X-FI Card Difference

[ElementalDragon]

I think the whole thing of "analog better than digital" probably also depends a lot on what speakers it's being connected to. Take the Z-5500's for example. Quite a few people seem to say that the audio processing capabilities (and thus quality) of the Auzentech Prelude are higher than that of the Logitech Z-5500's control panel with it's Dolby Digital decoding. So in that regard, they say that using the analog connections to the Z-5500's would produce better sound due to it being processed by the sound card itself. Now if it was being connected through a high-end home theater reciever... then it could be a different story. Not exactly sure about all that, but that's about all i've gathered so far.

 

[Not Bman]

Yea I can understand the difference now when you explain it that way, but at the very end it does not sound like it would be that much of a difference. When I finally move into my new place and can setup my new speakers I will have the Creative GigaWorks ProGamer G550W setup, which are quite nice, but I don't know anything about them in terms of that whole analog/digital connections yadda yadda.

 

[LordOfLA]

The analogue outputs on the X-fi, the Prelude and the Xonar D2 use very high end signal processing parts - solid state caps, very high snr DACs and amplifiers. These parts exceed the quality of the parts in all PC speaker setups and most home theatre and studio equipment (to a point).

Thus you will get cleaner, clearer sound using the analogue outputs to your speakers or your AMP.

If you have a good home theatre amp you will benefit from its greater amplifier power to enchance the sound further still.

Using digital output defeats the entire point of buying a powerful audio processing sound card. You might as well use the onboard optical/coaxial digital and be done with it.

Also powerDVD, etc only downsamples when the DRM tells it to. By removing the DRM it doesn't downsample.

 

[rotjong]

Also powerDVD, etc only downsamples when the DRM tells it to. By removing the DRM it doesn't downsample.

There were limitations to SPDIF and it wasn't that it down-sampled due to DRM. It was a limitation in PowerDVD, itself. I know they made some audio improvements in PowerDVD8 Ultra compared to PowerDVD7 Ultra but I don't know if this was addressed. If I remember correctly SPDIF output above 48 KHz wasn't supported regardless of whether your system was fully HDCP compliant or you were using AnyDVD HD which removed all the protections which would cause possible down-sampling.

 

[LordOfLA]

Maybe, but as I said above. Don't use SPDIF when you have a high performance sound card

 

[rotjong]

Maybe, but as I said above. Don't use SPDIF when you have a high performance sound card

LOL

I agree.

 

[chastity]

Well Creative appears to have finally gotten around to improving drivers for Vista in regards to Dolby

http://arstechnica.com/journals/har...es-supports-dolby-digital-dts-in-vista-driver

I'm not too impressed with the Creative Labs speakers, the one set I had the volume started to flux on its own and yes it was the speakers, happened both with a Sound Blaster sound card and with the onboard and on two different systems. I like the Cambridge Soundworks speakers I've which oddly enough are also Creative Labs but seem to be better quality or something. Replaced the Creative branded speakers with Z-5500 Speakers and love them

 

[rotjong]

Well Creative appears to have finally gotten around to improving drivers for Vista in regards to Dolby

http://arstechnica.com/journals/har...es-supports-dolby-digital-dts-in-vista-driver

I've been very pleased with the recent Vista support so far both on my system and my friends' systems.

Creative released an update to ALchemy (v1.20.04) on August 1st, as well.

 

[Not Bman]

I've been very pleased with the recent Vista support so far both on my system and my friends' systems.

Creative released an update to ALchemy (v1.20.04) on August 1st, as well.

Which was part of the reason I made now the time to get the card I wanted. I heard many people say the same thing about it.

 

[rotjong]

Which was part of the reason I made now the time to get the card I wanted. I heard many people say the same thing about it.

I have had some rather negative opinions of Creative as a company for awhile and it had steadily gotten worse. My issues are with their business practices. I believe the Daniel_K incident may have been a wake-up call. Time will tell but they did end up releasing ALchemy as freeware and offering a refund to people who had already bought ALchemy for 10 USD.

As a company I still do not like Creative but I am pleased with my product.

 

[Not Bman]

I have had some rather negative opinions of Creative as a company for awhile and it had steadily gotten worse. My issues are with their business practices. I believe the Daniel_K incident may have been a wake-up call. Time will tell but they did end up releasing ALchemy as freeware and offering a refund to people who had already bought ALchemy for 10 USD.

As a company I still do not like Creative but I am pleased with my product.

See I haven't been around (in terms of owning there products) during the newer issues with drivers and there business conduct. The last hardware product I have had of there was a SoundBlaster Live 5.1 card i believe. Which was a very nice card.

 

[rotjong]

See I haven't been around (in terms of owning there products) during the newer issues with drivers and there business conduct. The last hardware product I have had of there was a SoundBlaster Live 5.1 card i believe. Which was a very nice card.

I've owned Creative cards since the old AWE time period. The Live! series was alright. The Audigy series made me want to pull my hair out when it came to driver installation. The X-Fi series was a little better with drivers but you still must have the original installation disc. They only let you download updates and not the full install and they, of course, charge you for a replacement installation disc.

 

[indyjones]

I had the AWE32 where you could add memory to it I think FFVIII could take advantage of that bar that not much else i remember

 

[Not Bman]

Just quickly coming back to this.

If money was no issue, and you had these speakers,

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/speakers_audio/home_pc_speakers/devices/224&cl=ca,en

What Sound Card would you buy?

 

[LordOfLA]

I do have those speakers,

Asus Xonar

 

[Dark Atheist]

i have the too on old set-up it was a x-fi platinum pro, on this system i just use the onboard HD audio card

 

[chastity]

I have a set and currently running of the onboard sound chip on my current board. Otherwise given the information I've read here I would go with Asus Xonar, doubt I'll ever buy at least for my own use an another creative product

 

[LordOfLA]

To the best of my knowledge, from a technical perspective, the asus has the best analogue audio capabilities of any sound card to date (it rivals/surpases studio level output).

Subjective audio quality will always vary from person to person and poor speakers won't necessarily allow you to hear the improvement in sound.

The Logitexh z-5500 will allow you to hear the vast sound improvement as will piping it through your hi-fi in to decent hi-fi grade speakers

 

[Not Bman]

The Z-5500's, they are digital no?

 

[Dark Atheist]

they have 3 inputs

1 tos
1 co-ax
1 x 3 phono imputs

and they are good