Should I ditch my X-Fi?

[Davros]

I really wish there was a healthy market with competition fighting to produce add on sound cards for an open API, but we all know the story there. When listening to GRID or Lost Planet Colonies' amazing 5.1 EAX5 sound, it makes me sad that hardware accelerated audio is not long for this world

I blame OpenAL, right now having a suuports openal sticker on a soundcard means nothing from a technical point of view practically every card would qualify, and from the users point of view they have no idea what it is,
there needs to be several levels of openal 1 could be basic, right up to 5 which would be beyond eax 5 it gives ihv's something to aim for it also allows products to be differentiated (eg: big sticker supports openal level 5) it would also give game devs a standard to work to
next openal needs to stop hiding they need to make gamers/devs/ihv's aware of openal, make something like openal level 5 desireable just like dx11 support will be desireable

 

[Albuquerque]

Thanks for the reasonable and well phrased post Geo. To provide contrast the fix has worked for me without problem since I moved to x64 a few months back.

Onboard sound has gotten better but it is still onboard sound, which no hardware acceleration and a poor DAC. Analog Devices is the only company doing proper EAX2 and they recently announced they're leaving the market.

Well, with Vista, acceleration is no longer part of the picture... Thus, you're left with either poor quality DAC's or else bad grounding issues (mostly EMI issues), and the VAST majority of buyers really don't pay that much attention.

If I crank every audio knob (virtual and physical) to 100%, I can hear quite a bit of noise coming through my onboard audio. But at that volume, if a noise were actually playing, I wouldn't be able to hear anything for about a week from the ensuing nerve damage. At even unreasonable (but still tolerable) volume levels, there is no noise. And while I have an "expensive" X38-based board, it's the same onboard sound setup as most of the rest of Gigabyte's lineup.

This says to me that a $79 board can give you onboard audio that has sufficient quality to please hardcore gamers, but still not yet hardcore audiophiles. And yeah, it will take some miniscule amount of CPU overhead to do this -- when was the last time we saw any benchmarks on how Creative cards are helping modern processors offload? If it's more than 5% on a modern E8400 processor, I'd be quite shocked.

Really, in the days of Vista, it's new driver model, and the ubiquiteous dual core (or more) processors available, the only thing left for "add-on" audio is sound quality. And if you're using an SPDIF / Coax connection, you've pretty much done away with what little was left to complain about.

And I'm sure there will be the retort about either software options or the possibility of noisy optical / digital outputs to some infintesimal degree, to which I'd say "show me a blind sound-test where someone could legitemately tell the difference and I'll believe you"

 

[Skrying]

How can you blame OpenAL? Developers know about, they absolutely do. It's just not worth their time to use the "higher" levels of it or focus on the audio part of games. It's people who waste their money on gaming headphones (which blow so much ass) and think their $50 5.1 Logitech setups are good. It's just like how someone spends $500 on a video card and turns around and spends only $150 on a monitor. It's absolutely stupid.

Albuquerque, the vast majority of systems I've heard recently with onboard still give a flat static noise response. This is from $50 to $350 motherboards. You might not be able to hear it on yours but it's often there. It also depends greatly on what headphones I'll use to listen with. Low impedance phones make it much more apparent.

 

[Gnerma]

The question here isn't "is onboard audio good enough for most people". I think it's pretty clear that it is. The question is, "is it good enough to use INSTEAD of an X-Fi that you already have?" My answer to that is no.

As for Vista's driver model, it hasn't affected hardware acceleration in the real world as much as we first thought it would. Any game that ships with OpenAL support works out of the box and all directsound games work with alchemy (new games that only use directsound are rare these days though).

 

[Geo]

Thanks for the reasonable and well phrased post Geo. To provide contrast the fix has worked for me without problem since I moved to x64 a few months back.

Entirely possible. I believe there were heavy suspicions that it was interaction with specific mobo chipsets that was a major contributor there. So it could easily be a "YMMV" kind of deal.

It was on my ASUS P4P800 Deluxe that I had trouble with it on x64. I had it turned off by the time I went to the P5E in April and I think it never made it into this rig (which is an 8GB rig; the P4P800 was a 4GB rig). By then "I'd lost that lovin' feeling" towards it and wasn't going to give it another chance if the new onboard sounded good. It did, and a few weeks later I gave the the guts of the old rig, including the X-Fi, to a friend who intended to run XP on it anyway.

 

[Albuquerque]

Albuquerque, the vast majority of systems I've heard recently with onboard still give a flat static noise response. This is from $50 to $350 motherboards.

Again, I'd love to see someone do a blind listen-test to validate these claims. I've owned a few creative labs products, and know a few people who still do. I used to be able to hear a difference, but this was back in the 90's. After about '01the only difference was the acceleration (in the days of the early P4's where it made a measurable change in performance.)

These days, I strongly doubt the performance angle is there to any meaningful degree on a modern C2D rig (especially the overclocked penryn quad that I use). I strongly doubt the audio angle is there to the extremes of which some people profess.

And I'm not convinced of the widespread adoption of OpenAL by the general programming masses either, especially considering the above.

 

[Skrying]

I'm not saying its massive or even enough to bother me in games (games have many other lacking areas in audio before minor noise). But it is there and when listening to music some songs it will hurt. This is using the analog ports. I use SPDIF from my onboard audio and have zero issues with it, it's not as good as some much more expensive DACs I've heard but it is fine unless you're going to spend hundreds on good headphones and amp. But, I do here it when using the analog ports, so it is there however minor it might be.

 

[Albuquerque]

I think that's really it though... If you're an audiophile, chances are either that you're using a digital carrier to a head unit, or you're using a high dollar set of headphones. In the former I just don't see a reason to "upgrade". In the latter, it might be argued that a trained pair of ears could tell the difference on the source, but then again, there's a LOT of "hardcore" audio enthusiasts who swear that upgraded power cables make a difference too.

Guess I'm just not the type who "gets it" To each their own, right?

 

[Poro]

Thanks for all the answers! I've decided that I won't order a Xonar just yet, but I will try my X-Fi with ALchemy. Just one more question. I was reading the ALchemy FAQ and there was this question that confused me a little.

Q9. Is there a 64bit version of ALchemy?

Not at this time. There are very few native 64bit DirectSound3D enabled games that would require a 64bit version of ALchemy.

So does ALchemy work with 64-bit Vista and does it work with 64-bit game binaries?

 

[Gnerma]

So does ALchemy work with 64-bit Vista and does it work with 64-bit game binaries?

Yes it works fine in Vista 64 with 32 bit games. I would assume the answer to the second question is no due to how the FAQ is phrased. I've never personally run into a situation where alchemy was needed for a 64 bit game (played Crysis & Hellgate) and it's unlikely that future 64 bit games will use directsound.

 

[Poro]

Supreme Commander uses DirectSound as far as I know. Not sure if there is a 64-bit binary for it, but I would believe so. Well, this would propably be the only game that uses DirectSound and has 64-bit version so it does not matter if it does not patch 64-bit games. Thanks for clearing this for me though!

 

[willardjuice]

Supreme Commander uses DirectSound as far as I know. Not sure if there is a 64-bit binary for it, but I would believe so. Well, this would propably be the only game that uses DirectSound and has 64-bit version so it does not matter if it does not patch 64-bit games. Thanks for clearing this for me though!

Supreme Commander (even Forged Alliance) is not 64-bit. I use the X-Fi Prelude and 4GB of ram in Vista x64 and suffer no issues.