http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/R ... -main.html

heard oone of these the other day - very good indeed. i hear alot of talk about creative for gamers from you guys.....what do you reckon of these???

i have an m-audio fw410 for my lappy and it's wicked - but not a gaming card

i would say the X fi range from creative, the best software and hardware around.

got a zx audigy, can't stand the software. Got loads different bits and none of them quite fit together well....

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“There are some people in this world who don’t love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that!”

I can't see why all the gamers rate creative so highly. they have very bog standard AD/DA convertors and companies like m-audio specialise in sound : their software may be less bells and whistles but it does exactly what it says on the tin, the important hardware tends to be more refined - can take a hotter signal without digital clipping and generally the latency reported is both truer and more stable than game sound drivers produce - especially if run with ASIO compliant software, which in turn reduces the load on the cpu buffers/cache/ram.

Plus, the routing options are far more flexible.

Just a thought really. I know nothing of gaming cards but I note that whenever peeps talk about high end sound on the forum, they refer to creative.....I know I come from a different perspective (since my best sound card cost me a grand and is only configurable for surround manually (though it does have 24 ins and outs )), and look for different things in a soundcard, but i'm just curious really.

well, the XFI comes with virtual 10 speaker surround sound, puts you right in the game, allows you much more settings for voice and and out levels, gives you individual profiles for gaming, entertainment and audio creation. Their claim is that you can rip a CD and it sounds better on your PC, i have done this and i can admit that it does sound better, but not so much that it would make me run to buy one. There are better sound cards just for sound creation and manipulation. I think for gamin though it is a winner, my headphones are only £15 but i still get a better quality sound than someone with £50 headphones with a crap sound card.

Aye, fair enough but...



only reason i can think for this being the case is that their Digital to Analogue conversion from CD sources is poor - when compared to off the hard drive.....there's no way of making a CD quality file 'better' with ANY audio process - only different to how it was originally intended to sound, so really this 'selling' point simply masks a flaw in the porduct your still playing with the same 16bit 44khz wav file of info.

Anyway, to be clear, I do understand the different needs - and i posted this because as a computer user from the 'audio' side, it's interesting to hear gamers views

Thier technical brief says that a sound file in a studio is recorded in 24 bit then compressed to 16 bit for a CD, then the Xfi software puts it back into 24 bit

and where do they magic those 8 bits from? if its interpolation, it don't count

its also cheapish, £50 from dabs, not sure how much the xfis are these days

but my gods I HATE the audigy software

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“There are some people in this world who don’t love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that!”

i bought it when it was new with the front panel, £130 when i bought it.

lol - true in half a sense - i record at 24 bit too. then bounce to 16 bit. Once i've bounced it, that 8bit lost - the info is gone. there is no 'legacy' file which holds info about what was in the 24 bit file.

In creatives case It may make it a 24 bit file - but its still 16bit info - so ANY change to the sound from CD is FX based. you simply cant recreate sound frequencies that have been wiped. mp3 codecs etc simply delete mostly sounds in frequecies thehuman ear can do without. the same pronciple applies if you burn an mp3 to cd = it's upconverted to 44.1khz 16bit - but it's still the same audio info it was before so no 'improvement' can be made. Just FX applied that are always gonna be very subjective.

From what i get from Creatives manual and some sources, when ripping music to a old format such as MP3, certain data is discarded and lost in the compression process. The 24-bit Crystalizer aims to try to put back some of the lost vitality into the sound. As you said, you cannot put back what is not there (8 bits), however, there is one aspect of the sound that can be partly retrieved, the dynamics. MP3 ripping does have a significantly detrimental effect on the transients or percussiveness of some sounds which can make them sound lifeless. Also the dynamic range of the music is slightly compressed. The crystalizer uses companding techniques to redress the balance. The X-Fi uses sophisticated algorithms to selectively add punch to the music. It also adds some bass and treble boost to bolster up the overall effect. It is not the same as having the control as the recording engineer but used carefully it can improve a dull rip.

^^^^ what he said

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m
mmmmYou sir, are a swaggering addlepated jackanapes!
m

I think if your looking from an audiophile point of view then you might not get as pure sound from the creative as you expect from a dedicated card like the ones produced by m-audio, its probably a bit like expecting a pair of decent gaming headphone to give you the same quality as a pair of high end studio headphones.
But for most people the sound quality is good enough, (its like high end stereos most people probably wouldnt notice that much difference between a linn axis stereo and a high end stereo bought from curries).
As a gaming card goes, I got the creative because its cheap, (cost me 30 quid for an x-fi), and its more than adequate for my ears. especially with the limitations of the speakers and headset I have.

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Ultima Ratio Regum

I think we most motherboards coming with 5 or 7.1 surround support anyway, most people dont bother with getting a soundcard, those that do will probably choose the creative because they are low price and available everywhere, not to say that the xfi doesnt have a high end audio processor, but there are better sound cards for just sound if you get me. I suppose the xfi is the gamers choice but depends how much you want to play, and whether you are going to use the xfi to full potential.

this is what you want


http://www.lemmus.eu/th99/i/C-D/50387.htm

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