Creative's New X-Fi Audio Processor

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_xxx_ said:
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.
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How about some personal experience then? I owned a pair of 301 Series III Direct/Reflecting Bookshelves that I got as a gift, and I was looking to replace an old set of Yamaha bookshelves. So I hooked them up, and gave them a proper burn-in of 1 week before passing judgement. I was not very pleased, so I decided to let them burn in longer. After a month, they didn't get much better. They sounded flat, unlively, dead mids, somewhat shrill, and had no reach on the low end, and did not mesh well with the subwoofer I was using, since I had to set the crossover too high to compensate, and I got severe localization issues from the high crossover. Yuck.

I then sold them off, and went back to my old Yamahas, and used that until I got my current incarnation of a system.
 
Wow! Could you guys get back on topic? I don't care to read about Bose. If you wanna talk about then.... make a new thread! :oops:

P.S. about 2-3 days left till some new info is released on the new card...
 
Chastity said:
How about some personal experience then? I owned a pair of 301 Series III Direct/Reflecting Bookshelves that I got as a gift, and I was looking to replace an old set of Yamaha bookshelves. So I hooked them up, and gave them a proper burn-in of 1 week before passing judgement. I was not very pleased, so I decided to let them burn in longer. After a month, they didn't get much better. They sounded flat, unlively, dead mids, somewhat shrill, and had no reach on the low end, and did not mesh well with the subwoofer I was using, since I had to set the crossover too high to compensate, and I got severe localization issues from the high crossover. Yuck.

I then sold them off, and went back to my old Yamahas, and used that until I got my current incarnation of a system.
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Arguing with a Bose hater is like talking to a wall. There's simply no point in debating this further.
 
ANova said:
Arguing with a Bose hater is like talking to a wall. There's simply no point in debating this further.
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Why? I'm just relaying my own personal experience. Don't label me a Bose hater. I have ample reason for not liking the product I had, and my opinion is based on first hand experience over the course of a month in my own home. You also do not see me bashing any other product without me quoting source. And I do not feel my opinion is one of a novice, being that I have some experience doing reviews for 3DSS and other forums.

When I tested those units, I allowed for ample break-in, used clean amplification, and ran not only subjective listening tests, but also frequency sweeps and tested multiple listening positions, included the recommended placements by Bose. In the end, I found them to be a subpar performer, especially considering the price. If you like, I can discuss the very limited linear response that it produced, plus the various dips in the frequency curve that required an equalizer to compensate for.

I feel that my opinion is an educated one, which I can support with both experience and analysis. Labelling me a Bose hater just demonstrates that you couldn't think of a viable arguement to counter me with. That's very poor netiquette.

On another note, if the Bose units are such engineering marvels, then can you explain why the last review of their products in Stereophile is November 1971 of the 901 units? Was it because they were not happy with the overall review, where the article explained the science of the surround technique they were using, and praised their ambience effect, it's resilience against harsh playback, but had an overall mediocre quality performance? As an engineer, can you debunk this technical review? I welcome your input.

http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/425/index.html

I give praise when praise is due. I have always been a harsh critic of Creative Labs consumer products, and have always pointed out both their strengths and weaknesses. I refer to you my review of the Audigy 4 Pro as an example. I pointed out where CL improved their product, but also pointed out their weak points, such as their Bass Management issues. I've also read over a hundred reviews of my review in different forums, and I have yet to read one stating mine was biased or fanboyish.

If Bose creates a product that performs in accordance of its pricetag, I would be very happy to recommend it. Unfortunately, I can recommend alternatives that perform better, are more versitile in upgrading, and cost less.

If anything, your remarks in this thread suggests that you are a Bose zealot, and worth ignoring. You are welcome to prove me wrong.

Chastity
www.3DSoundSurge.com

PS - My apologies to the others in this thread, but I felt ANova needed to have both barrels emptied in his direction.
 
Don't forget that when Consumer Reports gave Bose a bad review once, Bose sued them(and lost) saying they used unscientific methods(a double blind test). Well, if an unscientific method isn't acceptable to Bose, how about the raw numbers that show that their speakers simply underperform in just about every area?
 
We've learned from several industry sources that Creative's OpenAL spec will essentially be the hardware-accelerated audio API for games in Longhorn. Microsoft, under growing pressure to move up the Longhorn development timetable has been pitching features overboard in order to avoid further delays. One such victim is hardware-accelerated audio in games.
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Interesting...
 
Bose audio is not horrible, but for the price they ask for it sure is. I'm surprized you actually worked for bose for an entire year and were unable to see through the developed shortcuts and marketing deceptions.

Forget the speakers for a second

Lets just look at this from all angles. Have you ever seen a single company employ as many trademark symbols on their webpage (69 on the waveradio page alone!) Obviously there is no real point in using about 90% of them because no other company would even want to do. So why do they do it? Its total marketing illusion! Make the public pretend like you have something special.. something to hide! The first time I heard about bose was some 10-15 years ago. My friend was telling me about these micro cubes things that had such advanced technology that they "never gave away their secrets or other people, and even when other companies opened up the cubes to copy the technology, it was so advanced that they could not even understand itâ€￾ YES I SWEAR TO GOD That is what I heard, and im sure it came form some other misguided bose fan on down the line to my friend to me. Like it was some sort of physically defining exploit that only Bose managed to discover!

I bought into that lie half heartily until i became somewhat aware of how audio really worked. I ended up taking apart one of those (very overpriced) 200 dollar bose cubes and it was about as sophisticated as 15 dollar sony in a box speaker satellite speaker. Tiny magnets, paper drivers and added weight to make it feel expensive. About the only thing that retained the slightest bit of quality was the rotation axel between the top speaker and bottom.

Bose does not have any sort of community, or at least one that they support. You ever wonder why? They want to hind what the experts know and they try very hard and do a great job of deceiving the uniformed and uneducated public. A bose forums would have so many audiophiles trolling the board that it would far more harm than good!

Most people don’t know a lot about audio. I mean who the hell wants to learn about speakers in their free time? You could take 100 highly intelligent people who know nothing about audio and tell em bose is the best, have em listen to the speakers and they would probably agree. The fact is, most people dont know what hometheater speakers can or should sound like or can relate to! If you asked the common person if hometheater can ever sound as good as the movies and they would say no! The fact is, it can be far better for a lot less than 4,000 bucks and it doest come from Bose.


They only have one real advantage and that is their size. Unfortunately , bigger speakers sound better, this is a undisputed fact of physics, but not everyone cares to have HiFi audio quality and will settle for something that sounds reasonable especially if its small! Other companies are getting into to the smaller speaker market and its only a matter of time before they figure out how to target the uniformed as well as Bose does.

Bose relies on a lot of other techniques to attract customers... very deception advertising which puts a lot of emphasis on gifs! I would bet 1 out of 4 people who own a waveradios got one as a gift. So now you have a large number of gift gives who have never experienced waveradio who would recommend it to someone in a heart beat because they spent 500 bucks on it, it must be worth it!

Its a giant facade! The fact is, unless you have experience (and 99% of people dont) Its very difficult to tell if a system is really great or not without doing a direct compare in the same room and conditions. I got a waveradio (as a gif) I took it apart (its laughable) and did direct compares and found that 40 dollar pair of multimedia speakers proved to be a better audio system by a large margin. So that leaves you with a 460 dollar cd player that matches the quality of a sony walkman – No thanks.

The bottom line is the debate is over. What i said wont change your option if you are truly stubborn. I was convinced as a young age that bose was the great, and learned by doing my own researching that bose was actually for the newbies and ill informed.

I don’t just echo the voices of the other bashers, There is a lifestyle in the other room that was playing a movie (Oceans 13 –very bad movie) the entire time I wrote this thread. I could not understand a single male voice from my room as they were mostly because replicated by a subwoofer that employs 5" woofers turned to 40hrz. Not very efficient bose and not very impressive.
 
It should give you less CPU load with more FX turned on, as well as perform better for recording. If that PR is to be trusted.



As for Bose, I never said they were the best or such, just that the stuff is quite good. Now THE best is something else, but Bose is nowhere nearly as bad as people tend to rant about. They put a lot of effort to make those little thingies sound as good as possible for the size. They also trim their stuff for use without any equalizer and with specific spacing, so the room is very important. Many people buy Bose boxes, turn up the bass all the way and wonder why it sounds like crap. Oh well.

And I worked there because I was paid rahter well for it, of course :)

As for the prices: it's the same for any company - if you can make money through marketing, you surely will do so. Nothing wrong with that. Be it "Intel Inside" or whatever, they're all just the same.
 
MasterBaiter said:
Chastity said:
jvd said:
Here is my question .


As a pc gamer what does this give me over my audigy ?
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EAX 5 support. And that's about it.
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And twice as many (128) 3D hardware accelerated sources as the Audigy line. :rolleyes:
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Hmmm considering Creative has poor drivers and there have been a lot of issues with Audigy cards (I have a 2 ZS) in some of the games I play I have to ask "Why?". I can honestly say the last sound card I was happy with for gaming was the MX300 from DiamonMultimedia and it had a A3D chip in it. I turn EAX on in BF:V and it totally lags out and the sound is extremely delayed.

I really wish there was some competition for Creative in the PC gaming audio market. It is nice that integrated sound has improved so much, but I would really like to get some nice audio advancements... maybe someone will bundle a PPU with a killer wave tracing sound chip?

/ducks
 
_xxx_ said:
It should give you less CPU load with more FX turned on, as well as perform better for recording. If that PR is to be trusted.



As for Bose, I never said they were the best or such, just that the stuff is quite good. Now THE best is something else, but Bose is nowhere nearly as bad as people tend to rant about. They put a lot of effort to make those little thingies sound as good as possible for the size. They also trim their stuff for use without any equalizer and with specific spacing, so the room is very important. Many people buy Bose boxes, turn up the bass all the way and wonder why it sounds like crap. Oh well.

And I worked there because I was paid rahter well for it, of course :)

As for the prices: it's the same for any company - if you can make money through marketing, you surely will do so. Nothing wrong with that. Be it "Intel Inside" or whatever, they're all just the same.
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You are utterly insane.
That is all.
 
_xxx_ said:
I know :LOL:
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If you know it,then stop going on about how bose isn't that bad.
No one but you and a few other ignorant people think bose is alright.
I wonder how the hell you can sell a system for well over a few grand and use such shitty components and not think anything is wrong with that.
 
Oh, puh-leese! Let's just stop this Bose shite, ok? I like the little Bose setup in my bedroom, you think Bose is crap, so what? Breathe...relax... :)
 
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