[malldian]

How expensive of a dac would it take to be better than the x-fi? I am building a system now and have to choose between onboard > dac or the x-fi.

 

[Exediron]

Well, purely for music, not very. A E-Mu 0404 is noticably superior, and it only costs about 100 dollars more. If you're going to be doing the stuff that an X-Fi is actually designed for eg gaming, then it's a tougher question.

 

[malldian]

Nah no gaming really. Ok I will take that out of my budget there.

 

[trekker140]

I would strongly reccommend not purchasing the x-fi. Your money would be much better spent on an emu product of some kind.

 

[necropimp]

while the xfi is a better card than many here give it credit for if you're not doing any gaming there are better options out there

 

[GordonFreeman]

dac

 

[Hookem]

A little more information would be helpful.

What speakers are you going to use ???

Do you do any gaming ???

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

Um...well you can get an X-fi and use the digital out with a DAC for music, and use the X-fi for everything else like surround sound, movies, gaming, etc.

 

[Redo]

Get a USB DAC, there's not too many DAC's that won't outperform the X-Fi.

 

[Apocalypsee]

If you have soldering skill, I suggest buy X-Fi and mod it. Sounded much better than any DAC I heard (although not many

)

If your onboard sound is the new HD-based one, especially the Analog Device, I suggest you buy DAC. Its because their digital is bit perfect capable and sounds rather good, I use AD1988B onboard hooked to DAC before moving to X-Fi, but my DAC is based on old model BB PCM58 DAC so X-Fi totally owns it.

The only thing you should do is don't ground the DAC to PC and you good to go, it will be dead silent and clean

 

[Zathan]

a good alternative would be the HT Omega Claro +

 

[umeng2002]

When you say X-fi, I'm sure you haven't considered Auzentech's Prelude which only has the actual X-Fi chip in common with Creative's cards.

Another thing, the X-Fi is a very good audio processor beyond EAX. In fact, most of the chip is dedicated to... Signal Rate Conversion.

In Entertainment mode, you're natively in 96 kHz mode, but if kernel stream past the kmixer under XP, the X-Fi chip will take a 44.1 kHz source and convert it to 96 kHz with -136 db distortion.

Or you could just bit stream in Creation mode.

 

[techniqu]

second for the omega claro+ unless the internals of your computer sound like a jet. honestly I've heard people say that an internal sound card picks up a lot of computer noise, but I have yet to notice any in all of my internal solutions (onboard, SB Live, maudio, x-fi, claro+).

 

[GordonFreeman]

Why bother with an internal sound card when an external DAC will sound better and create alot less hassle? I have a usb dac and it works great for gaming. If this is mainly for music then go external. If gaming is important than use the x-fi for that and use the usb DAC for music.

 

[Ryu1]

Does the x-fi or x-fi prelude have a headphone amp?