Creative's New X-Fi Audio Processor

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SRC is the weakest spot of the Audigy line sound cards. Many people even uses software based solutions (such as SSRC) to play Audio CD. If spending so much power to SRC makes it better, I'd say it's worth the hassle.
 
_xxx_ said:
ANova said:
MasterBaiter said:
ANova said:
There's only so much you can do with audio.

And we haven't hit the limits yet, so your comment is moot. :devilish:

I think we have. Anything beyond this point will offer a marginal advantage and more then likely be used primarily for marketing imo.

You know, there are some people who don't only play games but also do some other stuff with audio... ;)

I know my soundcards primary role is in a gaming environment, but I also have a few midi controllers hooked up, so mine does double-duty so to speak. :D

Onboard sound solutions AFAIK do not offer hardware accelerated sound, nor do they have ASIO compliance, so these are two big whopper issues that I have with them. I am referring to current sound solutions btw, so don't even bother bringing up Soundstorm. :(
 
No native 44.1KHz playback mode(STILL RESAMPLES in this day and AGE?), no true 24bit 96KHz effects processor, someone please enlighten me, what exactly can be "NEW"? :LOL: :rolleyes:
 
DSC said:
No native 44.1KHz playback mode(STILL RESAMPLES in this day and AGE?), no true 24bit 96KHz effects processor, someone please enlighten me, what exactly can be "NEW"? :LOL: :rolleyes:

The fact that they stopped using their 11 year old technology. Must have meant "New to them".
 
Question,

What will this give us in the realm of increased 3D audio speed? Any? All I really care about is gaming audio. So far the Audigy 2 ZS sounds good on my 5.1 setup. I just need to hook up my bass shakers to get a bit more punch. The best piece of audio equipment that I have is the Audio Control Phase Coupled Activator. MAN that rocks! It adds much more low bass. Dog's steps in HL2 are quite impressive. =)
 
I'm not 100% on this one, but I'm thinking it has 128 hardware accelerated 3D voices (twice as many as the Audigy line of cards).

Hehe, I have two bass-shakers on my computer chair too (and under my couch for the home theatre system) ;)
 
Until this is as good as Soundstorm in terms of drivers and does Dolby Digital Live, who cares?

What I want is Soundstorm 2 on PCI-E
 
DSC said:
No native 44.1KHz playback mode(STILL RESAMPLES in this day and AGE?)
Why do you care? Besides, 48>44.1, and the resampler in this chip is vastly vastly superior to the one in the live/audigy series. You're not going to hear any difference...

no true 24bit 96KHz effects processor
As the article explains, implementing this would have inflated the hardware resources to a tremendous degree (widening an execution unit by a third from 16 to 24 bits will require MORE than a third more transistors). Besides, which games exactly have source audio that is sampled in 24-bit resolution? :rolleyes:

Oh no; don't tell me! You run a professional studio on your gaming PC out of your room in your momma's house, yeah RIGHT. Like you need a pure 24-bit effects processor anyway. If you DID, you wouldn't have it sitting inside a noisy computer that's shock-full of EMI.

If you read the article, you'll see the effects processor handles 24-bit audio just fine by slicing it up into separate frequency bands and processing those in turn. It handles 24-bit audio far better than any other consumer audio product, so what exactly are you bitching about?

someone please enlighten me, what exactly can be "NEW"? :LOL: :rolleyes:

:LOL: :rolleyes: Read the mother fucking article, alright? You're just joining in on the general crap-on-creative bandwagon, well that's fine if you actually have anything valid to say. Except you obviously don't, you're just out to get in a couple cheap punches. First you should know where to strike tho, and you don't have the first clue there sonny...
 
Well Guden, while not exactly doing "professional" recording, I have my PC for recording as well, not only games.

On the other side, 16-bit audio is enough for any semi-professional recording/processing. It's not like I'd be making the next Dream Theater album at home...

The important thing though is the fact that no Creative card so far can handle more than just a few tracks simultaneously without presenting some serious "time-shifting" while recording. Since EMU cards (with the same chip) can do it without problems, I guess it's just crappy drivers. I hope the new card will be better in this regard.

And I really enjoy the output of my Terratec DMX6fire set to 96 KHz. Everything gets upsampled to that. I hope Creative will make this possible as well with the next chip.
 
Guden Oden said:
Why do you care? Besides, 48>44.1, and the resampler in this chip is vastly vastly superior to the one in the live/audigy series. You're not going to hear any difference...

So you'll just accept the mindless PR drivel? Then you certainly qualify to be a mindless Creative fanboi that buys their crap everytime. :LOL:

How does anyone think a resampler is better than native 44.1KHz playback is beyond me. Creative couldn't get it right for 7 years(Live to Audigy2ZS) you think they can get it right now? FYI, another clock crystal is way cheaper than to waste transistors on SRC portion. This has been echoed at the other forums like Head-fi, Hydrogenaudio etc. So stfu if you don't know anything. Superior? Yeah, so explain why the Chaintech AV-710 with a lesser 106dB DAC is praised for having better sound quality than a A2ZS with a top of the line 112dB Crystal multichannel DAC.

Guden Oden said:
As the article explains, implementing this would have inflated the hardware resources to a tremendous degree (widening an execution unit by a third from 16 to 24 bits will require MORE than a third more transistors). Besides, which games exactly have source audio that is sampled in 24-bit resolution? :rolleyes:

Oh no; don't tell me! You run a professional studio on your gaming PC out of your room in your momma's house, yeah RIGHT. Like you need a pure 24-bit effects processor anyway. If you DID, you wouldn't have it sitting inside a noisy computer that's shock-full of EMI.

If you read the article, you'll see the effects processor handles 24-bit audio just fine by slicing it up into separate frequency bands and processing those in turn. It handles 24-bit audio far better than any other consumer audio product, so what exactly are you bitching about?

If they didn't inflate the chip in the first place by wasting transistor budget on the SRC, you'd have think they could have done it for the effects processor, but obviously you don't think very far.

Guden Oden said:
:LOL: :rolleyes: Read the mother fucking article, alright? You're just joining in on the general crap-on-creative bandwagon, well that's fine if you actually have anything valid to say. Except you obviously don't, you're just out to get in a couple cheap punches. First you should know where to strike tho, and you don't have the first clue there sonny...

I've read, sonny. You obviously don't even have a clue. After seeing what Chastity, who wrote the Audigy4 Pro review for 3dsoundsurge, wrote about it, even she wasn't the least bit impressed with it. But hey, mindless masses like someone here would certainly buy more Creative junk. :LOL:

http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=119148

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=33927

Next time, try reading and learning more instead of just accepting Creative PR drivel.
 
I thought the Envy24 series does not have a DSP. Its because of the DSP effects that the Creative chip needs everything at a common sampling rate. Can the Envy24 series play/mix sounds at different sampling rates simultaneously?

Even considering all of this, audio junkies are still going to want bit-accurate effects-free playback at 44.1 or 48. In that case, why would they even need this new chip? Its clearly for gamers and people who want to play around with effects.
 
thomase said:
I thought the Envy24 series does not have a DSP. Its because of the DSP effects that the Creative chip needs everything at a common sampling rate. Can the Envy24 series play/mix sounds at different sampling rates simultaneously?

I own one and it can't, it switches to the lowest sampling rate in the mix. But it may as well be a driver issue, since Terratec is not really famous for good drivers.

Those DSP FX can be done on the CPU without any major performance issues when recording (I guess in games it's more of an issue), so it doesn't really bother me that much. AFAICR there are some addon possibilities for DSP and MIDI.
 
wow this thread needs some...closure. People, people, it's just a sound card. And yes, it does suck that there is still no native 44.1. However, who here can honestly tell the difference? Well, anyways I can't, so I'm happy.
 
I"m not ready to shred this chipset yet. The PR stuff (as with most companies) needs to be taken with some salt (or a brick of it for that matter...). Anyone condeming this product already however is not making a very well educated decision either though. Wouldn't it be better to wait until there is hardware to evaluate before we hoist it onto the gallows? Making snap judgements is as bad as taking a PR blurb as gospel. STFU, and lets see how this plays out. Could be good.... could be bad... :devilish:
 
Resampling 44.1KHz to 48KHz sucks. It prevents bit-perfect CD audio playback, and completely DISABLES DTS audio CD playback.
 
Well the question is, why did 44.1KHz become so popular (only CDA?) and why did 48KHz become a standard considering that?
 
pakotlar said:
wow this thread needs some...closure. People, people, it's just a sound card. And yes, it does suck that there is still no native 44.1. However, who here can honestly tell the difference? Well, anyways I can't, so I'm happy.

Well, then just avoid the thread and don't chirp in with useless comments, no pun intended.

Many people can hear the difference and want to discuss it, that's what the forum is for in the first place. ;)

If the chip makes better sound in games possible with +5 fps, it's a good enough argument for me to buy one. And keep my Envy24 as well for recording and listening to music. They can work in parallel in the same machine, so it's not really a problem.
 
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