Creative X-fi soundcard

Post by **Grudge** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:02 am

So, what's the deal with this? Everything I've read about it has been positive, especially when it comes to 3D audio for gaming. I always play with headphones, and according to all the reviews, the X-fi gives you a very noticeable improvement when it comes to this. It seems like Creative have finally got their act together.

It's pretty expensive though, although it seems that the cheapest version would be quite enough for my needs.

http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20 ... index.html

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1 ... X1K0000532

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/mul ... -x-fi.html

Post by **DiscoDave** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:33 am

When I first found out about this i read that it can aparrently re-encode music cd's to better quality than what they were originally. Hard to beleive but aparrently its true...

Even if that isn't entirely correct, its still a very impressive bit of kit you have to agree.

Post by **Grudge** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 8:52 am

yeah, read the last link I posted - they talk about that there, it's more or less just marketing crap

Post by **netrex** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 9:47 am

I seriously doubt any music will sound better than the original source.

But 3D sound for games played with headphones can be good. I have this MP3 with some insane 3D sound in it. It's really freaky listening to it. Only works with headphones, but it's damn good. If this soundcard can create soundeffects like this, I'll buy it for sure.

http://files.filefront.com/Binauralrar/ ... einfo.html

Here are some other 3D sound samples, but it's not close to as good as the first one I uploaded to FileFront: http://www.cmorrow.com/cma/audiosamples/index.html

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:31 pm

netrex wrote:I seriously doubt any music will sound better than the original source.

you're right. it won't.

Post by **Foo** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:53 pm

Will this one FINALLY be able to do on-the-fly AC3 Encoding, or Dolby Digital?

Because it's about fucking time they did.

Post by **netrex** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 6:23 pm

Yeah, that would be great for people with AC-3 hardware to get games what doesn't have AC-3 sound to play

AFAIK, nForce soundcards have done it for a while though.

Post by **JulesWinnfield** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 6:57 pm

AWE32 ought to be enough for anybody.

Post by **Foo** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 12:11 am

netrex wrote:Yeah, that would be great for people with AC-3 hardware to get games what doesn't have AC-3 sound to play AFAIK, nForce soundcards have done it for a while though.

The nForce 2 is the only chipset which was capable of encoding to 5.1 Digital on the fly.

What most people don't realise is that optical and coaxial connections only carry a stereo signal, unless the signal is first compressed then transmitted.

On DVDs that's no problem... the audio is already compressed as Dolby Digital or such and the digital receiver decodes it. With PC games and regular music, you have to connect the analog wires (3 or more) between the amp and soundcard to stand a chance of getting 5.1 or better.

Sorry for the lecture, you probably already know more than me.

Post by **netrex** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 1:29 am

I knew nForce 2 did that, but thought 3 and 4 did that also.

Post by **Dave** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 5:29 am

I haven't had a creative soundcard for liek 8 years

- thinks different

Post by **JulesWinnfield** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 5:30 am

Gravis Ultrasound > *

Post by **SplishSplash** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 9:12 am

The X-Fi (esp. the "Fatal1ty" edition with 64 MB extra RAM) are supposed to significantly lower CPU utilization. That's the only reason I'd buy one I guess.

Post by **Turbanator** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 9:15 am

HDA X-Mysique for me, Dolby Digital Live encoding with hardly any processor overhead. Even with XiFi, there will be no DDL... so fuck creative... fuck them with a giant dildo.