One thing about the soundcard that you suggested is that it doesnt have 2 of the things that I have to have. I produce my own music, & my software requires ASIO certified drivers as well as a breakout box with all the connections in the front of my computer. The mystique x soundcard unfortunately has neither which is why I have to buy this soundcard. I haven't upgraded it since Live 5.1, so I am sure that the x-Fi this will be a worthy upgrade even if it is on the pricey side.
One thing about the soundcard that you suggested is that it doesnt have 2 of the things that I have to have. I produce my own music, & my software requires ASIO certified drivers as well as a breakout box with all the connections in the front of my computer. The mystique x soundcard unfortunately has neither which is why I have to buy this soundcard. I haven't upgraded it since Live 5.1, so I am sure that the x-Fi this will be a worthy upgrade even if it is on the pricey side.
BenJeremy
Senior member
- Oct 31, 2004
- 718
- 87
- 91
Yes, that is true.... Vegas Video complains when it pops up about the lack of ASIO certified drivers for the Mystique-X (though it does work). As for the front panel breakout, they do market a nice digital I/O breakout bracket for the rear of the PC.
Perhaps we'll see convergence of the best features in another year or two, but it is still aways off. That's why I recommend people hold off for a while, if they absolutely must have features only the X-Fi has - there may be another card that offers it all in the near future (perhaps a higher-end TB card?).
is having dolby digital live on the x-mystique better than the creative x-fi cound card?
i was planning to get the x-fi sound card, but i've seen a lot of complaints on creative labs. So what is the best choice?
and why doesnt creative adopt dolby digital live?
i was planning to get the x-fi sound card, but i've seen a lot of complaints on creative labs. So what is the best choice?
and why doesnt creative adopt dolby digital live?
If youre that serious about Audio production, why arent you using M-Audio boards?
The HDA is the best card on the market right now for gaming.They just released 64 bit drivers and also new official 32 bit. Ive been pimping these cards for some time now, its nice to know people are finally catching on.
Originally posted by: Venomous
If youre that serious about Audio production, why arent you using M-Audio boards?
The HDA is the best card on the market right now for gaming.They just released 64 bit drivers and also new official 32 bit. Ive been pimping these cards for some time now, its nice to know people are finally catching on.
I would love to get an m-audio audiophile card, but they do not have any internal front output units on the soundcard. The cheapest solution i can come up with is about 300+ & since i am a college student, I do have to stay on a budget. =/ So I guess what I am saying is even though the creative labs is a little pricey, it caters the best to my needs.
1) It comes with an 5.25 input bay connectors
2) asio certification
3) actually pretty decent sound quality.
4) 100 less then a similar m-audio solution.
YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Moderator<br>A/V & Home Theater<br>Elite member
- Aug 6, 2001
- 31,205
- 45
- 91
Depends on what you're hooking it up to.
DDL isn't really going to make anything sound better really, it's just a signal format to get surround sound to a receiver or decoder etc.
If you have normal analog type comptuer speakers, DDL isn't going to do anything for you.
jdogg707
Diamond Member
- Jun 24, 2002
- 6,098
- 0
- 76
Most, if not all newer games take advantage of some form of EAX. EAX 1 (1998) and 2 (2000) are ancient, and even though they lend certain benefits, they are nowhere near the level of realism as the newer versions. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is one game that greatly benefits from EAX 4.0, and when I tried to play it on a Via Envy 24PT card, I noticed a severe difference in sound quality/effects quality v. an Audigy 2 ZS. In terms of gaming, you cannot try and use practicality as a motivator. That is why people spend 1K on a CPU, 600 on a video card, and overall, thousands on a computer. And I do not believe that high end systems can be deemed less stable than their cheaper counterparts. It all depends on who is building it, and how detailed the research for parts was. Also, you should probably head over to xtremesystems.org, there you will find a much bigger difference than 5-7% between the obsessed and the mildly insane.
While I agree with you that better is out there, and that it is the people out there buying into the marketing jazz that slow innovation, there are only two parties to blame on it. First, game developers for not demanding more innovation in their games, and gamers for not being more picky about their products. Unfortunately, both of these parties are almost impossible to effect from an individual stand point. Good luck preaching the word, but your sermon is most likely falling on the ears of those under the influence of a very powerful voodoo called marketing.
A $30 Audigy 1 supports all the way up to EAX 4.0. The only thing it doesn't support is the new Xi-Fi stuff, and who knows how much of a difference that will make?
The people complaining about Creative not having DDL support should look at this: Text
Granted its not being done on the sound card, and you have to output from the analog signals of your sound card.
Not sure how it would compare to DDL (which, yes, would obviously be good for Creative to support, but its not a deal killer for me personally), but interesting nonetheless.
Also of note is that you would then be able to send DVD-A digitally through your reciever. Although who knows what exactly is happening with the signal (since its being encoded into DTS), and sending it analog from a Creative card to that and then to your reciever I would say the sound isn't quite as good as say from a DVD player with DVD-A capabilities sent analog directly to your reciever.
Somewhat interesting though.
I agree that Creative is not that great of a company, but I think it a little unfair to judge the X-Fi until reviews (and people on the forums) have gottten to use it. For all you know at this point, Creative might actually have a very good product on their hands (now it being worth the asking price is another story). Crazier things have happened, and hey some companies have been able to rectify past grievances (take OCZ for instance). I'm not saing the X-Fi is making up for anything, but hopefully it'll at least be a great sound card.
If you go by Creative's marketing for the X-Fi (which yes, take with an entire canister of salt), then this card could take MP3s and other poor sources and make them sound significantly better. While we'll have to see if this is true or not, if they are able to then this would be a big boon. Having the best speakers in the world won't help you if you have a poor source, and as far as I know, DDL doesn't rectify any problems with the source. Personally, most of my music is in CDs or MP3s, and so if the X-Fi can get them to sound better (supposedly close to that of DVD-A, which I find hard to believe) then it'll be a damn fine achievement, and worthy of some praise.
Granted its not being done on the sound card, and you have to output from the analog signals of your sound card.
Not sure how it would compare to DDL (which, yes, would obviously be good for Creative to support, but its not a deal killer for me personally), but interesting nonetheless.
Also of note is that you would then be able to send DVD-A digitally through your reciever. Although who knows what exactly is happening with the signal (since its being encoded into DTS), and sending it analog from a Creative card to that and then to your reciever I would say the sound isn't quite as good as say from a DVD player with DVD-A capabilities sent analog directly to your reciever.
Somewhat interesting though.
I agree that Creative is not that great of a company, but I think it a little unfair to judge the X-Fi until reviews (and people on the forums) have gottten to use it. For all you know at this point, Creative might actually have a very good product on their hands (now it being worth the asking price is another story). Crazier things have happened, and hey some companies have been able to rectify past grievances (take OCZ for instance). I'm not saing the X-Fi is making up for anything, but hopefully it'll at least be a great sound card.
If you go by Creative's marketing for the X-Fi (which yes, take with an entire canister of salt), then this card could take MP3s and other poor sources and make them sound significantly better. While we'll have to see if this is true or not, if they are able to then this would be a big boon. Having the best speakers in the world won't help you if you have a poor source, and as far as I know, DDL doesn't rectify any problems with the source. Personally, most of my music is in CDs or MP3s, and so if the X-Fi can get them to sound better (supposedly close to that of DVD-A, which I find hard to believe) then it'll be a damn fine achievement, and worthy of some praise.
EAX4 capable stuff came out in what, 1998, this is 2005 technology, I'd imagine a significant difference in quality/capabilities.
BTW, kind of sucks that no one is even on par with Creative for EAX support, but were offering other features that could kind of compensate(dolby digital live for instance), and now creative's new xfi card stands to greatly raise the standards once again...and even worse, it is very proprietary and complex, so it's unlikely other companies will even come as close as they did to the audigys. Hopefully there will be a move to software sound engines over Creative APIs. I remember back in the day there used to be quite a few fairly good ones, from DirectSound itself to plenty of 3rd party efforts as well.
I just bought an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum for 85 shipped. The quality between these 2 cards are almost identical, right?
All creative cards since the original audigy are hardware capable of EAX4, they disabled it in the drivers to force people to upgrade.
There are ways to get newer drivers with EAX4 on the original audigy.
Dolby Digital encoding, especially what Dolby licenses for games, is pretty damn crappy.
Creative did(any may still) offer 6 channel uncompressed digital out if you're using one of their recievers.
Too true I have an old as dirt SBLive pre 5.1 and let me tell you it's head and shoulders above any integrated solution. I have had it for like 5 years now, and had stopped using it about a year and a half ago. Then I got Battlefield 2, and was rummaging through my old PC parts found the card an plugged it in.
I noticed the difference immediately. The sound quality/reproduction (using analog output) is only slightly definitely better than that of the nForce 2, and Via's Vinyl audio. The most noticeable difference is in games however, the 3D positional audio blows the tar out of integrated solutions. Particularly with a good set of headphones. Locating where that sniper shot came from is a heck of a lot easier now.
The SBLive is way better than integrated sound, and saying this is not a stretch. The Audigy is probably better still, and the X-Fi even more so. The interesting fact about the X-Fi, at least the models with on board memory, is that they appear to do for sound, what video cards did for 3D. That is take the bulk of the sound processing overhead off of the main system resources, and Processing and load them onto an separate card. Creative claims that in games that use it's OpenAL sound library(Doom 3, Unreal Tournament, and Battlefield 2 come to mind) there will be ~ a 10% performance increase.
Now there are lies, damn lies, and marketing director's claims of approximate performance increases, so you decide how believable that is.
But after my experience with the SBLive, and after seeing how well it stands up 5 years on, I've put the X-Fi on the short list of ?Things I will be putting in my PC as soon as I can get my hands on it.?
Regarding the performance increase, when Mr. John Carmack programed "Quake 3 Arena" he made it SMP aware (capable of using two processors simultaneously). He claims that all the extra processor did was handle the sound for the game. The performance increase of a dual processor system running Q3A was about 5%-10%(here and here) on similarly clocked systems but who knows?
Hope I'm at least 1/2 right
-manno
You lost me. I was responding to the original poster who claimed EAX4 was available in 1998, which is false- EAX4 is relatively new, less than 2yrs old.
EAX4 drivers for Audigy1 are available right on Creative's website.
n00b here but whats the diff if im using onboard sound with an optical cable? I thought digital was digital and the receiver decoded everything or am i really wrong?
Digital is digital and the receiver will decode it. However, there are different numbers of channels available. Until the introduction of Dolby Digital Live in the NForce/XBox chipsets, the most a standard, non-preencoded signal could do over a digital out was 2.1. Movie soundtracks and such are pre-encoded audio that simply passes through the 5.1 data. Dolby Digital Live allows for 5.1 surround sound to be encoded into a digital format from any source, allowing for games and such to have surround sound over the single cable digital out. If you have a capable receiver, the chances are the DAC in it are better than a sound cards DACs, plus it has much less electro-magnetic interference when you keep the signal digital up until it reaches the receiver. It also simplifies cable management as you only need one cable rather than the 5/6 for a standard surround sound setup.
I think the Live can be made to do EAX4 as well.(at lower performance however)
With the quality of a typical PC speaker system, the sound card might have a better DAC, if it has one at all. BTW, what about Creative's uncompressed surround sound digital out that could only be done on their recievers?
Problem with the soundsstorms were motherboard makers didn't isolate it well enough ... there was lots of added noise.
I really noticed the differance after comparing my THX Klipsch 4.1's on both a Audigy 19 and an NF2 Soundstorm with the volume up over 50% ... same music track. (Tried the mp3 first ... then dug out my original CD)
True a soundstorm probably wouldn't have the noise problem with an optical out...
As long as my speakers sound better with an addon board I'll keep buying them for my main rig.
Soundstorm wasn't very much at all if you weren't using the digital out, the analog out and performance was completely dependent on the hardware the motherboard maker added, I think asus was about the only one to have decent analog out.
It actually wasn't even soundstorm unless it was running over a digital out. The Dolby Digital Live/live encoding of 5.1 into a digital signal (either coax or optical) is what was classified as soundstorm. The regular analogue out was just standard crappy onboard sound over substandard DACs. By running a digital out, the DAC work was handed over to a receiver which limited both electromagnetic interference and also usually had better DACs than the onboard sound (unless your receiver was of poor quality).
The benefit of DD Live depends on what you run for speakers. In my case I run an old Onkyo HTS-500 setup (which consists of speakers, woofer, and receiver), and as such I can benefit from the direct digital out (although admittedly it isn't the best receiver). If you run a standard set of computer speakers (excluding the high end 5.1 Klipsch/Logitech setups which can decode digital signals in their control pods), you can't take true advantage of DD Live.
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