[MisterX]

Holy rightmark results batman!

Jodiuh: What effects are enabled in you test?

 

[Jodiuh]

Here's the results after muting line in monitoring

Now that one doesn't have any effects enabled. I tried 16/48 and 24/96, but there's mad clipping issues...

 

[mikechai]

ExtremeTech's review --> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1850360,00.asp

I think their rightmark results for A4 way off...

 

[Stangs55]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MisterX Odd cause a lot of stores are selling them now. Maybe they are gonna make you wait till the "official release" (Monday)?

I seriously doubt it will be monday considering that www.soundblaster.com says that the "Time to Next Release of X-Fi Info" is 7 days from now (friday aug 19, midnight CST). Ain't marketing wonderful

.

 

[Jodiuh]

na, na, that's the date for the release of news of the upcoming patch that fixes eax in bf2 for the A2 series. We'll also get 64bit support for the xfi chip too. Oooh, how bout a nice set of unified drivers!! Maybe a nice unified control panel with per game settings?!?!

 

[swatx]

would X-ram make a lot of diffrence in the coming years?

i was looking at the gamer edition and the xtreme music edition. and tbh i cannot justify spending 280$ on a sound card.

 

[Jodiuh]

For our sake, let's hope not. When you consider how cheap ram is...64megs + bay for another 150?! That just dudn't add up for me.

And what's with the mini molex (floppy power cable) on the card?

 

[EasyRaider]

I really think we're better off saving for a faster CPU than paying extra for X-RAM.

Even the basic model is quite expensive for a sound card. Creative won't be shifting a lot of units with these prices. I guess it's only a matter of time before the notion of gaming sound cards is history. Still, if it weren't for Creative's software history I'd be in line to buy one already.

 

[lini]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swatx would X-ram make a lot of diffrence in the coming years?

Well, with a high number of voices, it makes quite a difference in terms of cpu use already now. As for the other benefits one could get with X-RAM (better samples, umcompressed sample storage...): As I have understood it, games have to be adapted to check for the presence of X-RAM in order to make use of it. So we'll probably have to wait a while for more titles with EAX 5 in order to judge whether X-RAM is worth it. And maybe some fearless modder will also try swapping the 2 MByte chip on the non-X-RAM models with the 64 MByte chip of the X-RAM models sometime in the future...

Talking about chips, as I have my notes in the office and wouldn't break my nda anyway (*cough*

) , maybe someone else would like to tell the community what type of JRC on ST opamps you've found in the analogue stages of your X-Fi cards. That should be interesting for the technically oriented - and for the modders as well...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

P.S.: Jodiuh: That connecter is for extra power, just like on some graphics cards. However, I haven't tried the cards without it - possibly you'd only need to connect that for the models with additional modules, but I don't know...

P.P.S.: Edwood: I know you like to bash Creative for not including some real-time Dolby Digital encoder (be it DD Live or preferably some code that runs on X-Fi itself). One one hand, I can understand that - as it would have been a nice feature for a good number of users. On the other hand, the majority probably still just uses some pc speaker set or headphones - for them, a DD Live license would only make the cards more expensive for nothing. And one could also argue that Dolby is the real sucker in this case, anyway: Why don't they just offer DD Live as a commercial software in a retail package to everybody instead of only bundling it together with some hardware? Another thought: I could also very well imagine that Dolby has agreed to some exclusivity period for DD Live, when they teamed up with Intel and manufacturers of HDA codecs like C-Media - which could mean that Creative might not have been able to bundle DD Live, even if they wanted to...

 

[Glassman]

if it's JRC and ST I bet they are the same as on Audigies.. 4556 on front, 4558 on the rest.. together with the same DAC as on Audigy2, I see no gain over Audigy2 soundwise, well unless we're talking about the Elite Pro model of course..

 

[Sovkiller]

I suggest to give it a serious listening to that card, and the most importat time, to do comparisons etc...before making any commnets, on how this or that part should sound or should be good or bad, depending on how it sounds on other topologies and devices, there is no one size fits all in audio, and what performs good in one topology, doesn't mean that couldn't be better, or a lot better, in others (case that crosses my mind the RA-1, who the hell is going to believe that cheap poor performer OP amp will give you that sound that makes happy so many Grado owners...)

Please stop generalizing and listen it before keep on going, that card is new, how many of us had heard it, and how many of us had owned it.....

No doubt that head fi had changed a lot in the last years, now mostly what you read here is just based on speculation.....yeak!!!!

 

[TempestX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jodiuh Haah, this is great TempestX, you've got a revo 5.1 too? Are you diggin' the positional fun in BF2 courtesy of the new x-toy? I actually left the crystal on for awhile, but cmss3d got to go The driver gui's nice n pretty too. I found the 3 modes to work out alright. Not as big a deal as I thought with a nifty benefit. It saves settings for the various modes. This makes it easy to switch on/off certain features. Head to head with the revo 5.1...not quite ready to go single sound card...yet.

Don't have bf2, but may reload Doom3. So far I like everything about the sound of this card. CMSS3d is not bad depending on what song your listening. I am on a 2.1 setup and must say that this time it actually works.

Crystalizer to be honest gives the sound a fast dynamic attack sort of like the 0404 (yes briefly owned it at one time), and is great for movies.

Straight sound without CMSS or Crystal, this card has more air or expression than the Revo 5.1 to me so far. Revo 5.1 was much better to me than the Audiophile 2496. (Yeah owned one of those as well)

I have several types of music that I have listened to so far, but choose Barry White (Put Me in Your Mix) for some critical listening. Why choose Barry White?:

1 His music is dynamic and always changes
2 His deep voice inflections and the female voices in the background
3 Full orchestra (sounds great on this card) bells, horns, violins etc.

Whats different from the Audigy series: Bass is not slow/flabby, more air and 3d sound staging, and the lead vocals are not in your face.

FYI!
Metal lovers will love this card especially Metallica with Crystalizer enabled. ; )

 

[Stangs55]

Well it turns out that the local best buys have started getting them in stock....but only the Xtrememusic and Platinum editions. I have been desperatly trying to find either the Fatal1ty FPS or Elite Pro models. To those of you who have gotten one of these, where did you find them?

 

[TempestX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stangs55 Well it turns out that the local best buys have started getting them in stock....but only the Xtrememusic and Platinum editions. I have been desperatly trying to find either the Fatal1ty FPS or Elite Pro models. To those of you who have gotten one of these, where did you find them?

You are right on those two models. Hope you find one of the others. I almost got the Platinum but my pocket said no.

I am still thinking about the breakout box though. Just more sound cards to have to get rid of.

FYI!
For Beethoven lovers Symphony 8 and 9 sound good on this card.

 

[TempestX]

Jodiuh: Help!!!

So torn and confused as to which I want to use more. Since you have both give me your opinion. The Revo 5.1 is soo sweet with air in itself and so is the XtremeMusic. The air is similar but in a different way.