Even though I hate to admit it - the Creative X-Fi Titanium sounds really good!

I hate Ceative Labs. I'd rather not support them due to their constant market trickery and flakey drivers...
Reasons I hate Creative?
Let me count the ways...

1. Creative live 5.1 days, Audigy, and Audigy 2 that were all marketed as 5.1 sound cards that could NEVER actually produce Dolby Digital sound in Games, and were glorified stereo or at best 4.1 cards in reality. They couldn't even make my Denon AVR-5700 flip over to Dobly Digital in the driver control panel demos - the only thing that would flip to Dobly Digital as recognized by my reciever were DVDs. I bought each successive card in hopes that it would be the one. Then I gave up after a huge rant against creative on this forum a couple years back.

2. Driver support that often just straight up doesn't work - "your card not recognized"

3. Static and crackling and distortion on the line since at least audigy 2 days with newer OSes (X64, Vista, and Win7) because of lazy driver updates or lack thereof.

4. Crappy bloatware drivers and software support that doesn't do anything to warrant its size. 160mb for drivers and software? Really? Creative's media player takes over everything by default?

5. CONSTANT Marketing lies, see the newest SB1040 fiasco where they marketed old tech audigy 2 as an X-Fi Xtreme Audio and then used software drivers + your CPU to emulate the X-Fi's touted features and even left off a few features causing a preformance drop of 5-15% in games...Of course this software emulation was never explained to the consumer.

Creative cards I've owned and used --- so you know I've got some teeth behind my complaints.

Sound Blaster 16
Sound Blaster AWE 64
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Pro
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium



ALL THE ABOVE BEING SAID.



I just got done comparing realtek onboard (ALC888S), and an Audigy X-Fi Xtreme Audio (SB0440 card) (audigy 2 software card) to the X-Fi Titanium (SB0880 card) over the last week because I acquired these two creative pieces when parting out some machines, and darn if the X-Fi Titanium doesn't just sound amazing compared to the other two! The onboard is just barely adequate, in games like far cry 2 it's a bit hard to even decipher left and right positional audio to me. With the X-Fi Xtreme Audio - things sounded better, but not nearly as good as the X-Fi Titanium!
With the X-Fi Titanium MP3's liven up! Games come alive. Sound just plain sound more real!
It hurts to say it, but it may be that the Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium card is a winner!

#1 isn't Creative's fault. That just a limitation of SPDIF. The Live 5.1 and above are 5.1 sound cards, you just needed to use analog outputs.

I have a X-Fi Titanium and I love it as well...cant really say Ive had any other issues with Creative products...I have had a SB Live 5.1, Audigy, Audigy 2, and Ive never had issues with noise or driver issues...been pretty painless.

I will say that Creatives lack of drivers for Windows 7 is just completely unreal! For a company of its stature and size something like this is just completely ridiculous!

They are a good hardware company mated with a shitty software company. Their hardware really is good stuff. The X-Fi processor itself is a pretty amazing piece of technology. It's not some off the shelf thing that they just bought and used (like in receivers their processors are off the shelf TI or AD processors) it is their custom hardware.

However their software team. Ya, about those guys . Horrible horrible support.

Archaea said:

1. Creative live 5.1 days, Audigy, and Audigy 2 that were all marketed as 5.1 sound cards that could NEVER actually produce Dolby Digital sound in Games, and were glorified stereo or at best 4.1 cards in reality.

Click to expand...

Dolby Digital and 5.1 surround are only loosely related. You can have one without the other.

450 said:

#1 isn't Creative's fault. That just a limitation of SPDIF. The Live 5.1 and above are 5.1 sound cards, you just needed to use analog outputs.

Click to expand...

You can do 5.1 over SPDIF with a card like the Titanium that can do Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect. It's not a limitation of SPDIF per se. Just of the cards in the pre-DDL era.

AndroidVageta said:

I will say that Creatives lack of drivers for Windows 7 is just completely unreal! For a company of its stature and size something like this is just completely ridiculous!

Click to expand...

What are you talking about? Creative has Windows 7 drivers.

Archaea said:

2. Driver support that often just straight up doesn't work - "your card not recognized"

Click to expand...

I've never had this problem with my TItanium.

Archaea said:

3. Static and crackling and distortion on the line since at least audigy 2 days with newer OSes (X64, Vista, and Win7) because of lazy driver updates or lack thereof.

Click to expand...

I've never had this problem with my TItanium. You must have other problems with your system.

Archaea said:

4. Crappy bloatware drivers and software support that doesn't do anything to warrant its size. 160mb for drivers and software? Really? Creative's media player takes over everything by default?

Click to expand...

If you don't like the media player, why did you install it? Is 160MB that much to download in the year 2010?

Archaea said:

CONSTANT Marketing lies, see the newest SB1040 fiasco where they marketed old tech audigy 2 as an X-Fi Xtreme Audio and then used software drivers + your CPU to emulate the X-Fi's touted features and even left off a few features causing a preformance drop of 5-15% in games...Of course this software emulation was never explained to the consumer.

Click to expand...

Can't argue with that.

Does this card support DTS Master Audio and Dolby Digital HD?

Archaea said:

Does this card support DTS Master Audio and Dolby Digital HD?

Click to expand...

Does what card?

Those codecs can only be streamed over HDMI. Not because of anything technical, but rather just political limitations. HDMI has copy protection, TOSLink or S/PDIF does not. Those codecs can be decoded with certain filters which can then be encoded to AC3 on the fly to send over optical or coaxial. Or just decoded to analog.

Sweet thread necro.

Yes, the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium does sound good and provided you have some 'high fidelity' speakers (e.g. Harbeth, Bowers & Wilkins, Rogers ,and others not as expensive) and amplifier you will be more impressed with the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD. Selectively listening to uncompressed higher bit rate files beyond .mp3 with the DAC in the HD also brings out an audible improvement.

grimster said:

Does what card?

Those codecs can only be streamed over HDMI. Not because of anything technical, but rather just political limitations. HDMI has copy protection, TOSLink or S/PDIF does not. Those codecs can be decoded with certain filters which can then be encoded to AC3 on the fly to send over optical or coaxial. Or just decoded to analog.

Click to expand...

Okay - so i have to connect my vid card with HDMI out up to the Audigy card to pass the DTS Master Audio and Dolby Digital True HD signals - rather than toslink?

The sound card simply won't have anything to do with this. Your video card's HDMI audio device has to be selected as the output device in whatever software you're using.

grimster said:

The sound card simply won't have anything to do with this. Your video card's HDMI audio device has to be selected as the output device in whatever software you're using.

Click to expand...

wait...

I knew the new cards had audio built in, but then they won't pass the higher quality audio for MP3 playback. DARN IT.

I understand it won't matter for digital audio like DTS-MA and DDHD, but for most non bluray sources I'd rather use the creative card.

My Galaxy GTX 560 TI card can't just be a passthrough from the creative card?

You can internally connect the sound card's S/PDIF output to the video card's S/PDIF input, if the video card has that provision. I don't get what you mean about the MP3 stuff. Whatever you use to play audio can still decode to the same thing your sound card would see (PCM) and send that over HDMI. The only need I see for a sound card when you have an HDMI receiver is for a dedicated headphone source or something special.

Archaea said:

My Galaxy GTX 560 TI card can't just be a passthrough from the creative card?

Click to expand...

At the moment, no. There is no decode taking place on your sound card when HDMI is used. The video card HDMi is just a digital passthru.

Sound card DAC's arent for HT right now, they are more geared for 2-2.1 music listening, or 5.1 gaming.