I don't know how long this offer has been available, but I'm sure the 8-10 weeks has something to do with when this offer first came about, not from now.
I don't know how long this offer has been available, but I'm sure the 8-10 weeks has something to do with when this offer first came about, not from now.
What does it mean when it says quakecon only? You have to be at the event in order to recieve the discount?
Not if you ordered from the , now dead, link. The link automatically put one in your shopping cart. There were various shipping options to choose from. That was one hell of a link! Now I can cancel that trip to Texas- lol.
I think Creative will be just evil enough to never release OEM versions of this for sale in the open channel.
Also, ten bucks says they've dicked with the internal panel connectors so Audigy 2ZS Plat users can't use their front panels with the base-model X-Fi. They did it with the Audigy->Audigy 2, so they probably did it here, too, even though they're not fundamentally different at ALL.
The link is going up and down... when I first opened the thread I couldn't get to it. Now I can, and I can get the discount. Keep trying, it is there.
BenJeremy
Senior member
- Oct 31, 2004
- 718
- 87
- 91
...and yet it does NOT have Dolby Digital Live, STILL.
Creative sucks.
All they have been doing for the past 6 years is milking the market.
For all the supposed bells and whistles this thing delivers, it's overpriced hype if it cannot deliver the most obvious worthwhle feature that truly benefits users: Noise free, digital connections to Dolby Digital Receivers. This technology has been around since nVidia created SoundStorm/NF2 for the Xbox, and now CMI provides chipsets (See Turtle Beach Montego and HDA Mystique-X) as well as the new Intel HD Audio chipset.
I'm using a Mystique-X, and it sounds great. The thing is half the price of the mid-range CL crap, has socketed OpAmps, gold plated connectors. and includes the optical connector. I look forward to better drivers, of course... the DDL storm has really just begun (nVidia's vanguard effort was never fully realized), and there are many of us computer users who have Dolby Digital home theater receivers in our computer rooms.
I'm not trying to thread crap here (posting a preorder link is a good thing, for those who really need it), just trying to educate people that Creative Labs, for some bizarre reason, continues to mislead people and omit the "next big thing" in computer audio. Offloading audio processing is fine and dandy, but it's a minor hit on modern gaming systems (2%, MAYBE). Sound quality on the card doesn't mean a DAMN THING if the cables delivering the audio to your amplifier wind through 60hz AC power cables and high frequency digital cabling (not to mention wireless signals).
Ah well, decide for yourselves, but don't get too excited over Creative Labs latest lineup. I won't until it delivers DDL. Anything less and it really won't matter what the signal-to-noise ratio is, or what level EAX it has. Good audio played through crappy lines/amps/speakers ends up being crappy audio. In other words, if you do NOT have a 5.1 or better amp/speaker setup, why bother with a $200 audoio card? If you have such a setup, why waste the money on an audio card that can't deliver noise free audio to your amplifier?
Creative sucks.
All they have been doing for the past 6 years is milking the market.
For all the supposed bells and whistles this thing delivers, it's overpriced hype if it cannot deliver the most obvious worthwhle feature that truly benefits users: Noise free, digital connections to Dolby Digital Receivers. This technology has been around since nVidia created SoundStorm/NF2 for the Xbox, and now CMI provides chipsets (See Turtle Beach Montego and HDA Mystique-X) as well as the new Intel HD Audio chipset.
I'm using a Mystique-X, and it sounds great. The thing is half the price of the mid-range CL crap, has socketed OpAmps, gold plated connectors. and includes the optical connector. I look forward to better drivers, of course... the DDL storm has really just begun (nVidia's vanguard effort was never fully realized), and there are many of us computer users who have Dolby Digital home theater receivers in our computer rooms.
I'm not trying to thread crap here (posting a preorder link is a good thing, for those who really need it), just trying to educate people that Creative Labs, for some bizarre reason, continues to mislead people and omit the "next big thing" in computer audio. Offloading audio processing is fine and dandy, but it's a minor hit on modern gaming systems (2%, MAYBE). Sound quality on the card doesn't mean a DAMN THING if the cables delivering the audio to your amplifier wind through 60hz AC power cables and high frequency digital cabling (not to mention wireless signals).
Ah well, decide for yourselves, but don't get too excited over Creative Labs latest lineup. I won't until it delivers DDL. Anything less and it really won't matter what the signal-to-noise ratio is, or what level EAX it has. Good audio played through crappy lines/amps/speakers ends up being crappy audio. In other words, if you do NOT have a 5.1 or better amp/speaker setup, why bother with a $200 audoio card? If you have such a setup, why waste the money on an audio card that can't deliver noise free audio to your amplifier?
Does it bother anyone else that they didn't bother to put a firewire controller on a $280 card? The extra firewire ports were a big selling point for me on the audigy 1 and 2.
I guess it's time to use that 25% off settlement coupon.....lol.
I still wouldn't pay $150 for a soundcard anyways.
I still wouldn't pay $150 for a soundcard anyways.
Bingo, dont forget creatives bloated ~150MB drivers with 9 control panels that you have to install or half the cards functions dont work.
BenJeremy
Senior member
- Oct 31, 2004
- 718
- 87
- 91
Yes, I should have mentioned that, as well. Creative Labs has a strange approach to drivers! You need the original disc to install them, mainly because the ONLY difference between some $50 budget cards and the $200 cards is purely software based - which is insane, and yet the dirvers themselves contain all the code, no matter which version you run. Besides the bloated drivers, there is also the significant issue of multiple TSR apps CL insists on running (pretty much cancelling any minor processing bandwidth savings gained from their cards).
Besides DDL, what's needed now are audio cards that can offload samples directly into the soundcard itself. RAM, particularly at the slow speeds needed for audio, can be pretty cheap. Offload 512MB of audio onto the soundcard, and you should have 0.001% hit on the CPU during gameplay. Doesn't this make more sense? Unfortunately, this "innovation" - staring game audio card makers in the face for over a decade has only appeared on high end MIDI cards for musicians in the form of sample banks. :::sigh::: Cache the audio on a gamer's card and the impact of audio goes away completely.... but then Creative Labs can't sell you a card that gives you 1 more FPS on Half Life 2 a year later.
Where's my bridge?
If you have any kind of decent receiver/speakers with digital inputs, this card will sound just like all the others. Dolby digital, emphasis on digital. What about that don't you sound snobs realize?
Even within the digital realm, adding channels has diminishing returns which I think we've well reached.
I suppose the "audiophiles" out there would disagree with me. Well don't, otherwise I'll sneak around and oxygenate your $100 speaker cables. Save your money and buy a faster proc, better screen, or faster video card. That's what a real gamer would do.
BenJeremy
Senior member
- Oct 31, 2004
- 718
- 87
- 91
Well for DDL, the Mystique is still a bit rough around the edges, but each driver release has brought solid improvements. It's working well for me and NewEgg has them for $99 (last I checked).
The Turtle Beach Montego DDL is around $80 (Microcenter B&M carries them), but I don't know what the state of current drivers are - last I heard there was a slight lag in audio for DDL usage.
Otherwise, just stick with onboard audio or a cheap card (google some benchmarks, to be sure). You shouldn't have to spend more than $50 for a basic, reliable soundcard. Like I said, DDL is still on the rough edge, but give it 6 months, and more competitors, and these cards will make great choices for anybody expecting to use anything more than 2 speakers in their PC setup.
I just feel that people in the market for X-Fi are those with 5.1 or better speaker setups... and it seems like a waste to have to wire that up via analog; and if you aren't using theater speaker setups, why spend $200 on a sound card?
jdogg707
Diamond Member
- Jun 24, 2002
- 6,098
- 0
- 76
The problem is, and always will be...there is no better card for gaming, because game designers continue to rely on EAX, which is all Creative. No matter how much better one card may be than another quality wise, for gaming, Creative owns the market. Their cards have the lowest CPU utilization and support the most audio features actually used by game designers. All the bitching in the world isn't going to change the fact that this is true. The only way for it to change is if game designers start steering away from EAX, which probably isn't going to happen any time soon. For music, their is better out there, for production, their is better out there, for movies, their is better out there, for games, nothing else has come close since the Santa Cruz.
Try to get anything better than stereo and pre-encoded DD out of that motherboard header (this is where DD live ala NForce and a handful of newer cards comes in). You still have weak support at best for any of the 3D audio functions in games. If all you ever plan on doing is listening to a 2.1 signal then I'm sure you can get buy fine with a standard digital out, but it doesn't change the fact that most soundcards and the NForce trounce it in overall features, while being able to retain the same sound quality (does any card not supply a basic digital out that can do standard stereo?).
So yes, I have a bridge for you to buy.
BenJeremy
Senior member
- Oct 31, 2004
- 718
- 87
- 91
First off, the Mystique-X has EAX1 and EAX2 support, which covers almost all games out right now. Creative is still holding EAX3 and EAX4, but what game is making effective use of them? Secondly, as far as CPU utilization goes, as I said before - it's negligable. We are talking 2-3% on any system worth gaming on these days, if that even. Thirdly, what good is any percieved audio quality the Creative Labs' lineup has on paper, when it's pumped through analog lines running in high RF noise environments?
I do notice considerably better sound quality in my Mystique-X with 5.1 Dolby Digital over an optical line than my Audigy over (3 stereo) 5.1 analog lines. I came to appreciate the benefits of digital over analog signal delivery when I first got digital cable 6 or 7 years ago (the test was comparing several stations which had both analog and digital versions, and while the Sci-Fi channel, for example, looked great in analog, compared to the digital signal, it looked very staticy).
Of course, gamers can be very unreasonable when it comes to the practicality of cost/quality vs. performance. Witness how a person will spend twice as much on RAM, for example, to get a lower CAS timing, when it only gains 2% of a performance boost.... or the investment of a $300 video card (replacing their previous $300 video card, bought less than a year previous), when they already get higher frame rates than their monitor is capable of displaying. Another good example is the desire to buy a CPU running at 3.2ghz to replace one at 3.0ghz, even though the performance increase is likely to only be a percentage point or two... Quality often takes a back seat too, if a gamer can gane a few FPS on their favorite game; in the past, gamers have overlooked video drivers that "cheated" by dropping quality to maintain unrealistically high frame rates.
It's this unreasonable obsession with performance over practicality that keeps the peripherals industry moving along at a snail's pace, instead of delivering the real performance enhancements they might if driven by economic realities. Companies like Creative Labs gets a free pass to deliver incremental improvements that could have been on the market YEARS ago, if people stopped buying their overpriced cards and putting up with their marketing shenanigans. The real difference between a practical gamer's system and a performance obsessed gamer's system is about $1000-1500, a lot of stability, and probably less than 5-7% performance.
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