling"

And that's largely how I feel about the M50. There's nothing wrong at all if you like them, and there's nothing wrong at all with recommending them or anything of that sort, but I personally think they're over-hyped - they're boomy, clampy, have a narrow soundstage, and can sound congested and bloated with some material. Even in their price range there are other headphones I would personally prefer, but that's what it ultimately comes down to at this level of performance (and that extends all the way up to "exotic" headphones, like their big brothers, the ATH-W5000): what do you personally prefer?

IME gaming headsets are usually of inferior build and sound quality, but I don't know if that's changed in recent years - "cheap headphones" certainly have improved in the last ten years, so why couldn't headsets have improved as well?

In short, you're worrying about nothing as most headphones fall into the 30 something Ohm range, including the Audio Technical ATH M50's, which is 36 Ohms. And depending who you ask "normal" can be somewhere between 16-100 or 200 and below... Wiki - Headphones (Impedance)

BTW most (though not always true) "audiophile" headphones tend to fall into the high impedance range. Though the Sennheiser HD700's ($500+) are not necessarily "high impedance" they are in the 150 Ohm range. Contrast that with Audio Technica's ATH R70x ($349) which come in at a whopping 470 Ohms. 

Again, you're worrying about nothing.

Peace  

The ZxR had gain issues with my 12 ohm Sonys; it certainly played them but I had to run the gain/volume up significantly higher (and I would assume the card itself was probably getting warmer). That isn't all that surprising though - 32 ohms is usually bottom-end in most devices' specs, some will say 16 ohms, and lower than 16 ohms is usually a gamble, especially if you aren't at >110dB/mW (which my Sonys aren't).

Something else to point out on higher end headphones (and this is true of studio cans, "audiophile" cans, and even things like the Beats Pro (whatever genre you put those into): they can generally take A LOT of power before they blow up. Like 1-2W (that's 1000-2000mW). Your ears will go pop way before the headphones will, in that case.

People here still say they don't have problems with the Z... so I guess it's fine.

Also... this:


That makes me a little nervous. Is there anything better that I could get in Canada under the 200$ pricetag? What does it mean exactly? I have a Core i7-3820 so it's not like if I was lacking any CPU ressources, but I would obviously prefer the audio processing being handled by the hardware...

There is no "hardware audio processing" since Windows Vista. There are shims that can provide legacy compatibility for DirectSound3D H/W (which is NOT the same as "all" DirectSound - only some games ever used it), but that's for old games. New stuff is all software top-to-bottom, because that's the modern paradigm. There is nothing at all wrong about this either - modern CPUs are more than up to the task. You also have to remember, every Sound Blaster DSP had some pretty significant quirks in how it handled audio (Creative has been incredibly tight-lipped on SoundCore, which leads to various theories that its just a codec, or that it is in fact a DSP, but if it were a DSP - what is it actually doing?), and also generally introduced another layer of compatibility and stability concerns into a system (like every hardware audio solution that came before them also did). Software solutions, if done right (and most games these days just buy a commercial solution that has undergone significant testing and compatibility assurance, like Xaudio, WWise, or Miles), can be "theoretically perfect" and the point of loss is downstream (e.g. the actual playback hardware) - just like with digital music playback.

This is probably relevant:
http://satsun.org/audio/

Well, that's false about the Sound Core3D. The CPU/APU or whatever you want to call, the Sound Core3D chip that is, itself handles all the processing, in HARDWARE, obviously.
The only things lost compared to the X-Fi series is the hardware support for EAX HD, EAX 5.0, whatever it's called, and X-RAM. But considering those haven't been used since before the PCI-e versions of the X-Fi were launched, it's not such a loss.

Creative has never openly disclosed what the SoundCore does or does not do. Some speculate that it performs "hardware audio" but that leaves us asking "to what extent." Conversely, it could just be a codec, which handles audio I/O, but isn't doing DSP calculations - that would make more sense in a post-Vista world, especially since Creative has abandoned any sort of hardware audio API (they dumped OpenAL a few years ago).

The SoundCore does support EAX5 through ALchemy, although only a very few games ever implemented EAX5 (it came out right before Vista, and EAX was depreciated with Vista and the removal of DS3DHW) - Battlefield 2142 is one of them, and there's like 3 or 4 others; they're all old though (like ten years or more at this point). It does not have X-RAM, but X-RAM is not a software feature - its just a marketing brand for X-Fi's on-board DRAM buffer. Nothing has to be coded specifically to "use" X-RAM, because its handled by the drivers. Whether or not it ever provided a significant performance increase is of dubious merit.

"EAX HD" or "EAX Advanced HD" were alternative branding names for EAX 3 and 4, which came out with the Audigy series. Not a lot of games use either of them, but there are more titles there than EAX5. Note that EAX is not itself an API, its an API extension library for DS3D - ALchemy is able to support both EAX and DS3D, while non-Creative shims generally only support through EAX2 (and this has existed since before the Vista switch; a lot of C-Media designs, for example, will support EAX1/2), which was used by significantly more games.

Wikipedia has a list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_EAX_support

It looks like the total count for EAX5 is:
Battlefield 2142
Mass Effect
BioShock
Killing Floor 2
and with patches/config hacks:
Unreal Tournament 2004
Quake 4

Largely its a deprecated feature, and supporting it is primarily only of interest for running old games. Given the direction Microsoft has gone with newer operating systems, support for other DirectX API features (e.g. DirectDraw, DirectShow, DDI5-7, etc), along with NTVDM, have been removed incrementally (and this isn't "evil" - a lot of these things are ancient and nothing has used them in years), and newer versions of Windows will themselves run into compatibility problems far beyond not supporting DS3DHW, so if you're really after old games, an older version of Windows and older hardware (with older drivers) may be a worthwhile consideration. This is especially true if you're after games that primarily run (or expect to run) in a DOS or Win9x environment, and rely on vendor-specific APIs or libraries connected to vendor-specific h/w acceleration (and Creative has a place in this). If you're playing newer games (especially since ~2006), this is probably a side of computing or gaming you'll never see, and things should "just work" in many cases.

Oh and my usage of the ZXR card and the ACM module I experienced NO signal degradation at all. That said I no longer use the module as I have a DAC for my headphone amp. I also don't need a mic as I don't do multiplayer gaming. I'm a huge gamer, I just don't do multiplayer. That said, if I did need it, I'd have no problems using it again.

The ACM was measured some pages back, and shown not to cause any significant/appreciable difference in signal quality.

 

[bcschmerker4]

Speaking of SBX, Creative Laboratories® has revived the E-MU 10k2 platform in the form of the SB1550 Sound Blaster® Audigy RX™ PCIe 3.0 x1 audio card, which uses an ASMedia PCIe-to-PCI bridge to wed the CA10300-IAT DSP/codec (introduced in the Audigy4 series) to the host system; it packs a built-in headphone amplifier of unconfirmed manufacture (probably the same one used in the PCIe-native SB1500 and SB1510 SoundCore3D cards) for the Front Audio headphone jack.  The SB1550 has two rear and one front stereo microphone inputs, one rear line-level stereo input, 7.1 output via one TRS (Front L/R) and two TRRS (Rear L/R plus Side R; Front Center plus Subwoofer plus Side L) jacks, and a rear TOSlink digital-audio output.  As of 31 March 2016 I can confirm that the SB1550 has similar basic audio effects to the original Audigy models under Microsoft® Windows® 6.1.7601, using the included software.  (One disadvantage I found in the included software is lack of direct access to the dual mix busses, a priority of the Advanced LinUX Sound Architecture Project but not of either Creative or Microsoft.)
 
Anybody done a comparo of the SB1500 or SB1510 against the SB1550 yet?

 

[obobskivich]

Well, it should be quite easy to discover if Sound Core3D CPU actually does the DSP in hardware or not.
See the system CPU usage with the SBZ and it's software when using sound processing in any movie or such, with the SBX software, and then measure the CPU usage on the same system using the same DSP effects but with a different sound card, preferably the onboard crappy3D chip, using the Creative X-Fi MB3 software which is basically the SBX or Sound Blaster Z Control Panel software but for generic use.
It's not rocket surgery

Except that the CPU load for software audio these days is so low as to not be a significant problem for modern systems - "CPU usage" as reported by Windows is a relative, not absolute, measure (and you're also only looking at per-process loading as an approximate snapshot). And that's assuming the Creative drivers aren't freaking out and dragging very heavily on the Windows audio services for no good reason (its a real thing, it happens sometimes). And even with all of THAT aside, ALchemy will incur a CPU load as it seeks to translate calls between a software application and the Creative drivers (and you aren't "on the hardware" with most of that "sound effect" stuff). And finally, what's to say that Creative doesn't cook things a little with their stand-alone application to make it perform worse than if it were running on their hardware? They certainly wouldn't be the first IHV to do that kind of stuff in drivers. My point is, this is all speculative, and without some sort of official explanation on Creative's part about SoundCore, it will remain speculative.

Here's a professional review that says its all smoke and mirrors in drivers:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/05/01/sound_blaster_recon3d_fatal1ty_card_review/3 (although, the review is wrong about the SoundCore introducing 24/192 to a Creative-branded product - that was an advertised feature of the Audigy 2 ZS and some X-Fi boards as well)

Now, how much does this matter in the grand scheme of things? Not very much. Modern Windows doesn't support DS3DHW and the entire thing has been deprecated for a decade at this point. Game developers aren't using it, and the only people that it really impacts are those who want to run old games and need a compatibility layer. C-Media and Realtek have been implementing this for years (even when DS3DHW was still alive and kicking), and Creative has joined them in recent years with ALchemy.

Speaking of SBX, Creative Laboratories® has revived the E-MU 10k2 platform in the form of the SB1550 Sound Blaster® Audigy RX™ PCIe 3.0 x1 audio card, which uses an ASMedia PCIe-to-PCI bridge to wed the CA10300-IAT DSP/codec (introduced in the Audigy4 series) to the host system; it packs a built-in headphone amplifier of unconfirmed manufacture (probably the same one used in the PCIe-native SB1500 and SB1510 SoundCore3D cards) for the Front Audio headphone jack.  The SB1550 has two rear and one front stereo microphone inputs, one rear line-level stereo input, 7.1 output via one TRS (Front L/R) and two TRRS (Rear L/R plus Side R; Front Center plus Subwoofer plus Side L) jacks, and a rear TOSlink digital-audio output.  As of 31 March 2016 I can confirm that the SB1550 has similar basic audio effects to the original Audigy models under Microsoft® Windows® 6.1.7601, using the included software.  (One disadvantage I found in the included software is lack of direct access to the dual mix busses, a priority of the Advanced LinUX Sound Architecture Project but not of either Creative or Microsoft.)

Anybody done a comparo of the SB1500 or SB1510 against the SB1550 yet?

No idea on sonics, but as I recall the "new" Audigy cards lack the DOS and 9x compatibility of the older PCI models. Its an interesting platform to be sure, since there's little real application for that DSP hardware acceleration in a contemporary Windows environment. Also worth pointing out, all Audigy DSPs have the SRC bug, but it isn't persistent in the 10k2.5 cards (anything that relies on the DSP will experience it though).

 

[sygnus21]

"

I haven't heard the Kingston, but I've heard the original M50. I think they're over-hyped. They aren't bad or anything, but I think they're too often built into a giant; years ago when the AKG K701 were FOTM a poster made a comment along the lines of "these are often the first high-end headphone many listeners experience, and they get built into a giant because they sound great next to cheap junk; after folks have heard other high end cans, do they come back to the K701? That's more telling"

And that's largely how I feel about the M50. There's nothing wrong at all if you like them, and there's nothing wrong at all with recommending them or anything of that sort, but I personally think they're over-hyped - they're boomy, clampy, have a narrow soundstage, and can sound congested and bloated with some material. Even in their price range there are other headphones I would personally prefer, but that's what it ultimately comes down to at this level of performance (and that extends all the way up to "exotic" headphones, like their big brothers, the ATH-W5000): what do you personally prefer?

 
To be clear here, I'm not here to promote or defend the M50's. I simply stated what "I" have, and what "my" thoughts of them were.  If "you" feel they're "over-hyped" then they're over hyped to you, and that fine.  I like them, and that’s what matters to me.
 
That said, no, they’re certainly not the best, but I definitely wouldn’t call them “boomy” – they’re definitely nowhere near the Beats phones.  Yes, their soundstage is small and somewhat lacking, but they certainly aren’t “congested”.  And don’t forget these are classified as the monitor headphones which means their frequency response is supposed to be flat…. No heavy bass or excessive highs (treble). I think the M50X, nearly meets that criterial, and certainly at their price range.
 
That said, I certainly don’t think they’re the “best” headphone, and overall don’t think they sound better than my Sennheiser HD700’s.
  
What they do though is provide a different option depending on what I’m listening to as very few headphones can truly meet the demands of ALL music. This is also why most people have more than one pair of headphones.  So for me, when I want to listen to Jazz I plug in my HD700, when I want listen to electronica I plug in my M50X.
 
BTW having both the original M50, and now the M50X, I think the M50X has a cleaner extended bass range than the M50. I also don’t think it’s as bass heavy as the M50… Not that the M50’s is bass heavy anyway.
 
At the end of the day all headphones aren’t for everyone. You just have to find what suits you.
 
I just wanted to clear up your new counter to my new post.
 
Peace my brother

 

[dnLL]

So in the end, 1) it doesn't matter whether or not it has hardware or software audio processing and 2) people saying other people were wrong are finally the ones who were wrong. I love forums.

Anyway, you seem to know your stuff obobskivich, so as far as positional audio goes for modern games, how good are MMX-300 hooked to a SB-Z?

I'm still thinking a bit about the ACM, if I plan to keep that thing for a long time, I probably might as well purchase it, I can't regret having it...

 

[obobskivich]

So in the end, 1) it doesn't matter whether or not it has hardware or software audio processing and 2) people saying other people were wrong are finally the ones who were wrong. I love forums.

Anyway, you seem to know your stuff obobskivich, so as far as positional audio goes for modern games, how good are MMX-300 hooked to a SB-Z?

I've never heard the MMX-300 and I'm not a huge fan of Beyerdynamic headphones (and yes I appreciate the irony of this after saying a few posts up that I like bright cans). I would imagine it would do fine though; the Recon3D and ZxR never had problems with my MV1 (which are also 250 ohm, like many Beyer cans), or any of my lower impedance cans (in that weird "low impedance" swing-range of anything from 12 to 100 ohms; I know Beyer has some 32 ohm offerings), and offers SBX.* I don't know how the mic input behaves without Creative's beam mic hooked up - I'd assume it works just fine but you probably don't get some of the noise cancelling/processing stuff that goes with the beam mic, but with a headset you probably don't need it.

* This is all post-processing. Whether or not you like it depends on you. Modern games will run on software audio and many offer a "headphones" mode that should be selected when using headphones. For those that don't, the newer Sound Blaster drivers automate the old "set Windows to 5.1 and set the output to stereo and downmix it for better surround" trick when set to "Headphones" which is mostly just a time/effort saver (can't knock it though), but again the "mix" is coming from software, and SBX is just able to do stuff "on top of" it at playback. There's comparisons on YouTube between SBX, Dolby Headphone, CMSS, etc - some of them have probably been linked in this thread before, and they aren't hard to find (and I'd say go look on your own because there's enough of them out there now that you can probably find one using a game you actually play).

The Z will also, like the rest of the SoundCore line, support ALchemy so you get legacy DirectSound support for older games that need it, but that's really nothing novel compared to other contemporary solutions. The only real bonus with ALchemy is that it will support EAX 3/4/5 properly, which afaik nobody else does/can (because EAX is proprietary to Creative), so if that's a factor its worth considering as well. But if you aren't married to EAX, the DirectSound support isn't unique to ALchemy, is basically my point.

I'm still thinking a bit about the ACM, if I plan to keep that thing for a long time, I probably might as well purchase it, I can't regret having it...

It doesn't hurt anything, and it includes the beam mic built-in. If you position it right, the beam mic itself is actually pretty usable. Shame they don't sell the ACM separately (I actually have emailed and asked) - I miss the days of them selling the "accessory upgrade module" (e.g. Live Drive, Fatal1ty Bay, etc) as separate upgrades for their cards. If you just want the volume-control-on-a-chain thing, there are stand-alone devices from Sennheiser and Koss (and probably others) that do the same thing, look for "in-line volume controls" or similar phrases.

 

[Alexandrus]

Except that the CPU load for software audio these days is so low as to not be a significant problem for modern systems - "CPU usage" as reported by Windows is a relative, not absolute, measure (and you're also only looking at per-process loading as an approximate snapshot). And that's assuming the Creative drivers aren't freaking out and dragging very heavily on the Windows audio services for no good reason (its a real thing, it happens sometimes). And even with all of THAT aside, ALchemy will incur a CPU load as it seeks to translate calls between a software application and the Creative drivers (and you aren't "on the hardware" with most of that "sound effect" stuff). And finally, what's to say that Creative doesn't cook things a little with their stand-alone application to make it perform worse than if it were running on their hardware? They certainly wouldn't be the first IHV to do that kind of stuff in drivers. My point is, this is all speculative, and without some sort of official explanation on Creative's part about SoundCore, it will remain speculative.

Here's a professional review that says its all smoke and mirrors in drivers:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/05/01/sound_blaster_recon3d_fatal1ty_card_review/3 (although, the review is wrong about the SoundCore introducing 24/192 to a Creative-branded product - that was an advertised feature of the Audigy 2 ZS and some X-Fi boards as well)

Now, how much does this matter in the grand scheme of things? Not very much. Modern Windows doesn't support DS3DHW and the entire thing has been deprecated for a decade at this point. Game developers aren't using it, and the only people that it really impacts are those who want to run old games and need a compatibility layer. C-Media and Realtek have been implementing this for years (even when DS3DHW was still alive and kicking), and Creative has joined them in recent years with ALchemy.
No idea on sonics, but as I recall the "new" Audigy cards lack the DOS and 9x compatibility of the older PCI models. Its an interesting platform to be sure, since there's little real application for that DSP hardware acceleration in a contemporary Windows environment. Also worth pointing out, all Audigy DSPs have the SRC bug, but it isn't persistent in the 10k2.5 cards (anything that relies on the DSP will experience it though).

Are you serious ?
I did not say it would be a problem load for the system CPU, but I said it's easy to determine if DSP is done in hardware or not. And it freaking is.
What I was missing is that it doesn't even have to be that way, as it's already clear that all DSP is done in hardware.
SounedCore3D has been renamed to Axx1, and all devices using Axx1 chip are doing the very same DSP effects even standalone, without being connected to a PC or other device.

 

[obobskivich]

Are you serious ?
I did not say it would be a problem load for the system CPU, but I said it's easy to determine if DSP is done in hardware or not. And it freaking is.
What I was missing is that it doesn't even have to be that way, as it's already clear that all DSP is done in hardware.
SounedCore3D has been renamed to Axx1, and all devices using Axx1 chip are doing the very same DSP effects even standalone, without being connected to a PC or other device.

Well, it may be "very freaking clear" to you, but numerous reviewers and other users don't seem to have such impeccable powers of clairvoyance, nor has Creative made any official statement one way or the other (apart from describing it as an "audio and voice" processor and listing SBX and CrystalVoice as its "novel features"). Most likely the chip is not doing "hardware accelerated audio" in the same vein as the Audigy of yesteryear, due to the significant changes in Windows' underlying audio stack (e.g. there is no DS3DHW), but it may be capable of performing more than just I/O routing (e.g. it reportedly has ADC and DAC functionality built-in, which the original Recon3D used (as far as I'm aware the Z and X series don't, however, use the built-in ADC/DAC)).

This is also largely an immaterial debate in the context of contemporary software, and especially for music or movie playback.

 

[Alexandrus]

Well, perhaps you can read my post again, especially the last phrase.
If by clairvoyance you mean the ability to actually read a post and draw some logical conclusions, then yes, clearly some reviewers and users do not seem to have that ability

 

[obobskivich]

Well, perhaps you can read my post again, especially the last phrase.
If by clairvoyance you mean the ability to actually read a post and draw some logical conclusions, then yes, clearly some reviewers and users do not seem to have that ability

I'm not convinced that the SoundCore is the same chip as used in the X7 and other external products, however even if it is there are likely other components in those products to enable them to operate as free-standing devices. That having been said, there's a big distinction between hardware assisted or hardware based post-processing (e.g. SBX) and hardware-assisted or hardware-accelerated "rendering" of sound (e.g. DS3DHW) - a lot of AV receivers and preamps will also perform post-processing functions as part of their surround decoding package, but that doesn't mean they're capable of generating the audio signal from a game or similar, which (as I understood it) is where the real question over the SoundCore lies (and I'll admit to not understanding why its so important whether or not it does or doesn't have the ability to do this, not only because its irrelevant for modern software, but because even when hardware-accelerated audio was a "thing" the legitimate *need* for it died out years ago, as CPUs have become significantly faster).

It is worth pointing out that the SoundCore does not support MIDI, or work in Windows 9x or XP, so the only way it would ever approach hardware-based audio is via OpenAL or ALchemy, if its even doing that in hardware. There are plenty of examples of non-Creative cards that rely entirely on sophisticated driver stacks to provide OpenAL, DS3D, EAX, etc functionality and do a great job at it, so overall its not a "killer app" like it may have been in the early 1990s.

Finally, one avenue where a software-based solution likely has a consistent leg up is with SRC. All of Creative's cards prior to SoundCore were dogged by quirks or problems with their implementations of SRC (the X-Fi being the "least bad"), but I haven't heard any complaining about SoundCore cards and SRC, which leads me to believe it likely uses a highly-accurate software solution, like many other contemporary HD Audio configurations.

None of this should really be viewed as a negative for the SoundCore - there's still a good case to be made for stand-alone soundcards even in 2016.

 

[Alexandrus]

I'm not convinced that the SoundCore is the same chip as used in the X7 and other external products, however even if it is there are likely other components in those products to enable them to operate as free-standing devices. That having been said, there's a big distinction between hardware assisted or hardware based post-processing (e.g. SBX) and hardware-assisted or hardware-accelerated "rendering" of sound (e.g. DS3DHW) - a lot of AV receivers and preamps will also perform post-processing functions as part of their surround decoding package, but that doesn't mean they're capable of generating the audio signal from a game or similar, which (as I understood it) is where the real question over the SoundCore lies (and I'll admit to not understanding why its so important whether or not it does or doesn't have the ability to do this, not only because its irrelevant for modern software, but because even when hardware-accelerated audio was a "thing" the legitimate *need* for it died out years ago, as CPUs have become significantly faster).

It is worth pointing out that the SoundCore does not support MIDI, or work in Windows 9x or XP, so the only way it would ever approach hardware-based audio is via OpenAL or ALchemy, if its even doing that in hardware. There are plenty of examples of non-Creative cards that rely entirely on sophisticated driver stacks to provide OpenAL, DS3D, EAX, etc functionality and do a great job at it, so overall its not a "killer app" like it may have been in the early 1990s.

Finally, one avenue where a software-based solution likely has a consistent leg up is with SRC. All of Creative's cards prior to SoundCore were dogged by quirks or problems with their implementations of SRC (the X-Fi being the "least bad"), but I haven't heard any complaining about SoundCore cards and SRC, which leads me to believe it likely uses a highly-accurate software solution, like many other contemporary HD Audio configurations.

None of this should really be viewed as a negative for the SoundCore - there's still a good case to be made for stand-alone soundcards even in 2016.

Do you EVER stay on topic or do you just like to talk about stuff ?
Who the heck ever mentioned OpenAL, ALchemy, DS3DHW and so on ?
I just said DSP, SBX is just that, DSP.
As for you not being convinced, well, you're entitled to your opinion, although SoundCore3D having been rebranded SB Axx1 is simply a fact. I know, I am clairvoyant and I can read and so on, when and if you discover that gift in you I am sure you'll find the same conclusions as I did.

 

[Brooko]

[Mod Comment]
 
We've just had to lock the thread while the mess was cleaned up. To the posters who were involved - and you know who you are - please refrain from the current vein of antagonism.  Next time we'll have to eject people from the thread, and no-one wants that.

 

[darky_mtp]

I succed using my SBz under Linux Ubuntu.
I have to use a modified kernel.

 

[NoOneLt]

Anyone have problem that Foobar stops playing ASIO after some days/weeks when in Stereo Direct mode? Recently reinstalled Win 10 x64 + latest ZxR drivers, set to stereo direct in CP and ASIO in foobar, worked fine. One day i got message "Unrecoverable playback error: Could not query ASIO buffer sizes" tried to fix it somehow with no luck... Only full driver reinstall fixed this. Now after some time same thing happened... Though CP 2.0 mode works fine with ASIO..
 
While playing with settings accidentally fixed this by setting CP to 2.0, starting playback in Foobar, then changed to Stereo Direct in CP and while CP is "not responding" started Foobar playback, got message but instantly started song again, and it worked... And noticeably louder than 2.0.
 
Strange issue, anyone else came into this?

 

[huspas]

I have had Creative Zxr for 3 years. I can say it is very functional soundcard for daily uses but nothing more. It has background noise and headphone output is not powerful for planars especially for hifimans.