[doxaman]

I'm wondering if it worth upgrading my Audigy sound card in my Dell Computer with a new Extreme Music X-FI.
Will there be any real benefits sound wise, must of my music is through iTunes, somewhat compressed (192?)
I'm not sure if it's worth the $99.00 Canadian and I'd be sacrificing a Firewire connection as well as a seperate microphone jack.
Is the sound that good, or should I just keep using the Audigy
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Laronzo]

Looking at your setup, I can see you have a bit of money to spare.

So I highly reccomend investing in an X-Fi card. You will definitely hear the improvement in quality, even in compressed music.

However looking at your headphone selection I highly reccommend converting your music to .wav, I recently did and WOW the improvement is incredible and I'm only using a fairly average 5.1 speaker setup.

Laronzo.

 

[Redo]

The original Audigy is pretty mediocre from what I remember. The X-Fi will be a big improvement in every respect. Especially if you play games.

 

[deathBOB]

I recently made the switch from an original Audigy to an X-Fi Xtremegamer pro (It's the full size xtremegamer card without the external box). I was pleasantly surprised by the change in quality. Bass lines that were previously muffled are now clear and everything has much more punch.

I want to do the mod described in this thread, but I don't have any soldering skills and I can't stand the thought of voiding the warranty.

Even compressed music should sound better. If it's AAC 192 it's not that bad.

 

[uraflit]

i heard the audigy1 series sucked quite a bit compared to the audigy2 and x-fi series

 

[flashnolan]

On paper it should sound a lot better...and it does

 

[Seaside]

Not all X-fi is the same.
Especially avoid X-fi Xtreme audio, since it is rebadged audigy SE, which is just a value line of audigy. There are a lot of info in the internet regarding this. Check them for yourself.

Some creative models, I think about 5 models, are deceiving. I think one of them is a DELL model, which I do not remember. Creative said they are capable of doing something when it is done by software emulation, not by hardware acceleration. Beware of that.

So... for OP, if you want X-fi, check before you buy. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-fi first, and search other informations before you buy.

 

[doxaman]

Hmmm, thanks for the input, from the sounds of things I really should ignore the slim extreme audio XFI and go for the Gamer, I had ignored the Extreme Gamer because of the $40.00 difference, but it does appear to be a fuller card. I don't want to get into any of the front or external attatchments and I'm not really much of a Gamer. My sad philosophy is that there hasn't been a better game than GTA Vice City and my system handles that fine, something newer I'm afraid might choke my Dell 8400 (I'm using a PNY 7300 Nvidia clone 256 graphics card and everything seems to be holding together)
I'll have a look at that Wiki article today and see what I'm getting at the end of the month!
Thanks again