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Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum

wow...are we doing dolby digital on-the-fly encoding YET or is this a dumb question. I swore off Creative YEARS ago due to their monopolistic driving of Aureal out of business and the lack of XP drivers for the soundcard I had at the time....but there really is no other choice is there?

I'm also afraid of Creative bloated drivers with huge GUI interfaces, lots of updating and notifications running on my system. Does life with Creative still come with obese bloated drivers with big fat gui buttons trying to make life with a complex sound card easy for housewives or has Creative changed their direction and approach to software and drivers?
 
There is nothing inherently wrong with competition--Intel and AMD try to drive each other out of business, and nVidia vs ATI, er AMD?! WalMart has monopolized the retail world (including selling more toys than the former king ToyRUs), by offering better services and more products at a lower price. People may whine about WalMart wiping out Mom and Pop stores, but didn't WalMart start out as one, and PC giant Dell started out of a garage? Without competition from Japancese cars, German cars would still cost twice as much. I am digressing--the install cd comes with tons of stuff, but you can install only the driver and control console and skip the others. The biggest criticism re
Creative's driver is that it doesn't get updated frequently enough.
 
Originally posted by: Heinrich
wow...are we doing dolby digital on-the-fly encoding YET or is this a dumb question. I swore off Creative YEARS ago due to their monopolistic driving of Aureal out of business and the lack of XP drivers for the soundcard I had at the time....but there really is no other choice is there?

I'm also afraid of Creative bloated drivers with huge GUI interfaces, lots of updating and notifications running on my system. Does life with Creative still come with obese bloated drivers with big fat gui buttons trying to make life with a complex sound card easy for housewives or has Creative changed their direction and approach to software and drivers?
Click to expand...

No DD / DTS live yet with the X-Fi.
 
How does this compare to the Creative 70SB046A00000 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series - Retail $125.99.

I am a casual gamer on PC. Mostly RPGs like Oblivion. Will I miss the X-ram that is on the Fatl1ty card?

I am using on-board sound right now.
 
I was thinking about getting a POD XT Live (guitar amp modeler), which has MIDI, so I guess this would be a good card for me to get to use with that. Anyone done this?
jacks
jacks

Wish I didn't have to pay the $16.70 tax though.
 
Originally posted by: Heinrich
wow...are we doing dolby digital on-the-fly encoding YET or is this a dumb question. I swore off Creative YEARS ago due to their monopolistic driving of Aureal out of business and the lack of XP drivers for the soundcard I had at the time....but there really is no other choice is there?
Click to expand...


Aureal = ownage

I still have 2 of those cards laying around cause they are BY FAR the best cards Ive ever heard (too bad they only work well in win98)
 
Originally posted by: Heinrich
but there really is no other choice is there?
Click to expand...

Hell yeah there is.

http://www.bluegears.com/

http://www.m-audio.com/

Both make cards that really do Dolby Digital and DTS encoding on the fly.
Creative are a bunch of un-innovative schmucks who have been selling the same card for about 5 years now, the X-Fi is simply an evolution, not anything revolutionary.
EAX is a joke and ruins surround sound IMHO. Get a DD/DTS encoding card, hook it up to a real receiver and you will never go back to Creative's crap.
 
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