Wait, who makes 8-speaker headphones? How is the surround?

http://www.trittontechnologies.com/products/TRIGA600.htm

They are a little weak on the bass (the rumble feature, which is tuned to go off with bass, is supposed to assist in that manner) but the surround is definitely noticeable. It's not going to beat any middle/upper end desktop surround system, but when its late at night and ive got some fragging to do its a nice tool to have. This is opposed to other surround headphones that either just use dolby pro logic or have a built-in (low-end) AC97 chipset to handle the surround.

Sadly, they haven't really "picked up", so there isnt a huge and worthy catalog of selections. But considering the AX360's are geared more for an xbox than a pc, they certainly function well enough.

------
"Oh how awful. Did he at least die peacefully? To shreds you say. Well, how's his wife holding up? To shreds you say."

Interestingly enough, I have both a "low-end" X-Fi XtremeMusic (non-XRAM) AND one of the tested mobos, the uber-doubly-sucky (per Tom) ECS RS482-M.

To my knowledge, I've not had any issues w/Creative's drivers, be it using the Install CD or downloads from Creative's site. I originally had the X-Fi in an ECS nForce2 mobo, and had no problems w/that setup, either. I've never had to utilize the oft-mentioned "PCI Latency Tool," and not once have I experienced this crackling that others mention. (Knocks on wood...) And believe it or not, I actually prefer the EAX-enabled effects in a variety of games over certain onboard audio solutions. (Mostly RealTek and cMedia chips...)

In fact, I've gone from the original Soundblaster to the Pro, 16, AWE32, Live, Live 5.1, Audigy 2ZS (which is working great on the aforementioned ECS nForce2 mobo), and now the X-Fi, and I've never had any problems whatsoever. Perhaps I've never angered the audio gods or something?!? (Even when I "sort of strayed" and added a Roland Sound Canvas to the mix back in the 90's...)

I have an m-audio revolution 7.1. I stopped buying creative labs sound cards when they abandoned one of their previous cards, I don't remember what it was, back in the day. The card had issues in games and they never fixed them and from that day because of the poor driver support, I decided never to buy SB again. The thing is based on what I have been reading across the net, games are going to be written to use the cpu for sound processing for Vista. So things like OpenAL which a lot of current generation games use, a creative developed standard, will be dead. I'm so glad I read things like this because I almost wilted and bought a x-fi card. After reading I said screw that. Hopefully we see creative lab soundcards die as onboard audio gets better and better.

This comment was edited on Dec 28, 04:11.

How could creative not found these issues before releasing x-fi cards?

Because they don't test for them. Because they own a ridiculously large portion of market share, effectively making them a monopoly, and because they simply don't fucking care.

They have NEVER been able to write a decent fucking driver, ever. All their cards have problems, ever since the SB Pro. And people keep buying them, sadly. (I am forced to admit, I am one of them, I gave in and bought an audigy, because it simply sounds better than onboard audio.)

Creston

Except with my 8-speaker surround headphones.

Wait, who makes 8-speaker headphones? How is the surround?

Keep in mind from what I've read the incompatibility issues between Xi-Fi cards and the nForce4 chipset only applies to the two low end Xi-Fi cards (the ones without the X-Ram).

Creative asserts that motherboard makers can fix this problem with a bios update. Something Asus hasn't done with my P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe. The only other solution is to get an RMA and send your card back to Creative to be flashed with a "workaround" bios.

I never had the crackling and popping problems, only that I couldn't use my card in my system without constant errors and rebooting.

Hey listen, I hate Creative just as much as the next guy, and I agree with the comments in the article about the current X-Fi drivers being bloated crap. But let's look at the facts. The two motherboards that failed were:

1) One ASUS board, out of three that were all using NForce4 chipsets. Why weren't there problems on the other two?

2) An ECS RS482-M using an ATI chipset. Two loser brands when it comes to motherboards and chipsets. (Ok so that's an opinion.)

So, based on crackling on these two motherboards, the author of this article claims that Creative is to blame, Creative sucks, blah blah blah.

Maybe there is a problem with the X-Fi, maybe there isn't, all I'm saying is that this article provides WAY too little evidence to make any kind of useful statement. And too many people just go along with it because Creative bashing is the in thing. How about finding or making a poll which gathers enough data to make a real conclusion? That would be something useful.

I have an X-Fi in my machine and I've never had any problems with it. I tried the on-board audio before I got it and it was terrible because it had a tonne of noise. Guess I'm just one of the lucky ones...

My MB is the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe with an AMD FX-60 CPU, if that makes any difference...

--
Adam 'Staunch' Bryzak

DS Friend Codes at http://abryzak.org

I'd like to add that my X-Fi card refused to work with my Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe motherboard. Computer kept locking up and rebooting. When I took it out all was fine. Sent it back to Creative per instructions on their forums to be "reflashed with an updated firmware with solves incompatibility issues with the nForce4 chipset".

Tom those motherboards that were selected I think they just grabbed a few they had and saw what happened. They aren't exactly obscure motherboards and they are representative and creative labs should have caught that. But they didn't. And what's with their bullshit about irq sharing. The article is right, if creative labs says it's pci compliant than their cards shouldn't have any irq sharing issues.

Again this creative labs bullshit won't change unless people stop buying creative labs but with a virtual monopoly it's not going to happen.
This comment was edited on Dec 27, 17:35.

The author of this article is kind of lame to claim a general 40% problem rate when he only experienced it on 2 out of 5 motherboards. How many motherboards are available? Hundreds? The only way to get a good idea of how much this is REALLY a problem is to get data from a large number of users and link it with the hardware they're using. For example, something on the scale of what StorageReview does for drive reliability index, or Steam does for gathering info on what hardware people are using.

How would you expect other reviewers to catch this problem unless they're testing on the same tiny subset of motherboards, which is extremely unlikely?

Yeah that's what I don't understand. I didn't find one review where they complained about the x-fi's bloated drivers and crackling/popping.

The analysis found here:
http://techreport.com/etc/2006q4/onboard-eax/index.x?pg=1
I really wish that more sites instead of just helping hardware manufacturers sell cards would do in depth analysis that show problems.
To this day realtek still hasn't fixed their 3d sound issues and companies continue to use realtek sound cards.
http://techreport.com/etc/2006q4/onboard-eax/index.x?pg=1
http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=articles&go=read&arc_id=124
used 5 mobos and 2 of them had crackling/popping. How did no other review site catch that?

Anyway this will never change until creative does not have a virtual sound card monopoly.

Also everyone knows that realtek sound chips on board mobos don't reproduce 3d sound correctly. Which is why ASUS switched to analog devices as their onboard sound provider on their higher end motherboards.

This comment was edited on Dec 27, 16:27.

Funny how this card got so many rave reviews, from virtually every big hardware site on the net. Ok, I guess it's possible that none of them had any problems with the card, possible - just not likely.

This comment was edited on Dec 27, 15:50.

I have a Creative SB Live! 24Bit (yes, that exclamation mark is in the name).

......


Do your computer a favor: give it a bath. It'll thank you.

/mutters about the Live! card

---
Xfire: GreySpire
We want Blue's News T-shirts!

I have a Creative SB Live! 24Bit (yes, that exclamation mark is in the name).

I was using on-board audio, and have for years. But I got a new great pair of fancy surround sound headphones, and the on-board audio does not have enough power.

These headphones you hook up to three stereo jacks, and the on-board audio just did not have enough power to send all three ports at decent volume (only 2 out of 3).

The SB Live! 24bit was the cheapest at a local store ($24, actually) that had the right amount of power.

Other then that, I had no problem with on-board audio, and actually preferred it (cheaper, no extra card in case, etc).

But I have not had any trouble with the sound card, at all. It has not caused mysterious crashes, or anything. Flawless victory.

So, *shrugs*.



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This comment was edited on Dec 27, 15:24.

but when you want 3d sound in your games, there is no alternative

Is this true? Than how do you play games with 2D sound?

but when you want 3d sound in your games, there is no alternative.

Except with my 8-speaker surround headphones. They have an external box which accepts (only) digital optical and digital coaxial lines. Failing to have Dolby Digital Live, any Creative sound card fails to transmit EAX signals into Dolby surround for use on the phones. If I want any kind of surround from them I have to go directly into the soundcard, losing the ability to connect both my 5.1 speakers and my phones, and losing 90% of the features the headphones have.

At least the Bluegears b-enspirer has DDL, even if I am limited to EAX2 because creative is a fuckbunch of pc game audio whores refusing to license anything out.

------
"Oh how awful. Did he at least die peacefully? To shreds you say. Well, how's his wife holding up? To shreds you say."

Well i have the nforce4 BIOS on my board so i guess it is using Nvidia onboard sound or something. I will give it a try tonight when i get home from work.

That's what i use right now as well. I might give the onboard sound a try than. I am not even sure what kind is it. It's an Asus A8N32-SLI board.

You've got the AlC850 on that board.


As for Creative cards, I've had a few. My last two, the Live! 5.1 and the Audigy 2ZS, were great pieces of hardware. The problem really is the drivers. The whole reason I got rid of the Audigy was because I was getting lockups so frequently in Oblivion that I ended up disabling hardware to isolate the problem. With the sound card gone Oblivion didn't lock up anymore and several other (rare) lockups also disappeared.

---
Xfire: GreySpire
We want Blue's News T-shirts!

As far as i can remember i have never used onboard sound for anything.

And Creative would prefer you keep it that way, thank you very much.

The last thing they need you to discover is that they are completely redundant nowadays.

And please don't look at the competition. You might discover that they have real features instead of bogus marketing-speak, cost less, and have better drivers.