[maarek99]

Comparisons to what? High-end stuff?

If head-fi would make a card it would just be a microdac inside a computer right?

 

[akwok]

Quote:

Originally Posted by maarek99 Comparisons to what? High-end stuff? If head-fi would make a card it would just be a microdac inside a computer right?

OUTSIDE the computer.

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by maarek99 Comparisons to what? High-end stuff? If head-fi would make a card it would just be a microdac inside a computer right?

Comparision to maybe other soundcards?
Only one in the review is the audigy 4.

If head-fi made a soundcard, it would just be a bit perfect digital transport with lots of power filtering and and jitter reduction. It would be bundled with a high quality external DAC of course

 

[chrisfromalbany]

I would be interested in hearing how they compare with the EMU line of audio cards.

 

[thomase]

I've been hearing people complaining that EAX effects are virtually inaudible in BF2 when set to "High" quality. "Ultra High" is only avaialable with the X-Fi. I have also heard that crackers have discovered that essentially, on the "High" setting, the code deliberately turns down the level of the EAX effects such that there is a greater perceived difference when going from an Audigy 2 ZS to an X-Fi.

Do I smell another class action lawsuit? This definitely seems wrong, but on the other hand, I can't really put my finger on anything that is necessarily ILLEGAL about this, other than it being generally deceptive towards consumers. I'm also kind of annoyed by the fact that BF2 does not seem to support non-Creative (including Live! and anything below the Audigy) soundcards even though they are perfectly capable of support OpenAL through a DirectSound3D wrapper.

 

[Jodiuh]

Bah, link diddin't work

 

[Leviathan]

Hello, I have an audigy 1 plat. and was seriously considering upgrading. I was wondering if the front bay connector on the x-fi will work with my audigy 1's front bay? It looks identical, along with the bay itself. Anybody know for certain? This would save me some cash on the platinum version.
Thanks

 

[Tachikoma]

How good, or bad is the x-fi xtrememusic when it comes to driving headphones? (AV-710 as a reference for "bad")

 

[RP2X]

I was so annoyed about that silly flexi-jack half the reviews said its a digital in and then possibly an output...
so confusing.

Anyhow for an £50 more u can get the plat version with remote + front drive bay... much easier and proper connections at least.

Other then that the X-fi is still the best soundcard overall to get atm.

Hopefully if drives cans well/but got a feeling ill still find it better to hook it up to my av amp

 

[RP2X]

Has anyone actually tried to connect there soundcard to ther AV amp with digial coaxial connection ?

Im not 100% sure theres a difference between that and analogue tbh.... my ears maybe lieing to me?

Could be just that its mp3s and divxs im playing back

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RP2X Has anyone actually tried to connect there soundcard to ther AV amp with digial coaxial connection ? Im not 100% sure theres a difference between that and analogue tbh.... my ears maybe lieing to me? Could be just that its mp3s and divxs im playing back

It all depends on the quality of the DAC in the A/V receiver.

It is probably your source, and quite possibly speakers/headphones

 

[speedo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tachikoma How good, or bad is the x-fi xtrememusic when it comes to driving headphones? (AV-710 as a reference for "bad")

Same question

 

[patricklang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgrossklass While you're certainly right that the sound card isn't the very most important factor in gaming performance, I don't think that the comparison to the AWE64 is valid. These old EMU8k based cards had memory for wavetable MIDI only, which has no influence whatsoever on performance (zero, zilch, nada) but rather made for better-quality game background sound provided the game was using MIDI for this. This X-RAM stuff looks to be different (I suppose you could preload samples into this and such, should read up on this).

You never used ScreamTracker, Impulse Tracker, or FastTracker then They loaded all of their samples into ram and rendered in realtime on the AWE series or Gravis Ultrasound. On my 486sx, this let me run 8 tracks instead of 4.

I think Duke Nukem 3d actually had a custom sample set for AWE32 if I remember correctly.

 

[patricklang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanne well they are charging $400 for their top of the line card, which is certainly marketed towards the audiophile crowd.

True, but people also buy Bose because if the marketing says its better and the cost is higher - it must be better. Plus, the Bose salesmen are typically trained better.

 

[patricklang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jiiteepee From iXBT review: Doesn't this mean: ASIO driver is build in hardware, the way like it's on RME cards? Benefits ...? ... depends on, what are you doing with the card. jiitee

ASIO is extremely simple. It gets the audio (bits) from the application, throws it in ram into a specified location. Your sound card can pull from that buffer via PCI DMA (direct memory access) which is handled primarily by your PCI host in your motherboard chipset. ASIO API's let you change the buffer sizes to balance latency and dropout protection. If the sound card gets to the end of the buffer before the software has the next one ready, you get a dropout. Larger buffers decrease the chance of this.

It also exposes some other things to control hardware specific parameters that may drive hardware mixers on the sound board, audio routing, etc. The Echo cards for example have hardware mixing using their onboard DSP, so they expose X channels, but can downmix to 2 on the fly without using your main CPU.