Campquake Senate

For any of you sitting on the fence on this one, I just took the leap in to a SoundBlaster X-fi Elite Pro PCI sound card. I left my built-in on-board Intel i865 SoundMax audio chip and picked up this card. I actually wanted the lesser expensive X-fi Fatal1ty, but all the sites I trusted were back order for that model. My wife let me have the extra $100 to upgrade to Elite, but they are virtually identical except for the upgraded I/O External Drive. So I just went from the worst case scenario to the best in one audio upgrade.

The first problem that I was having with the i865 audio chip, as you may recall, was that it didn't have enough amplifier to drive my Bose headphones. With the volume set all the way up, these headphones sounded more like they were on level 4 or 5, of 10. The X-Fi can now be set to 50% and the sound is insanely clearer and phenomenally more powerful.

The next problem that I had with the on-board audio was that sound would skip when my computer was turned on. Heavy hard drive activity would cause the audio to stutter. Not any more. I've tested with other audio cards, and they were also able to fix this, but they couldn't drive the Bose headphones.

Another problem that I had was with Serious Sam 2. I played the demo, and noticed that some of the monsters lacked sound. And some of the weapons sounded soft like they fired Nerf products. The X-fi easily fixed this problem too. It has enough processing power that I can hear monsters in all areas of the map, EAX is calculated with perfection, and the soft Nerf-like sounds are now sharp cracks and booms like they should be. It wasn't that sound was ignored; it was more like the sound card thought that it would take too much time to render the audio so it skipped it.

The Sound Blaster X-fi also is supposed to enhance compressed music. It's tough to really compare the old music to the new, but I don't hear enough difference on that alone to suggest the upgrade. I record most my music in FLAC any way, so compression isn't a problem. Since I have an IO output on the back of the X-Fi card and a headphone port on the I/O External Drive, it's a real joy to be able to leave both on and adjust the speakers independently of each other. I used to have a 'Y' adapter and I couldn't use both or the sound levels would drop too low.

I would probably recommend the X-fi sound cards for anyone with SoundBlaster Live! or lesser audio. And especially recommend it if you have on-board audio like I did. If you have an Audigy or better, then use your best judgment.

Thanks for the review Neo!
As for audio, sometimes upgrading between cards that are relatively not far apart in age, there is not always a notice of improvement. In your case, it sounds like a 100% difference from having used onboard sound.

I have a SB Audigy and works/sounds great! Went from a SB AWE 64 to that.

A lot of the professional reviews agree with you Akira. The upgrade is almost evolutionary, and not revolutionary. Even though on paper the X-Fi has like 24X more MIPS than an Audigy. They say that the jump from Audigy 2 to X-Fi that there isn't reason enough to make that leap. Now if developers actually use the additional 64 Megs "X-RAM" that the two high end X-Fi cards come with, opinions may change. And that why I say if you have a Live or lower card, there may be enough reason to upgrade. I'm sure the Audigy cards have several more years of life left.

Perhaps when developers learn how to use all the power in this card games will start to exceed the capabilities of an Audigy. That should be a while. I've learned one thing though, Intel's SoundMax on-board audio is now obsolete when facing new games.

I don't know what kind of motherboard I have, or what chipset is being used (without looking) for my sounds... but I just have onboard, and even though it is fine in all games I play (of which there are a LOT), I am in the market for an actual sound card anyway, because that would offload the cpu from the burden...and my games might run a little better. The last sound card I think I ever had was... umm.. Sound Blaster 16, or something like that, so you can get an idea how long its been. How much does this x-fi cost?

Serpent wrote:How much does this x-fi cost?

Retail for X-Fi's are in four levels.

SoundBlaster X-Fi Extreme Music = $129
SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum = $199
SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS = $279
Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro = $399

They all have the same CPU. The differences are:

SoundBlaster X-Fi Extreme Music = Base model

Platinum adds an internal I/O panel, cables, and Remote

Fatal1ty adds 64 MB "X-RAM" (DDR RAM)

Elite Pro professional quality DAC for 116 dB SNR and exchanges the internal IO for an External I/O, and software: Cubase LE, WaveLab Lite, Amplitude LE

Neophyte wrote:

Serpent wrote:How much does this x-fi cost?

Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro = $399

<<<< Sh!ts his britches.....that much for a sound card....yikes

NightReaver[CotC] wrote:

Neophyte wrote:

Serpent wrote:How much does this x-fi cost?

Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro = $399

<<<< Sh!ts his britches.....that much for a sound card....yikes

Heh! Yeah, that's like 3 weeks of payments for your truck! Sad isn't it? But unlike your truck, I'll never use the sound card to its fullest. I'll never plug a guitar or keyboard in to it and record cool things since I'm not musically inclined like that. Heck it might even be a long while before I ever buy a 5.1 speaker kit for my PC. And, that I know of, Battlefield 2 is the only game out there that takes some advantage of the extra power and memory. Maybe Doom 3 does too, but I don't play either of those games right now. I mostly wanted to make sure that I was future ready with the extra 64 Megs and had the cleanest amp available for my headphones.

I'll have to see if I can FRAP's a demo for you to hear the difference of the old way it sounded as compared to the new way. At least in SS2, it's a noticeable difference.