Is SB X-gamer 5.1 *crappy* or just *incompatible* ??

[VBboy]

A lot of people say that Creative Labs X-Gamer 5.1 as well as Platinum 5.1 suck.
What are they trying to say, that sound quality and 3d positional audio is crappy, or that these cards have poor Win2k/etc compatibility?

In terms of pure sound quality and 3d positional audio (EAX), are these cards worse than Santa Cruz, Phillips Acoustic Edge and others?

 

[neuralfx]

people will tell you they are.. i actaully have the xgamer 5.1 and a 5.1 speaker set on this box, and the sound is great, whether in games or just music, its great, .. ya this is subjective but.. well sound great, i could imagine another card being *miles ahead* of this one.. jus my 2cents ..
-neural

 

[gopunk]

afaik, the sound quality is just as good if not better, some people just seem to have trouble with compatibility. although i'm running win2k and it works fine. i will offer you this bit of advice. install as little as possble from the creative cd. i only have the audiohq, remote center, and drivers installed. the rest of their software really kinda blows. and you'll get this newsupdate program with audiohq, that always wants to access the internet (i have zonealarm so i noticed this). if you want to disable this, find where the program is and double click on the icon, it'll ask you if you want to disable it. and get the lastest update off the website for remotecenter, it crashed on my machine until i got the update.

 

[VBboy]

gopunk,

Thank you for your advice. I actually installed only the stuff from the first CD although it might have thrown the evil self-update on my machine.. I will check.

If anyone else wants to shine some light on the "Creative blows" situation, please do

 

[gopunk]

eh... first cd? i only got one... it has a bunch of other stuff that i unchecked during my custom installation.

 

[JaiKnight]

They are most likely talking about the Win2k driver problems, and the need for the VIA 4-in-1 patch. Check out the forums at http://www.3dsoundsurge.com to see the types of problems people are having.

Like I said in the other thread you made, I've got the Plat 5.1 and am having no problems whatsoever, and sound quality is good. I'm running in Win98SE.