EAX 5.0 info.

[MasterBaiter]

Hmmm... well Creative seems to be taking their sweet time releasing info on the new X-Fi card... Seems to be the paper launch from hell to me. Anyways, link to new info:
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/X-Fi/technology/lastinfo/eax5.asp

 

[Monty]

ive just given up looking at that site, been months with pathetic amount of information coming out of them.

best thing ive heard on x-fi upto now is from the toms hardware guide preview of it, they make it sound like a must have.

 

[swaaye]

According to Maximum PC the cards should be out in Sept. They went bananas over it too in their latest issue. I guess we'll just have to see what all the noise is all about....

 

[PARANOiA]

Still no Dolby Digital encoding in the X-Fi by the looks of things. One simple feature that would make me upgrade from my Soundstorm in a flash.

I know there are others on the market with this feature, but I'm looking for something with this feature, plus quality sound ;-) .

 

[swaaye]

I don't know whether it'll do DD. But hell I don't have a DD receiver nor speakers for one. I think most people are in that situation, relying on computer speakers for sound. And I don't think computer speakers need be terrible either. NF2 NVAPU would be pretty low quality garbage if you didn't have a optical out. Tragic that they never made a sound card. And that the drivers aren't really up to par. AND that they seem to have dumped the thing in general.

A lot of the talk about this X-Fi card has to do with its headphone spatialization capabilities. Apparently they are something else. And headpones are far more pleasant for the people around you But I don't care too much about that either! Heh.

I'm not really sure what I think about this new chip honestly. It sounds immensely powerful. But from what I've read a TON of that power is just for resampling. In fact in the previews I've read resampling quality has been all the rage. I don't know about you guys but I'd rather use a simple Winamp software-resampler plugin than blow $200 on a card that does it for me! AND I can't tell the difference between 44.1 and 48KHz on my Audigy2 anyway! And, you know what? Game developers are getting to like low-bitrate MP3 audio in games. So WTF is the point of a good sound card for games anyway? Christ the music in KOTOR2 is encoded at 32KHz with a 10K low-pass, mono, 48kbps. No soundcard in the universe is going to fix that trash.

Here's to hoping that their new 3D audio techniques are suprisingly fresh. Otherwise I don't really see the point.

 

[MasterBaiter]

I actually run my system through a DD receiver, so it would be nice to have on the fly encoding, but I'm not going to sweat it @ this point. My biggest concern is the quality of the sound, and it's 3d acceleration in games (128 voices sounds awfully nice...).

 

[thomase]

Creative just announced a new product called DTS-610 Home Theater Connect which is an external device that performs DTS Interactive encoding. However, it seems that it requires a connection from your soundcard's analog outputs. This results in the signal going from digital->analog->digital->analog as it travels from the soundcard to the HT speakers connected to the receiver.

I simply don't understand why they won't at least support the proprietary Digital DIN interface that they use for their Inspire digital speakers. That would eliminate the extra DAC->ADC stage.

 

[demalion]

Does anyone have any info on the nuts and bolts of the sound chip processing functionality? I'm wondering about the relationship to 3dlabs Pxx chip functionality and how much of the announced featureset is an adaptation of such.