I've been using an X-Fi Titanium HD for the past 5 years. Its pretty solid, and I actually don't make good use of it (has a good quality analog input), but it sounds decent for me. I thought about getting a vintage stereo receiver but too difficult to know what is good and not and prices have gotten out of whack, and then I'd have to figure out speakers. I've been using a set of the original Swan Mk stereo, and they work well enough for my listening.
Thunderbolt has definitely opened up a plethora of interface options!
Finally replaced our firewire MOTU devices with Apogee Ensembles.
Onboard audio is full of noise, distortion and other bad things and most products with the name "Creative" in them are not much better particularly when dealing with drivers and i/o. The USB sound blaster is actually pretty decent though. But it lacks proper balanced outputs.
Lots of interesting stuff going on in the audio world. I can't help but think a lot of it is pointless (like the push for mega-bandwidth DSD signals, I think they're up to 5.2MHz, er nevermind they're up to 22.5MHz) just to keep pushing new specs to sell new equipment (that checks all the feature boxes). At least on the audiophile side. I can't remember what it is, but I seem to recall that there seemed to be some movement towards a new type of signal/DAC (that is closer to PCM, but allegedly is supposed to resolve the issues that the what like 2-3 types of DACs used for processing those signals has), but that might have just been the marketing of some certain company. Speaking of, I think Chord is actually doing their own DAC designs (versus using the typical BB/TI/AKM/Sabre/WM/etc) using FPGAs (and in the case of the, I think Mojo, is getting raved about quite a bit).
And of course the changes happening in the headphone world (where they're still debating different target sound curves and HRTF and whatnot). But Tyll (of InnerFidelity) seems pretty high on the prospects of what going digital and basically making the whole signal chain integrated (so the processor, DAC, amp, and transducers all will be aimed at working together, with DSP being the big benefit where it will enable powerful manipulation both to get as "correct" of sound as possible, but also to enable a lot of tuning based on the user's preference, where the DSP could correct for anomalies that arise).
In another thread on here, I made the case for what VR/AR will bring to the audio realm (if you read up on the developer side of how to do those "right", doing the audio well is an integral part of accomplishing that). And this is certainly wishful thinking, but I'm hoping that being able to offer a complete experience with VR, might usher in a new era like the 70s and prog-rock and concept albums. But maybe it'll at least start a push for binaural mixes (and react to your positioning)? Probably not (since the iPod sadly didn't usher binaural mixes despite it really pushing personal audio and headphone markets).
They've improved onboard quite substantially (depends on the specific boards, but the Realtek 1150 actually often does quite well - obviously it won't compare in performance to $500+ external pro boxes, but for typical users a lot of integrated will be more than good enough for the speakers they have attached). And as we've seen, plenty of people enjoy distortion.
😉
Creative has actually changed quite a bit. They have several external cards (including a nifty but a bit expensive one that features a modest 2 channel speaker amp) that seem to be quite good. Even their standard fare has improved, and their higher end offerings have an abundance of features and decent audio quality. If you're a real pro then yeah you'll likely be better off with a real pro mixer if for nothing other than the interface, but Creative is fine, if overpriced (but then they're hardly the only audio company that describes). The funny thing is, Creative still actually has a dominant role in setting how things could go (I believe they control OpenAL which I think most games use), but their hardware isn't a necessary part of that any more (so no being locked to EAX levels based on the Audigy hardware you have).
And actually Creative had some quite good (for the price) pro stuff under E-Mu. I don't know if they even still produce those though. I think their more serious stuff is being done under Cambridge (DACMagic for instance, although I think it is still a consumer oriented device, so not sure if they do much in Pro audio).
Creative also was keeping the good quality Fostex headphones that Denon had been using (and then decided to stop and replace with inferior in basically every way but lame "gamer bling" looks), for a while there.
Just don't go looking at their hugely expensive ridiculous sound bar.
