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Discussion on Article:
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Sound Card Family Review

Started by: SaberJ2X | Date 01/13/06 04:51:50 PM
Comments: 48 | Last Comment:  07/20/09 08:42:38 AM

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1. 
WARNING!!!!

These cards DO NOT work on nforce4 motherboards (intel or amd) and some other new motherboards, they all seem to have clicking and popping as can be seen from this 430+ reply thread on creative.com

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board. id=soundblaster&message.id=31426&view=by_date_ascend ing&page=1

[Posted by: hydra  | Date: 01/13/06 06:31:06 PM]
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+ expand thread (4 answers)
2. 
while you're at it check out these two threads

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board. id=soundblaster&message.id=32566

(800+ replies!!)

and this one

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board. id=soundblaster&message.id=26289

(500+ replies)

Do yourself a favour and check out some alternatives like this card:

http://www.xoxide.com/bluegears-xmystique-ddl-gold.html

http://www.ihda.co.kr/skin/ihda/goods/productList.php?cat_lar geno=1

http://www.bluegears.com/xmystique.html

[Posted by: hydra  | Date: 01/13/06 06:35:34 PM]
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+ expand thread (2 answers)
3. 
SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro

This is the top model in the family that includes high-quality Cirrus Logic digital-to-analog converters with about 16dB SNR and an external I/O unit.

16db? or 106db?
[Posted by: SaberJ2X  | Date: 01/13/06 07:20:51 PM]
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+ expand thread (1 answer)
4. 
My soundcard upgrade path since 1995...

Soundblaser 16 ISA (12 feet long this was) ---> Aureal 3D (WCPR'd to work on Win2k, then XP) ---> Philips Acoustic Edge (now).
[Posted by: ODi  | Date: 01/13/06 08:55:20 PM]
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5. 
A good review, but there was one thing I would have like to have seen added.

I think it would have been beneficial to measure the additional power this card took over both the Audigy and the on-board sound. Since that and heat dissipation are real concerns for people, it deserves some attention, especially since there is an extra power connector on it. I really don't know how much power this card wants, but in order to make a fully informed decision, I'd really need to.

Otherwise, very thorough and useful.
[Posted by: TA152H  | Date: 01/13/06 10:12:35 PM]
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6. 
bass redirection can be activad in all modes using the thx console. in gaming mode is ALSO accesible directly from creative menu
[Posted by: and  | Date: 01/14/06 10:22:46 AM]
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7. 
its a very nice card, BUT WARE IS THE DOLBY DIGITAL LIVE SUPORT !!!
whit out it these cards are not interesting for the real audio enthusiast
[Posted by: player-x  | Date: 01/14/06 11:19:16 AM]
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+ expand thread (2 answers)
8. 
My C-Media 8738-Card surpasses X-FI easily because there's still no Linux driver and sound that occupies the CPU is still better than no sound.
[Posted by: Schugy  | Date: 01/14/06 03:33:59 PM]
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+ expand thread (2 answers)
9. 
hydra, is that issue related to Windows drivers? Or a hardware issue.

Back when the SB Live was released, it worked very bad on certain chipsets and on dual CPU systems, it made pops and clicks.

If you switched to some other OS that supported the sound card, those pops/clicks were gone! The chipset problem was a different story though!

It leads me to believe that this could be a repeat of a Windows Driver or hardware issue.

If its a driver issue, it won't be fixed for yonks! (even then, its not likely to get fixed at all). Welcome to Creative's world!
[Posted by: vdvz  | Date: 01/15/06 04:18:14 AM]
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10. 
If only they would have included 2 XLR/TRS combo ports on the front of the 5-1/2" drive bay box so that it could be used for home recording as well.
[Posted by: StratMaster  | Date: 01/15/06 07:38:57 AM]
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11. 
Why is it no one wants to do a comparison from within the X-Fi range?

Namely, compare the Fatal1ty/Elite Pro against the Music/Plat card.

This will show the benefit of X-Ram concerning the CPU utilization above 64 voices with CMSS 3D heapdhone mode enabled, such as gaming on BF2 with max/ultra sound at a lan party with headphones: The xtreme music will consume up to 70% CPU utilization while the X-Ram models stay at less than 3% CPU.
[Posted by: BBA  | Date: 01/15/06 10:52:59 AM]
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+ expand thread (1 answer)
12. 
I own the Xtreme version. Best upgrade I done to my pc. Sound is so freaking crisp and clear.

almost blows my audiophile 24/96 in the water.
[Posted by: gman  | Date: 01/15/06 02:29:03 PM]
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13. 
enfin quelqu'un qui s'y in téresse en profondeur
[Posted by: lauren  | Date: 01/16/06 04:45:02 AM]
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14. 
Save yourself some money. I have an xtrememusic hooked up to my audigy2 front panel, works perfectly, and the xtrememusic has eax5.0 too, other than the 64mb of ram, all of these are the same card. EAX 5.0, headphone cmss, etc, all of that is on the xtrememusic too. The front panel is creative's standard front panel, the opticals work, the headphones work, etc. And I have had 0 problems with my nforce4 board working with it.
[Posted by: pvtgoose  | Date: 01/16/06 08:02:30 AM]
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15. 
It's a sound card...how about telling us how it sounds??
[Posted by: Reverend Trev  | Date: 01/17/06 01:12:32 AM]
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16. 
Is the SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro the only one with the high impedance input?
[Posted by: Jeff7181  | Date: 01/17/06 04:29:49 AM]
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+ expand thread (1 answer)
17. 
I purchased the Fatal1ty card to replace an on board chipset and found as a whole the card performs rather well. I have noticed that the CMSS-3D in both headphone and speaker mode will tend to distort some of the very low end frequencies. This is quite apparent with Gatecrasher- Robert Miles-Children-Tilt'.

It would be nice if Creative would standardize their Drive Bay. It seems like every new card that uses a bay has a slightly different pin out. I believe that X-Fi bay is the fourth version of the Live Drive. Creative should at least keep their own products compatiable.

It would be nice if they had included a round cable for the bay instead of the flat ribbon cable or at least made it so you could replace it with a standard round PATA cable.
[Posted by: NucEm  | Date: 01/17/06 07:37:17 AM]
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18. 
This card has been thourougly discussed here, have a look
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=163703
[Posted by: Arnold S.  | Date: 01/17/06 10:30:10 AM]
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19. 
I haven't bothered to read the entire review...

But do you know if the Creative X-Fi re-samples mp3s to 48khz from 44khz (just like the Audigy 2 series). This makes them sound worse; it sounds so much better when an mp3 is decoded into wav, then burned at 1x (using my 6 yr old 8X cd writer) and played as an audio cd in my car stereo

pls respond to jhellier@gmail.com
[Posted by: Jon  | Date: 01/23/06 05:09:10 PM]
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20. 
$400 and no...

Speaker auto calibration instead we get
"take your ruler and measure from the center of yoru forehead to the left speaker. Good. Now stick out your pointing fingers...that's it both your left and right hands now, what angle is that/"
hmmm say 31.55 degrees!! No more like 40 degrees now I know wy my new X-Fi $400 card sounds like my old Audigy Platnium well because they have not used all the "new" processing power to due what a $400 HT receiver can do and that is SPEAKER CALIBRATION!!!!!

I AM SO DISAPPOINTED AND I SO WANTED TO BUY THIS CARD SYSTEM. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
[Posted by: Dr. Zen  | Date: 01/23/06 07:04:08 PM]
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