Creative's New X-Fi Audio Processor

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DSC said:
So you'll just accept the mindless PR drivel?
I'm not accepting nuttin, but unlike YOU, I don't make up my mind before I've even had a chance to listen to the product. :rolleyes:

Then you certainly qualify to be a mindless Creative fanboi that buys their crap everytime. :LOL:
The only one that qualifies for a fanboi is you, with your mindless creative-hate. I try to keep an open mind about things, especially those I haven't yet experienced.

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.
The issue isn't about COST, you mindless thread-pooper because creative knows just as well as your silly audiophile forums that a crystal is cheaper than millions of transistors, it's about the fact you need a common sample frequency for all sound channels to do proper digital effects processing on the datastream. :rolleyes: So STFU with the STFU bullshit alright? Think things through first before you start laying on the hate.

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.
Your comparison is irrelevant; neither of these cards have anything to do with this new chip.

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.
Lol dude, like I said, how is it supposed to process audio with datastreams of varying sample rate? That's what the resampler is there for. Think, man, THINK! :rolleyes:

Maybe if you weren't so busy hating creative, you'd perhaps have a chance to try and understand the reasoning behind this piece of hardware. Tip for you: nobody here have time nor patience for mindless haters and threadcrappers like you, if all you care about is bashing creative for whatever reason, go back where you came from.
 
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/santa_cruz/index.htm

Like many other consumer soundcards, the Santa Cruz does quite a bit of resampling, but unlike many of it competitors, the resampling does not seem to materially degrade technical or audible performance.

Santa Cruz CS4630 DSP is only rated at 420MIPS or so, and yet it as "weak" as it is, its resampling doesn't degrade sound quality. Creative needs a 10k MIPS DSP to get better resampling, is Creative so inefficiently stupid?? :LOL:

Envy24HT/HT-S and variants doesn't have have a DSP or hardware acceleration yet it can playback 44.1/48/96/192KHz natively with no resampling, process true 24bit signals perfectly, no BS unlike a certain company proclaiming 24bit 96KHz on their boxes for a certain older hardware and getting a class action lawsuit slapped on them.

Proper digital effects processing? Creative can't even get a simple thing, native 44.1KHz playback for CD music and most lossless and lossy compressed music right. You seriously think something far more complex can be done right by them? You're certainly more ignorant than one would think or way too much believe in Creative PR drivel. :LOL:

The EMU cards(0404/1212M) have the same EMU10k2 DSP as the Sound Mangler series. They have very good sound quality, far better than any Creative shit despite sharing the same crappy EMU10k2 DSP and surprise, they don't resample at all. In 44.1/96/192KHz mode, the effects processor is DISABLED, otherwise all signals will be resampled to 48KHz. Talk about great design decisions, eh? The effects processor is basically useless in the modes that are used for music creation. So basically when you're doing real work in 24bit 96/192KHz, the effects processor is about as useful as a paperweight. :LOL:

Like I said, if you don't know anything, stfu. It's really simple. You can go back to where ever you came from, mindless masses of Creative buyers.
 
Your debate about "audiable quality" is pretty meaningless, since everone will have a different opinion based on personal preferences. And frankly, most people are not able to distinguish a 128K mp3 from a 24/96 studio track, nor they really care about it. Although Envy cards _do_ sound much better for music/DVD's, even these can never match even a midrange Hi-Fi system in my living room. I know of no audiophile using the PC for his/hers listening pleasure, so it's a kinda useless discussion in the first place.

Now for resampling: you're bound to do it anyway. If you're recording with 24/96, you'll still have to downsample it to 16/44.1 for CD's after the final mix.

If you record with a creative card @48KHz, you can use DSP with no problems. Why should you want to record in 44.1 anyway? If the card should be capable of recording with 24b/96K, or at least 24b/48K, that's what will be used, with downsampling afterwards.

For any serious recording you'll use an external DSP anyway. I have a cheap-o 24b Lexicon DSP sitting on my amp which I use for the PC as well. There is no consumer-level sound card which can beat that.

The poor sound quality of the Audigy is mainly due to some filtering they do all the time, poor DAC's and crappy drivers, not because of the chip as such. As you can experience with EMU cards.

Now if I only had enough cash for a nice B&O system...
 
Please visit Head-Fi or Hydrogenaudio, where many forumers there use a PC as their source. They have top of the line soundcards such as Lynx L22, EMU0404/1212M, ESI Juli@ etc.

Even Stereophile explores the question about PC as an audiophile's source of music.

http://stereophile.com/news/041105serving/

Of course, saying blanket statements like "I know of no audiophile using the PC for his/hers listening pleasure" shows your ignorance.

Yes, the final cd is resampled from 24bit 96/192KHz to 16bit 44.1KHz, but why does Creative insist on doing 44.1KHz -> 48KHz -> 44.1KHz resampling for 44.1KHz content? Most other soundcards can play it back natively no resampling. Of course, if you want to join in the Creative stupidity, fine by me.

Chaintech AV-710 is $25, yet it beats a far more expensive A2ZS with a better DAC in sound quality. Go figure. Don't make excuses for Creative.
 
EMU0404/1212M are top-of-the-line soundcards and you keep bitching about the chip? And I am the ignorant here? :rolleyes:

Your language is a bit over the top, don't you think?

And: you're talking to a guy who has been MAKING music for over 20 years now, y'know. Six years of classical education, many years in different bands and studios. That prolly qualifies me as ignorant, I guess.

I don't really care about any numbers, but only what my ears tell me.

As for audiophiles, certainly you can use a high-end card and whatnot for listening to music and prolly it'll sound just as good as your average hi-fi rig. A real audiophile, though, will want the visuals as well. Meaning, I'd like to see a nice B&O, Bose, Marantz or WhatNot rig as a part of my living room design, too.

And there's one thing a PC will never be able to beat, no matter what: tube amps :!:

But whatever, it's not like I really care what a flamer kid like you thinks or says...
 
Bose? Obviously you don't even know whats a high-end speaker.

http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html

For your own benefit, I suggest you read that. :LOL:

Things like Dynaudio, Egglestonworks, Wilson Audio, Revel, Martin Logan, B&W, Kharma, Dunlavy etc, now those are what should be considered high-end audio, not Bose crap. :LOL:

http://www.dynaudiousa.com/main.htm

http://www.egglestonworks.com/

http://www.wilsonaudio.com/

http://www.martinlogan.com/

http://www.revelspeakers.com/

http://www.kharma.com/

http://www.bwspeakers.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/global.main
 
I suggest you stop reading and start listening. I guess you never even heard a proper Bose setup in action.

I worked @Bose in the amp development for a year, FYI. So I guess that makes me incompetent too. Poor me. :rolleyes:
 
Look, I'm not going to join the flame war with some PFY here. You're free to have your opinion, whatever it might be based on. I have my ears and a certain amount of first-hand knowledge and that's more than enough for me. If you want to argue about some sensless stuff like opinions of other people etc., or brand names, try Rage3D or Planetcrap forums, they'll welcome you.
 
So have you actually even read the Intellexual article? Obviously not. :rolleyes:

You don't even try to defend your opinions with any facts, just taking out the easy route, "I'm no getting into any flamewar blah blah", as usual with most people.

Why the specs for the speakers are not published at all? Frequency response, etc etc? Every other speaker manufacturer does publish the full details of their products, you know.

http://www.dynaudiousa.com/products/audience/42/aud42spec.htm

http://www.bose.com/controller?even...ertainment/stereo/floorstanding/901/index.jsp

One can compare themselves. One manufacturer provides the full specs of their product, and the other provides nothing useful.
 
Sonny, I don't need to read anything. As I said, I WORKED THERE, so I know what it all sounds like. And I also tried pretty much every sort of speaker, amp and DSP equipment at some point in my life. As opposed to you, obviously.

I see no sense in arguing over that stuff.

Anyway, we were talking about the new Creative chip here, so let's try staying on topic, shell we?
 
We should know something new in the next few days. I'd be curious if there will be some actual reviews of this product @ this time , or if it's just going to be another PR blurb. :?
 
Good God People!

You know. Aren't audiophiles the l33t group that buys those $5,000 speaker cables with 10cent resistors/capacitors in them? I heard that from a old audio engineer friend of mine.

Granted there are gains to be had. But for PC audio I think going to some insane crazy extreme with the signal quality is pointless on tons of levels. I'd rather see them put effort into new 3d audio techs than trying to reach the pinnacle of audio clarity where you need $10,000 speakers to hear the difference and cut out every hardware DSP feature of the card to do so (Envy) to remain price competitive.

Pick your extreme, or pick a well rounded card.

It's all so relative and fantastical.
 
This is clearly a card meant primarely for gaming, so the discussion about sample rates, mine-is-bigger-than-yours etc. is pointless anyway.

As I said, if it enables better gaming experience with a nice fps boost on top of that, I'm all for it.

Audiophile is actually someone who enjoys quality sound. Which is not voodoo of some kind and easily achivable with simple stuff. The people buying those expensive cables and stuff are just idiots, because that doesn't improve the sound quality in any meaningful way.

Nor does the frequency response or any other specs tell you anything about the actual sound quality coming out of the speaker.
 
To reiterate the above, the Acoustimass's bass module responds to 46 Hz to 202 Hz at ±2.3 dB, while the satellites respond to 280 Hz to 13.3 KHz at ±10.5 dB. This is, by the way, the only speaker that I have ever seen tested with a ±10.5 db allowance. Still, this leaves a frequency gap between the satellites and bass module of about 80 Hz! That is 80 hertz of sound that is completely erased within the system's internal crossovers! I wonder how Bose figured out which 80 hertz matters least in the audible spectrum?

But it does allow one to see the objective data for the speakers, and 80Hz of sound is missing from the spectrum, then one has to wonder.... ;)
 
Wow that some interesting stuff about Bose. Good read guys. Thanks. The numbers do speak for themselves...unfortunately we do have a Bose home theater setup that my dad got...its quite nice...but these numbers are very disconcerting.... :rolleyes:
 
_xxx_ said:
I suggest you stop reading and start listening. I guess you never even heard a proper Bose setup in action.

I worked @Bose in the amp development for a year, FYI. So I guess that makes me incompetent too. Poor me. :rolleyes:

Don't take it to heart. Anywhere anyone mentions the name Bose one of these trolls appear. Most of which have never actually listened to the systems, and those that have are so biased they make themselves believe it sounds bad.
 
ANova said:
Anywhere anyone mentions the name Bose one of these trolls appear. Most of which have never actually listened to the systems, and those that have are so biased they make themselves believe it sounds bad.

Yup, seems so. I really hate it when people don't even bother listening but judge only based on some flowed numbers someone pulled out of his arse.

Let alone the fact that most people could never tell any significant difference between Burmeister B99 speakers (~$50,000) and $500 speaker from the local electronic shop :rolleyes:

I guess they should all save for buying a Burmeister or Classé system (both in the range of $50k-100k), that'll prolly make them _much_ happier ;)
 
swaaye said:
Aren't audiophiles the l33t group that buys those $5,000 speaker cables with 10cent resistors/capacitors in them? I heard that from a old audio engineer friend of mine.
Unlikely. Anyone worth his/her rep as an audiophile definately uses oil filled caps & slit foils for their Zobels...:)
 
stevem said:
Unlikely. Anyone worth his/her rep as an audiophile definately uses oil filled caps & slit foils for their Zobels...:)

ROTFL!!! :LOL:

Zobel's only good for the woofers, though...
 
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