Comparison: X-Fi vs. Realtek

[seeker010]

Originally Posted by Riou

It would be more worthwhile to spend the money on a pair of very good headphones than an X-Fi card. Get a pair of Sony V6's, Sennheisers, Grados, AKG, etc. instead of paying for another re-badged Creative card.

If you want a pro-audio card, do not get a Creative card.

I've never had any luck with silent background noise using a HP amp and onboard jacks. a discrete card, any discrete card, would probably be better for that purpose. The creative bashing has reached nonsensical heights from people who can't tell their mouth from their a-hole.

[{WOR}lock]

Originally Posted by Riou

It would be more worthwhile to spend the money on a pair of very good headphones than an X-Fi card. Get a pair of Sony V6's, Sennheisers, Grados, AKG, etc. instead of paying for another re-badged Creative card.

If you want a pro-audio card, do not get a Creative card.

Rebadged Creative card with interchangable OPAMPs, superior caps etc.

I have some Senn's HD650s and I disagree with you. The prelude is the best of both worlds - gaming / pro-audio (I've changed my OPAMPS though).

[theshadowcult]

I don't think this has been said simply because of later posts, but you don't need headphones. You can plug your 2.0 speakers into the headphone jack and set them up on the side instead of the front and get full 9 channel 3d positional sound. Bonus is you don't go deaf, downside is you lose the discrete volume so no late night sessions in a shared house.

Also, this probably has been said, but some games (EG: Juiced 2, Mass Effect) just don't like Realtek Sound cards

I know this thread is more than a month old, but i thought it was worth saying.

[Brinkman]

Onboard has come a LONG way in the past 10 years. I remember dropping 10fps and hearing crackling and popping with onboard in the late 90's.

Now it's near flawless if you're using headphones. Creative is just marketing their name. These new cards really are overkill for 99% of the gaming community.

[Jokerzwild]

This thread is an oldie but a goodie .

I just recently got an Xfi Xtreeeeme Gamer kinda on a whim (it is a "real" Xfi, apparently there are some that only use software or something, think they're called Xtreeeeeme Audio's ), didn't really need it but it caught my eye so I figured I'd give it a shot. I immediately loaded the latest Daniel K. drivers, never even installed the ones that came with the card. Haven't had a single solitary problem with the drivers during the time I've had it. Plenty of crap in them to mess around with too.

Now, I haven't even remotely started digging into what it can/can't do vs. onboard, but one thing that was immediately noticable to me was that positional audio in games is "smoothed out" more. Can't really describe it like I want to... it's like, things sound all around you and transition from one speaker to the other without the harsh cutoffs I have with onboard. With onboard you can tell when the sound switches from the front to back speakers... no in between, on the Xfi it blends them together better.

Damn that was a long paragraph to explain a simple effect . Other than that, really it's not that much different, though I'm just about as far away from being an audiophile as you can get. With onboard if I'd get some background static too, but every discreet sound card I've tried fixes that, even cheaper ones. Motherboard must pick up more electrical interference :\

I could live with the onboard HD audio if I had to or if I was tight on cash, but given the choice I'd rather not. Just to get rid of the faint background noise I'd be happy with even an old Audigy 2 or something. Onboard sure has come a long way though, I don't think anyone would dispute that.

[seeker010]

Originally Posted by Brinkman

Onboard has come a LONG way in the past 10 years. I remember dropping 10fps and hearing crackling and popping with onboard in the late 90's.

Now it's near flawless if you're using headphones. Creative is just marketing their name. These new cards really are overkill for 99% of the gaming community.

I don't know what kind of headphones you use, but hd595 directly connected to onboard vs audigy 4 pro vs audiotrak prodigy vs x-fi elite pro (if I can ever get my 1616m to play nice with my x-fi...) sounded different. maybe not enough to justify the cost for some, but I wouldn't say it's exactly the same.

[GanjaStar]

Originally Posted by Brinkman

Now it's near flawless if you're using headphones.

what you call flawless is to others an unacaptable sound quality. i cannot stand on board. even just the software creative bundles with the card makes it a better choice for me.

but i do agree that onboard is improving so creative will soon need new tech to keep up the lead.

[RicH(SAD)]

I recently bought a Asus Xonar Essence STX and it definitely sounds better than my old Creative X-fi xtreme Music. Considering the X-fi already sounded a lot better than the onboard soundcard, it just shows how crappy the onboard cards really are.

[bhanja_Trinanjan]

Hi,
To my ears, onboard sound is big time crap… just plug in a sensitive IEM like SHURE E4C/SE 530-PTH or a headphone capable of high resolution like the AKG K701 (via analog out to Headphone amplifier) and you will hear that the signal is polluted with noise from the various motherboard buses. Your HDD is busy transferring data and signal interference from the SATA bus is clearly audible. Your wired mouse moves… and electrical interference noise spoils the party. I guess that X-FI might be better… I don’t own one! Also the cable that transports analog sound to the front output sockets is often of questionable quality. ‘Audiophile’ and ‘onboard sound’ don’t get along well with each other… it’s probably worthwhile to use an USB DAC from Headroom and plug in headphones via a can amplifier!

[MikeEx]

Originally Posted by Jokerzwild

Now, I haven't even remotely started digging into what it can/can't do vs. onboard, but one thing that was immediately noticable to me was that positional audio in games is "smoothed out" more. Can't really describe it like I want to... it's like, things sound all around you and transition from one speaker to the other without the harsh cutoffs I have with onboard. With onboard you can tell when the sound switches from the front to back speakers... no in between, on the Xfi it blends them together better.

A friend gave me his Audigy2, I was using a SBLIVE5.1.
I also noticed smoother sound transitions through different channels.
Definitely put more value into my 5.1 HPA2 headphones.

-

You'll always suffer EM sound interference from your motherboard. Although some MOBO makers started shifting integrated audio chips to add-in cards.


Dedicated audio cards suffer less from EM sound interference due to being slightly raised off the MOBO via PCI slot.

High end X-Fi and ASUS XONAR have EM shielding.

[BlindNero]

The smoother transistions are also due to EAX 4 on the audigy vs 1 on the Live, EAX 5 (X-fi exclusive) vs 1 (?) on the Realtek.

[RicH(SAD)]

Most games don't even use EAX these days. I would personally leave it off most of the time. It just seemed to butcher the sound more than anything else.

[Hatecrime69]

I originally had an audigy 2ZS, though I semi-recently upgraded to an x-fi with the intention of being able to decode dolby digital input from my cable box (either the version i picked of the x-fi can't do it, or the specific model, i can't remember)

So aside from that I'm not un-happy with it, I don't feel that i've been ripped off at least, however I do have one annoying situation where if i'm listening to something for awhile (tv though media center, or music though audiosurf for example) the audio will randomly screw up, changing from the front left-right to the rear channels (or center channel only sometimes) and needs to be fixed by changing the speaker setup from 5.1 to 2.1 and back to 5.1 annoying, but I still use the card rather than junking it and wasting the cash i spent, but I do still wish i knew what the heck the people at creative do all day, because it certainly ain't driver work!

[badboy]

I had a audigy 2ZS.. installed windows 7, nothing worked, looked when creativer will release windows 7 drivers for the card, saw "YOUR ****ED BITCH! WE DONT CARE", took out the card, broke it and used the addin card that came with the motherboard that I bought 3 years ago and it functioned wonderfully without any problems at all.

so creative can go **** themselfs for all I care.
If I ever buy a card in the future it will be Asus.
Creative is on of the worst companies in the world. And their cards and drivers suck balls

[Pirate Neilsouth]

Originally Posted by badboy

Creative is on of the worst companies in the world. And their cards and drivers suck balls

[ElAguila]

ASUS and Auzentech make good soundcards. Turtlebeach has some good cards. Onboard sound has made quite a bit of progress over the years. I have heard some onboard audio solutions that sounded very good. Creative has gotten sloppy and there is no doubt about that. If you get the x-fi to work then it works great.

[GanjaStar]

Originally Posted by badboy

I had a audigy 2ZS.. installed windows 7, nothing worked, looked when creativer will release windows 7 drivers for the card, saw "YOUR ****ED BITCH! WE DONT CARE", took out the card, broke it and used the addin card that came with the motherboard that I bought 3 years ago and it functioned wonderfully without any problems at all.

um audigy 2 win 7 drivers are from july they didnt work for you?

and your addin card is from 2006, and audigy 2 is from 2002

every single component in my PC has changed at least 2-3 times since i got the x-fi gamer. seems like a good deal to me so creative still got my respect

[badboy]

Originally Posted by GanjaStar

um audigy 2 win 7 drivers are from july they didnt work for you?

Those are the "beta" drivers. The only things that works with them is that crappy sound comes from your speakers. Nothing else works.

My 6 year old can but together a card and drivers that sound better than the audigy 2 zs with those drivers.

Want to use mic? not with these drivers

Want to have sound problems in 80% of the games go ahead and get the drivers.

Want the pc to act like you took a big dump inside the case? use these drivers

[GanjaStar]

so i guess some creative products mught suck , my x-fi isn't one of them, thank the calculator heaven for that.

[Jokerzwild]

Daniel K drivers maybe? I retired my Audigy 2 awhile ago, but did use it with Win 7 for awhile using the Daniel K drivers and as far as I remember they had full functionality. Hell I run Dan K drivers with my X-fi.

And yeah, it does suck that Creative doesn't put more work into the Audigys themselves these days, but if you truly are looking to get your hardware running give these a try .


http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/audigy-drivers/

[monkeydust]

I just built a new computer yesterday. Tried installing my old X-FI in this computer with Windows 7 64 bit and it didn't recognize it. I tried installing the X-FI drivers and it didn't see any compatible devices. Didn't take much effort to get the onboard sound working so I'm sticking with that. So, the major difference I see is that one works and one doesn't.

[Auric]

That does not really seem like a card specific problem. Try another slot or otherwise fiddle with the BIOS/CMOS Setup.

[monkeydust]

Originally Posted by Auric

That does not really seem like a card specific problem. Try another slot or otherwise fiddle with the BIOS/CMOS Setup.

I did try multiple slots and disabled onboard sound in the Bios.

[stormy13]

You try installing just the driver manually through Device Manager? Seen this problem crop up a few times (and experienced it personally the first time I installed 7, and a manual install fixed it) , and in most of them manually installing just the driver fixed it, and then they could run the installer to get the control panel (or the apps if using the daniel_k driver).

[forciano]

Since everybody likes to bash Creative (deserved or not), all I have to say is that I never had any outstanding issues with my X-FI card either on Vista 64 or Win7. I also used to own the Audigy 2 card and I really liked it too, maybe I'm just lucky...

[Apocalypsee]

Originally Posted by forciano

Since everybody likes to bash Creative (deserved or not), all I have to say is that I never had any outstanding issues with my X-FI card either on Vista 64 or Win7. I also used to own the Audigy 2 card and I really liked it too, maybe I'm just lucky...

Not just you, me too, been using Creative cards since PCI 64, and used Creative card ever since. Been using X-FI XtremeMusic and the latest one is Elite Pro, zero problem, no popping, cracking or any sort. It just works in everything I try, XP Pro, 7 RC7100 x64 and x86 and the latest one 7 Pro x64

[stormy13]

Originally Posted by forciano

Since everybody likes to bash Creative (deserved or not), all I have to say is that I never had any outstanding issues with my X-FI card either on Vista 64 or Win7. I also used to own the Audigy 2 card and I really liked it too, maybe I'm just lucky...

Originally Posted by Apocalypsee

Not just you, me too, been using Creative cards since PCI 64, and used Creative card ever since. Been using X-FI XtremeMusic and the latest one is Elite Pro, zero problem, no popping, cracking or any sort. It just works in everything I try, XP Pro, 7 RC7100 x64 and x86 and the latest one 7 Pro x64

Just to add another that hasn't had any real problems either; no popping, crackling, etc.

Started with a SB Live value (CT4830, now collecting dust in a box), moved to an Audigy ES (SB0160, still in use in the kids computer running XP), to an Audigy 4 (now in the wife's computer running Vista x64), to the Xtreme Music currently in mine (running on Windows 7 x64).

[sMashPiranha]

I've had the odd minor problem with C-Media, Realtek, my old GameTheaterXP 7.1, and the various Creative cards I've owned. The Creative cards have never been any worse for me than any others I've had. If they were why would I still be using one?

[Riou]

Creative drivers, even DanielK, have crashed my multiple computers over the years. EAX is not important anymore as the gaming industry will use OpenAL if necessary. If you want real sound quality, get a real pro audio card.

On my rig, I have an Onkyo digital receiver that I send audio to from my onboard digital output and also from graphics card.

Creative is a horrible company with their proprietary standards. I would not support them if possible.

[forciano]

Creative has done some pretty ****ty stuff in the past, and remember EAX effects can be applied to OpenAL, Quake 4 for example sounds really good.

I'm actually going to give Asus sound cards a try if they ever decide to release the Essence ST. Not because my X-FI sucks, i actually love it for gaming. Its more a matter of sound quality now, the only thing im worried about is what dolby headphone will do for gaming, instead of the CMSS-3D from creative which is pretty good IMO.