I broke down and bought an X-FI

[Unique]

Well I bought the Xfi for my gaming rig. I swore I’d never buy a creative soundcard after shelling out 200.00 for that Sblive platinum pos. You would think at some point one engineer would turn to the other and say, "you know this card sounds like crap maybe we should fix that before we sell it". I bought the platinum version again, this time though the quality seems much better though. The card didn’t like the first pci slot I tried but it was okay with the second and installation went without a hitch. Creative’s reputation for bloated software has remained intact. The full install added 8 running processes and most were useless. There’s even a program to aid compatibility with win 98 and me, and older cdroms? I need that on an xp-pro machine. The good news is I was able to get rid of most of them without any problems so far, and what’s left works well.

The sound quality is very good, at least as good as the AP2496 it replaced. It supports ASIO 2.0, which Media Center recognized and setup without a problem. A pleasant surprise was the quality of the headphone out. That CMSS 3D thing works very well for headphones, it reduces listening fatigue without losing dynamics. I like it a lot. Anyway if the card doesn’t self-destruct I think I made a very good purchase

 

[MikeW]

I like mine too. Im often wondering though if a Emu 404 would be better. I have no experiance with anything else though. I don't like CMSS for music but it's great for movies and games. I don't much care for Crystalizer on my headphones either, but it's good on my PC speakers (Klispch 5.1's). Now maybe I can save you a few headaches here..

I tested this card alot with udial and resamplers in foobar 2k. Keep it below 79% volume level and don't resample. It took me a good while for my ears to "mature" enough to dicern the differnces (im a novice listner) but I can now tell a very obvious differnce between XFI's resampler and Foobar's. And the x-fi one is overwhelmingly better. So don't waste your time.. I find a lossless copy of enya's "Silver inches" is an excellent test if you want to try for yourself. The soundstage go's buh-bye when you turn on foobar's resampler. You also lose a suprizing amount of detail and things get "Smoothed over".. this is resampling to 48 hz of course. And obviously this does not mean the resampler in foobar is crap, im sure it's awsome for audigy 1/2 and built in sound cards, but for xfi it's not as good as the cards hardware. (The devoted 70% of it's power to SSRC)

Regards,
Mike

 

[knalb]

i've had a lot of bad creative experiences, but some OK ones as well. I bought one this week because i wanted a onboard audio upgrade. Anyway, I like it, i have no complaints. I was smart before installing to be very careful to only install the absolute necessary software. i only put a few things on. I run that CMSS at 25% which sounds good i think.

 

[Unique]

I have the PMU 5.1 as well and to me there already a touch bright. The 24bit crystallizer just adds to that and to me sounds the same as using the “rock” preset on the EQ. It’s touted as being help for poor old mp3’s I don’t think it’s necessary for lossless files. But if it sounds good it sounds good. Just like the CMSS to me gives my headphones the more analog tube sound that I prefer