Creative Sound Cards? What Happened?

I'm not in the market for one, as I already have the sound setup I like, but I am curious, as I havent really paid attention for a while.

Did Creative just completely drop their pretty awesome E-Mu 20k2 DSP chips?

It seems like nothing they sell today have them, and instead have something called SoundCore3d which lacks DSP features completely.

Anyone have clarity on this? Seems like an awful shame.

Also noticed they brought back the Audigy name, but the lowest cost one (the FX) has a Realtek chip. (lol)

They dropped them because windows vista though windows 8.1 dropped support for hardware dsp effects. OpenAL still supports hardware dsp but they felt that most of the effects could be offloaded to the computers cpu with minimal performance impact. With the intro of VR into gaming now sound will become more important and I bet we start to see company release more hardware DSPs to help with wavetracing and reverb effects. Of course nobody is really talking about it right now, but it only makes sense due the performance advantages of dedicated hardware.

pooloffire said:

They dropped them because windows vista though windows 8.1 dropped support for hardware dsp effects. OpenAL still supports hardware dsp but they felt that most of the effects could be offloaded to the computers cpu with minimal performance impact. With the intro of VR into gaming now sound will become more important and I bet we start to see company release more hardware DSPs to help with wavetracing and reverb effects. Of course nobody is really talking about it right now, but it only makes sense due the performance advantages of dedicated hardware.

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Hmm.. So to a current soundcard shopper, if a title uses OpenAL, there may actually be a benefit in getting an older Emu20k2 based sound card, but otherwise not?

Yes, there are if you play games that use it, but there are few modern games that use OpenAL. Most games use either a custom sound engine or other third party engines that are easier to program with. OpenAL is much more difficult to program with in comparison to other sound engines due to it being less of an engine and more of just an instruction set to control sound hardware. OpenAL is comparable to OpenGL. There are advantages to going with new tech cards too. Most notably sound quality. The Soundblaster Z (SoundCore3D) has a higher SNR than most X-FI cards, and don't forget that Soundblaster Z cards have headphone amps, which most X-Fi cards don't.

Zarathustra[H] said:

Hmm.. So to a current soundcard shopper, if a title uses OpenAL, there may actually be a benefit in getting an older Emu20k2 based sound card, but otherwise not?

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No need for an Emu, as Creative has a software suite that works with all their latest soundcard lines (Audigy, Z, X7): Creative Alchemy.

http://support.creative.com/kb/showarticle.aspx?sid=28967

It's not the best solution, but IMO it's a lot better than building a separate dedicated rig for OpenAL games, or switching out your video card (that and the PCI slots issue for new motherboards).

pooloffire said:

The Soundblaster Z (SoundCore3D) has a higher SNR than most X-FI cards, and don't forget that Soundblaster Z cards have headphone amps, which most X-Fi cards don't.

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Yeah, but you really don't want the DAC or amp inside the computer with all it's gigahertz noise under ideal circumstances anyway, let alone when you start running hot and heavy overclocks with out of spec voltages, fans, water pumps, etc.

I've been convinced for a while that the way to get the best of both worlds (gaming + good music sound) is to get a gaming based sound card with an optical out that sits after sound processing in the chain. That way you get the gaming 3d effects, but bypass the noisy internal dacs and amps.

tungt88 said:

No need for an Emu, as Creative has a software suite that works with all their latest soundcard lines (Audigy, Z, X7): Creative Alchemy.

http://support.creative.com/kb/showarticle.aspx?sid=28967

It's not the best solution, but IMO it's a lot better than building a separate dedicated rig for OpenAL games, or switching out your video card (that and the PCI slots issue for new motherboards).

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I don't understand, why would one need a special dedicated rig for OpenAl? What would be the downside of just using am E-Mu equipped chip in a daily driver? It may not be taken fully advantage of but it certainly wouldn't be WORSE, right?

Zarathustra[H] said:

I don't understand, why would one need a special dedicated rig for OpenAl? What would be the downside of just using am E-Mu equipped chip in a daily driver? It may not be taken fully advantage of but it certainly wouldn't be WORSE, right?

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To the best of my knowledge, none of Creative's current lines has that E-Mu chip, so Alchemy is the only way to go -- I mentioned the "dedicated rig option" simply b/c most top-tier motherboards (3 years or less) don't have the PCI slot for the older Creative sound cards.

tungt88 said:

To the best of my knowledge, none of Creative's current lines has that E-Mu chip, so Alchemy is the only way to go -- I mentioned the "dedicated rig option" simply b/c most top-tier motherboards (3 years or less) don't have the PCI slot for the older Creative sound cards.

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Ahh, OK.

My X-Fi Titanium HD ises a 1x PCIe slot, so it works just fine in my modern rig.

Titanium HD is one of the few X-fi based cards with as good or better SNR than most Soundblaster Z based cards and a headphone amp. Its is still a really good card for modern rigs.

pooloffire said:

Titanium HD is one of the few X-fi based cards with as good or better SNR than most Soundblaster Z based cards and a headphone amp. Its is still a really good card for modern rigs.

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Yeah, but I don't trust SNR ratings of internal sound cards. There are so many other variables that impact the noise levels. Do you have hard drives? Do you have fast fans, do you have water pumps? Overclocked GPU's CPU's? etc. All of these things give off electrical noise which is going to travel up the PCIe slots an into the analogue parts of the sound card and make it noisier than the published specs.

For instance, on mine, I can hear my water pump and my mouse pointer move through my headphones when I use the DAC on the sound card. Connect an external dac to it via optical cable, and it is dead silent.

Amd mind you, my external DAC has a S/N ratio of ">104dB" compared to the Titanium HD's spec page which claims "122dB", and the external DAC is much much quieter.

I don't trust the specified S/N ratio's of internal sound cards in the slightest.

Well I have a Soundblaster G5 so that isn't a problem for me either. Its uses an Soundblaster Axx1 which is just a rebadged SoundCore3D. It has a SNR of 120db and a very good headphone amp. Its software isn't as advanced as Soundblaster Z, but it get the job done and sounds really good. I have problem with resource conflicts when I try to us my PCIe x1 slot above my main PCIe x16 slot. So I have to go external.

Your amp is most likely going to have a S/N below 100db so it's quite pointless to argue about sound card S/N. If you're using cheap 'computer speakers' you're not going to be able to even play at 100db so again, you will never push the volume so high that you'll be able to hear the noise.

I recently went from a G35 7.1 wireless usb soundcard headset which I always felt the audio channels were backwards to a Soundblaster ZXR and the SBX studio surround sound emulation is really really good, I can point shoot based on sound in Overwatch and BF1.

Well worth the $80 in my book!

B00nie said:

Your amp is most likely going to have a S/N below 100db so it's quite pointless to argue about sound card S/N. If you're using cheap 'computer speakers' you're not going to be able to even play at 100db so again, you will never push the volume so high that you'll be able to hear the noise.

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I use a headphone amp which is rated at ">109db" S/N ratio, and I'm getting a set of powered monitors rated at ">90db" S/N ratio.

So in my chain right now, the Titanium HD DAC is bypassed so it is irrelevant, the external Magni Multibit DAC is rated ">104db" S/N ratio, the Jotunheim headphone amp is rated at ">109db" S/N ratio, and the Emotiva powered monitors I'll be getting soon (once I've recovered from my surgery and can set them up properly myself) are rated at >90db S/N ratio.

As always, the transducers (headphones, speakers) are the weakest link, especially since Schiit (the maker of my DAC and amp) have noted that they use a standard safety margin of about 6db on their official specs pages compared to their in house measurements just to make sure they don't have any complaints.

IMHO, I think a lot of the obsession over signal/noise ratio is overblown. As long as you aren't hearing shit you don't want to hear in your speakers/headphones everything is good.

Before, when using the analogue outputs straight from my Titanium HD, I could hear my water pump and even my mouse move across the screen over my headphones. Now I can't.

The soundblaster z's have a EMI shield.

I thought I'd shared this, but since I haven't, this is from my Amazon review after returning an SB-Z:

"I was looking for an inexpensive way to provide better DAC and Amp duties for a newly purchased pair of Sennheiser HD600 headphones for music, gaming and movies/streaming video. I was using an ASUS Z170-AR with their Crystal Sound 3 setup, which is far better than average and acoustically close enough to an X-Fi to warrant not dealing with Creative's software, and came across mentions of the DAC in the Sound Blaster Z being decent enough and the amp showing to support headphones with an impedance up to 600 Ohms.

The hardware is solid; the quality is a step up from the ASUS solution for the 300 Ohm HD600s, but I quickly ran into an annoying issue for which there was no easy answer: when playing games, in-game sounds, VOIP streams, and music playing separately in the background would be moved to one channel or another as well as change volume drastically, from being almost too quiet to hear to being almost too loud. I tried disabling every software feature but found no method for preventing this from happening, and found no help online. What I did notice is that upon switching away from a game, this anomaly occurring in both Battlefield 1 and The Witcher 3, the problem ceased; the remaining background music and VOIP streams normalized in volume between channels and between each other. My conclusion is that the problem is probably software-based.

I'm still giving the card three stars because it is good hardware, and I cannot eliminate my system from the equation; inside runs very hot with a pair of mid-range (145W, supplied by a Seasonic 650W PSU) GPUs, and while it is certainly not too hot for electronics in even the warmest spot, the SB-Z still gets warm to the touch, and there also remains the possibility that power could be a problem when both GPUs are running full-tilt, neither of which I can really verify. I also cannot eliminate the possibility that I received a bad card. However in light of the heat issue, I decided that returning the card for a refund to be used toward an external solution would be prudent instead of asking for a replacement."

Zarathustra[H] said:

IMHO, I think a lot of the obsession over signal/noise ratio is overblown. As long as you aren't hearing shit you don't want to hear in your speakers/headphones everything is good.

Before, when using the analogue outputs straight from my Titanium HD, I could hear my water pump and even my mouse move across the screen over my headphones. Now I can't.

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I agree that it's overblown. It's also important for people to understand that while soundcards are more susceptible to EMI, etc, it's not a guarantee. I'm running an overclocked hex-core processor cooled with a water-pump based cooler along with 3 overclocked videocards in SLI. Most computers aren't half as electrically noisy inside as mine. I have zero background noise on my Titanium HD.

If you have an OpenAL game and need to get some surround sound/processing with it, you can do it in software these days. OpenAL Soft is a pretty decent free implementation. Blue Ripple Sound used to sell a better one, but they discontinued the cheap version and the advanced version is WAY too expensive to be worth it.

I currently use X-Fi ExtremeMusic PCI soundcard but I also have an EMU 0404 USB soundcard (can also be used strictly as a DAC with a bit of fiddling) but I have also used Optical from the mb soundcard direct to my receiver and to be honest with you for music I can't detect any real difference. Only thing I have noticed is that with the X-Fi in games I get a bit richer sounding explosions. YMMV.

p.s. heat must be a possible issue for internal soundcards because my X-Fi has a heatsink on top of the main sound processing unit.

well I raise you with a hardwarcanucks review! seems pretty deeecent!

Creative got cheap, that's what happened.

I wish they would make another 7.1 sound card, but they decided that, because they're no longer making 7.1 computer speakers, that none of their newer sound devices need to have 7.1 outputs; they'll make a crappy USB device that acts as a 7.1 sound device and then downmixes it to stereo, but god forbid they make a sound card that has an additional 3.5 mm jack on it. My motherboard has the Creative SoundCore 3D chip on it, disabled because it lacks a basic feature. Creative technologies are mostly irrelevant now days anyway, the only thing I want is that noise cancelling feature so that I can use a mic and speakers.

sanitarium16 said:

The soundblaster z's have a EMI shield.

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So does the Titanium HD. Doesn't help much if the noise is in the actual PCIe bus.

cageymaru said:

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That sounds like a bad joke.

Creative was never truly high end audio, but they came close with their Titanium cards based on the E-mu 20k2 chips.

A sound bar? ugh...

I guess for now I'll keep my Titanium HD just for the 20k2 chip and Open AL or Alchemy titles, but if it dies, I'll just plug my DAC straight in to the optical port on the motherboard.

Zarathustra[H] said:

I guess for now I'll keep my Titanium HD just for the 20k2 chip and Open AL or Alchemy titles, but if it dies, I'll just plug my DAC straight in to the optical port on the motherboard.

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Creative is simply creating average sound devices now days to stay afloat. If you're an enthusiast, there's no reason to purchase anything past the X-Fi series. Most PC gamers are using headsets, which a big number of manufacturers produce with either their own surround tech or a Dolby/DTS tech, some enthusiasts are hanging on to older Creative cards to get EAX effects, those in music production are using USB DACs, and I don't know who is buying this modern Creative stuff; I'm eventually going to go HDMI LPCM for my gaming since I can't think of any EAX-based games that I really want to play.

Sycraft said:

If you have an OpenAL game and need to get some surround sound/processing with it, you can do it in software these days. OpenAL Soft is a pretty decent free implementation. Blue Ripple Sound used to sell a better one, but they discontinued the cheap version and the advanced version is WAY too expensive to be worth it.

Click to expand...

DiRT 3 Complete Edition (Steam) was recently available for free, so I obtained it; Rapture3D was excluded from this version (it was included in the old GFWL version), but since I was curious, I went ahead and paid £30 for Rapture3D because I wanted to know more. I found that Rapture3D seems to better understand my 7.1 layout than OpenAL Soft. I think that OpenAL Soft is using the 7.1 wide layout while Rapture3D is detecting and using the traditional 7.1 layout that my sound card is setup for, this noticeably affects how audio is positioned in the surround speakers. I forced Rapture3D onto Gears of War (the original), Mirror's Edge, and Devil Daggers and they sounded better than OpenAL Soft and even seemed to function smoother than using my X-Fi OpenAL capabilities. I was actually impressed that something I paid for was working better than something that was free; OpenAL Soft isn't bad, but Rapture3D seems to work very well in comparison.

With that said, if a game specifically supports EAX 4, 5, "HD", whatever it is that's greater than 3 (DOOM 3, Quake 4, and Prey are a few), use the X-Fi OpenAL, but if a game uses just "OpenAL" then Rapture3D might actually work out nicely.