Creative's latest sound card is actually pretty good.
- Thread starter Guden Oden
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Hey, I had one of those too - great cardChalnoth said:While we're on the subject of reminiscing....I still miss my Aureal Vortex 2
It's been said before, and it will be said again, but A3D was soooo much better than any version of EAX I've heard. It also suited my prefered sound method, which was headphones (which when done correctly always sound better than speakers, IMO).Do you guys have/had any cracking and popping noise problem with Audigy cards while playing 3d games?
I was an Audigy 2 ZS owner and I had this problem in several games. It was very disturbing really. Completely making the gaming impossible with Audigy 2 ZS. I searched the web and found out that it was actually a very common problem caused solely by the Audigy line DSPs. Creative's community board is filled with such topics and there is no real solution suggested from Creative that I am aware of.
For a while I used my onboard sound for gaming and my Audigy 2 for listening to music. Then I decided that the slight increase in the sound quality was not worth to keep the sound card and I put it on ebay. Now I am using my onboard sound for everything without any problem.
I was wondering if the same problem persist in X Fi line of products too. Any comments?
I was an Audigy 2 ZS owner and I had this problem in several games. It was very disturbing really. Completely making the gaming impossible with Audigy 2 ZS. I searched the web and found out that it was actually a very common problem caused solely by the Audigy line DSPs. Creative's community board is filled with such topics and there is no real solution suggested from Creative that I am aware of.
For a while I used my onboard sound for gaming and my Audigy 2 for listening to music. Then I decided that the slight increase in the sound quality was not worth to keep the sound card and I put it on ebay. Now I am using my onboard sound for everything without any problem.
I was wondering if the same problem persist in X Fi line of products too. Any comments?
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Joe DeFuria said:
So do I!
I still have the external Roland SC-7 that hooks up via the Midi/Joy port on sound cards. I haven't used it in years, but in its time it was hot! I remember having friends over and when they heard MIDI games via the Roland Sound Canvis they flipped compared to their weak Sound Blaster 2 tweets and twots.
I'm assuming that my Audigy 2 ZS's joystick port works as a Midi connector, but I have no real reason to test the SC7.
FYI, before I owned the Sound Canvis I also owned the LAPC1, which was Roland's huge ISA card that did Linear-Arithmatic based sound. That was cool too.
Heretic 2 was great with A3D too.
Bought a X-Fi Fatal1y board yesterday since they've got that $40 rebate running. Next upgrade will probably be a new 150 GB WD Raptor. Edit: mainly because I was a little bored yesterday and was comparing my Maxtor MaxLine III's tested I/Os in Storagereview's various tests against the new Raptor and even in games there's a huge difference.
Bought a X-Fi Fatal1y board yesterday since they've got that $40 rebate running. Next upgrade will probably be a new 150 GB WD Raptor. Edit: mainly because I was a little bored yesterday and was comparing my Maxtor MaxLine III's tested I/Os in Storagereview's various tests against the new Raptor and even in games there's a huge difference.
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Heh, I have a nice collection of sound cards I've built up.
All Ensoniq cards (including Soundscapes and AudioPCI)
SB16, AWE32, AWE64, SB32, Live, A2ZS (had a SBPRO until a friend gave it away!!)
Roland SCD-15 daughtercard
Diamond MS MX300 (Vortex2)
Turtle Beach A3DXStream (Vortex1)
Philips Seismic Edge (Tbird128)
I am sort of a 'puter multimedia freak and have been since the early '90s, so I've used lots and lots of cards. The MX300 has awful audio quality honestly, other than the Vortex 2's 3D audio capability of course. It must have awful analog circuitry/DACs. The Turtle Beach card as excellent quality however. Creative cards pre-Live! were noisy POS's usually. You better like Rice Crispies cuz those cards definitely snap, crackle, and pop.
For DOS games, nothing really beats that SCD-15. The Soundscape Elite board though is very very competitive and can sound better at times. AWE cards are god awful unless you can load a soundfont on them in Windows or use a daughtercard.
Audigy 2 definitely has some 3D audio capability, but it's nothing mind-blowing I'd say. It works well though. But it's not a card that stands out from what's come before in 3D audio. That may be because of a lack of proper developer support though. It has fantastic audio quality though. Crystal clear response with excellent separation and zero noise. Better than Live! for certain.
All Ensoniq cards (including Soundscapes and AudioPCI)
SB16, AWE32, AWE64, SB32, Live, A2ZS (had a SBPRO until a friend gave it away!!)
Roland SCD-15 daughtercard
Diamond MS MX300 (Vortex2)
Turtle Beach A3DXStream (Vortex1)
Philips Seismic Edge (Tbird128)
I am sort of a 'puter multimedia freak and have been since the early '90s, so I've used lots and lots of cards. The MX300 has awful audio quality honestly, other than the Vortex 2's 3D audio capability of course. It must have awful analog circuitry/DACs. The Turtle Beach card as excellent quality however. Creative cards pre-Live! were noisy POS's usually. You better like Rice Crispies cuz those cards definitely snap, crackle, and pop.
For DOS games, nothing really beats that SCD-15. The Soundscape Elite board though is very very competitive and can sound better at times. AWE cards are god awful unless you can load a soundfont on them in Windows or use a daughtercard.
Audigy 2 definitely has some 3D audio capability, but it's nothing mind-blowing I'd say. It works well though. But it's not a card that stands out from what's come before in 3D audio. That may be because of a lack of proper developer support though. It has fantastic audio quality though. Crystal clear response with excellent separation and zero noise. Better than Live! for certain.
I've got a Roland MT32 sitting on my desk right now connected up to the midi ports on my SB A2ZS (which has a 75mb SF2 loaded). Can't beat it for old school.Windfire said:FYI, before I owned the Sound Canvis I also owned the LAPC1, which was Roland's huge ISA card that did Linear-Arithmatic based sound. That was cool too.
Colourless said:
If I'm not mistaken, the LAPC1 was the internal version of the MT32.
The computer industry moves so fast... But it is still fun to look at the noestalgia of the past.
The three pieces of hardware that I think changed "the world" for me in the past were:
1 - The Sound Blaster 2 (with DAC)
Wing Commander 2 with full voice was increadible!
2 - The Roland LAPC1 and SC7 Sound Canvis
In conjunction with the DAC from the SB2 we had the best sound combination ever--the two cards worked in conjunction.
3 - The Orchid Righteous 3D 4MB Voodoo1 card.
I pre-orderd this for $300.
It was a dedicated 3D card that had in parallel with my 2D card (probably a Matrox Millenium or Tseng 4000).Funny how both the LAPC1/Sound Canvis modules and the first dedicated 3D cards worked in parallel with traditional sound and video cards. Those were the days.
Any impressions so far?John Reynolds said:
I'm certainly happy with my board, except for the fact it forgot all my EQ and some other settings when my PC hung unexpectedly when windows wanted me to reinsert a CD, and I refused. Dammit, I hate that optical disc handling STILL is so damn flakey, opening a tray while the OS is reading the disc, or removing/switching discs before windows thinks it's finished with it has all kinds of annoying (and typically fatal) effects.
Anyway, after powering off the system and turning it back on again I found none of the settings had been saved, except for me switching speakers over to 5.1 mode. So I re-set things and fiddled a bit more with various adjustments (there's quite a lot), now I think I got things to sound a bit better and more balanced. I think I managed to overdrive the inputs on my decoder, because there was some distortion in strong sounds with the old EQ/crystalizer settings, but now that is gone.
I wonder if the DD/DTS decoder that Creative supplies REALLY is hardware based this time or if it's just a software solution that pretends to be hardware, just like with the DD decoder for the various Audigy lines.
Guden Oden said:
It shipped today so I won't get it in the mail until next week. And let's just say I'm borderline deaf so I'm not the best audiophile for subjective commentary (couldn't pass hearing tests 12 years ago while still in the national guard and I just picked up reading glasses this week, the guy who used to have 20/15 vision).
Sounds like those settings were lost because your Windows profile wasn't saved due to the reboot. I've heard the X-Fi's in game mode with a nice set of headphones is the way to go. I'm still kludging along with my old Klipsch 4.1s I bought back in '00 and due to my fat noggin' I have trouble finding headphones that're comfortable to wear for extended periods.
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FrameBuffer
Banned
Would like to throw up another hand for Aureal and A3D !! By far the best positional sound system Ive ever encountered in the modern PC gaming scene .. by FAR.. It's a real shame that they went under I still have one or 2 Vortex 2 kicking around here.. hell if there were drivers I'd probally still be using them over the creative crap we are stuck with. The last real sign of Aureal's works is still one of the most prefered options on any AMD mobo.. Nforce2 Soundstorm or whatever marketing name it was given.. a real shame too that nVidia had a hand in Aureal's demise although by the time Aureals grave stone was nearly finished..
every day I put on my Seinheissers Im reminded of how much I hate the fact that the PC sound market is owned by creative and how much I (as a consumer) miss basic competition which also brings innovation as opposed to the stagnation we've been force to live with for the last handful of years now..
Long Live Aureal ... !!
(plugs phones back in creative card and remembers has a Hercules GTXP 6.1 boxed somewhere ... hmm)
every day I put on my Seinheissers Im reminded of how much I hate the fact that the PC sound market is owned by creative and how much I (as a consumer) miss basic competition which also brings innovation as opposed to the stagnation we've been force to live with for the last handful of years now..
Long Live Aureal ... !!
(plugs phones back in creative card and remembers has a Hercules GTXP 6.1 boxed somewhere ... hmm)
I had a Vortex 2 running about a year ago to play Half Life again. It was neato but it's not all that honestly. It has the best spatialization for 2 speakers, but that's it. It's bad for 4 speaker audio and headphone mode isn't really that great. The Monster Sound MX300 also suffers from poor signal quality (of course not the fault of the Vortex chip, but cheap Diamond circuitry). I think the reason people are so fond of the chip is cuz it was one of the first chips to really do good 3D audio, but today many options (even software) aren't that far off from what the games actually implemented back then (even if the hardware could've done more perhaps).
It would have been nice to see where it woulda gone. A3D 3.0 was in development when Aureal died out. Probably had some interesting additions.
People also need to realize that Creative isn't singularly responsible for Aureal's demise. It was really mismanagement that killed them, just like what happened with 3DFX. They drove themselves into the ground. It's ironic too, because Aureal was built from the remains of Media Vision, who also died cuz of mismanagement. Creative has survived since the '80s and has always innovated, if not overly so. They are just better at surviving in the market than their competitors usually, and that is not evil, it's just intelligence and saavy. They know how to cater to their customers to make money, and how not to drown in R&D expenditures.
It would have been nice to see where it woulda gone. A3D 3.0 was in development when Aureal died out. Probably had some interesting additions.
People also need to realize that Creative isn't singularly responsible for Aureal's demise. It was really mismanagement that killed them, just like what happened with 3DFX. They drove themselves into the ground. It's ironic too, because Aureal was built from the remains of Media Vision, who also died cuz of mismanagement. Creative has survived since the '80s and has always innovated, if not overly so. They are just better at surviving in the market than their competitors usually, and that is not evil, it's just intelligence and saavy. They know how to cater to their customers to make money, and how not to drown in R&D expenditures.
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Your CPU will also have an instant heart-attack... No thanks!_xxx_ said:Well than go get an Envy24 based card like DMX6Fire and your ears will have an instant orgasm
Windfire said:
Yep it is. Of course MT32 has the advantage of still being able to be used with current systems with the likes of Dosbox for use with old programs, and has the oh so fancy programmable LCD on the front.
