Audigy 2 ---> x-fi gamer...worth it?

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tbonepat11

Limp Gawd
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Dec 2, 2001
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I have an audigy 2 generic solution in my rig now. Have had it for a long time now and it has been good, I still get random stuttering in games and whatnot but overal good. Best Buy is having the X-Fi ExtremeMusic on sale for 99.99 and i was wondering if it is worth the upgrade? I do mostly gaming/movie/audio listening with a Klipsch 4 piece setup. Thanks in advance!


PS Sig is old...have an Athlon 64+ with a Chaintech 754 chipset.
 
tbonepat11 said:
I have an audigy 2 generic solution in my rig now. Have had it for a long time now and it has been good, I still get random stuttering in games and whatnot but overal good. Best Buy is having the X-Fi ExtremeMusic on sale for 99.99 and i was wondering if it is worth the upgrade? I do mostly gaming/movie/audio listening with a Klipsch 4 piece setup. Thanks in advance!


PS Sig is old...have an Athlon 64+ with a Chaintech 754 chipset.
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For Music:

The audio quality I believe should be close (X-Fi being better) because they both use the same DAC's; although the SRC on the X-Fi is a lot more accurate than the Audigy 2's SRC (and you can even have Bit-Perfect playback in creation mode). Technically though you could just use a software SRC with your Audigy 2 to achieve the same results (wasting CPU cycles though).

For Games:

The biggest differences between the two is the X-Fi can now do EAX 5 (vs the Audigy with EAX 4) and the X-Fi supports 128 hardware voices (The Audigy 2 uses 64). I think Quake 4 is the only game that uses some EAX 5 features with 128 hardware voices, and BF2 only uses EAX 3 with 128 hardware voices. So game support for EAX 5 (and 128 hardware voices) currently is limited, at best (although that will probably change in the future). The X-Fi also has CMSS-3D which is great for headphones in games.

For Movies:

Should be exactly the same.

Conclusion:

Depending on what you are doing, the X-Fi is a small step up from the Audigy 2. You will be able to tell the difference between the two, but nothing that will BLOW you away.
 
Thanks. Appreciate the quick response. That is what i was thinking it would be, a small but noticeable step up. I will have to dwell on this =)

Is the X-fi series the best upgrade line for me or would there be some other options out there? I have not stayed on top of the audio hardware recently ( i know shameful!!) Also keeping into consideration that my budget is a bit thin, like many these days. Thanks alot
 
tbonepat11 said:
Thanks. Appreciate the quick response. That is what i was thinking it would be, a small but noticeable step up. I will have to dwell on this =)

Is the X-fi series the best upgrade line for me or would there be some other options out there? I have not stayed on top of the audio hardware recently ( i know shameful!!) Also keeping into consideration that my budget is a bit thin, like many these days. Thanks alot
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If you are a serious gamer it's the only upgrade line (I know sad :( ). If you are more interested in music and sound quality you could always grab an E-MU 0404 card, but don't expect to do much, if any, gaming on that. I guess the X-Fi is currently probably the best "all-around" card out there. I don't think you will be disappointed with it, but just don't expect miracles.
 
After my Klipsch 4.1 speakers went out I upgraded to the logitech Z5500s on my audigy 1 card. I have owned the Soundblaster Live, Audigy 1 and now Audigy 2 ZS. With my Audigy 1 on the Z5500 I had to turn the speakers up to 3/4 volume to get any decent sound. Upgrading to the Audigy 2 ZS was like night and day.I do not think the sound can get that much better. For music would the X-Fi extreme music be a good upgrade? They are dropping below 100 at some retailers.
 
roaf85 said:
After my Klipsch 4.1 speakers went out I upgraded to the logitech Z5500s on my audigy 1 card. I have owned the Soundblaster Live, Audigy 1 and now Audigy 2 ZS. With my Audigy 1 on the Z5500 I had to turn the speakers up to 3/4 volume to get any decent sound. Upgrading to the Audigy 2 ZS was like night and day.I do not think the sound can get that much better. For music would the X-Fi extreme music be a good upgrade? They are dropping below 100 at some retailers.
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Well I think I have sort have answered that in my first post. You will notice an increase in sound quality due to a more accurate SRC (Creative claims 300 times more accurate if I remember right) and possibly because of slightly (and I mean slightly) better SNR (109 vs 108, which is like nothing). However, you can already achieve a better SRC with an Audigy 2 using a software solution (I once had a Audigy 2 ZS a long time ago and had to do the same) but that eats (if I recall correctly) like 4-12% cpu usage. You could all together skip the SRC with the X-Fi's Bit-Perfect playback by using the Coaxial Out into your Z-5500 (requires a separate cable and converter though), and that should deliver a considerable improvement in sound quality (remember this is only under Audio Creation mode and only outputs 2.0 source or previously encoded DTS/DD, only useful for music or movies). So depending on what you want to do, the X-Fi will give you a small step in sound quality, or if you are willing to go that extra mile, a very noticeable step in sound quality (IMO).
 
"You could all together skip the SRC with the X-Fi's Bit-Perfect playback by using the Coaxial Out into your Z-5500 (requires a separate cable and converter though), and that should deliver a considerable improvement in sound quality (remember this is only under Audio Creation mode and only outputs 2.0 source or previously encoded DTS/DD, only useful for music or movies)."

Assuming the output stage on the Z-5500 is better than the A2 ZS. Why is there a popular misconception that Digital-Out is always better than analog?
 
Chastity said:
"You could all together skip the SRC with the X-Fi's Bit-Perfect playback by using the Coaxial Out into your Z-5500 (requires a separate cable and converter though), and that should deliver a considerable improvement in sound quality (remember this is only under Audio Creation mode and only outputs 2.0 source or previously encoded DTS/DD, only useful for music or movies)."

Assuming the output stage on the Z-5500 is better than the A2 ZS. Why is there a popular misconception that Digital-Out is always better than analog?
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Because I have owned the A2 ZS and while I am not sure if the dacs on the Z-5500 are much better or worse, I can testify to the SRC negatively affecting sound quality. I prefer the Bit-Perfect output using my receivers dacs than to the SRC through analog (and I guessed since the dacs on my receiver and Elite Pro are close in sound quality, I thought I could use the same principle with the XtremeMusic and the Z-5500 which I'm guessing are about the same in dac quality). It's only slightly noticeable on the X-Fi because of SRC on the X-Fi is pretty good, but it is most definitely better than the A2 ZS's SRC.

I was giving my opinion that Bit-Perfect playback is better than using a SRC; as long as the Z-5500's dacs are close to the Audigy 2 ZS's dacs (and I am fairly sure they are) , then I am sure that Bit-Perfect playback will sound better than SRC.

I don't claim that digital is better than analog, I just claim that Bit-Perfect sounds better than a crappy SRC.
 
"(Games) Elite Pro (Gaming mode obviously using Analog Out, the bass isn't too great though) -> YAMAHA HTR-5860 -> Klipsch Quintet II"

Did you enable the +15dB Bass Boost to your receiver, since I am sure you are doing Bass Management. You're suppose to with HT receivers and analog out.
 
Chastity said:
"(Games) Elite Pro (Gaming mode obviously using Analog Out, the bass isn't too great though) -> YAMAHA HTR-5860 -> Klipsch Quintet II"

Did you enable the +15dB Bass Boost to your receiver, since I am sure you are doing Bass Management. You're suppose to with HT receivers and analog out.
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Yeah, it's not like its not "loud" enough per say, it's just not as clear as I would like it to be. Granted it was a lot better than the Audigy 2 ZS which had no bass, but it's not at the same level as the HDA-Mystique. I assuming the DDL added the bass in, which sounded great. It wasn't overpowering and it came in quite clear; I could actually pinpoint how close a grenade exploded toward me. It's not like the bass sounds bad on the Elite Pro, it's just not how I am use to it I guess. What cutoff frequency do you use? I can never seem to get mine just right, it's either too much or too little.
 
Yeah, it's not like its not "loud" enough per say, it's just not as clear as I would like it to be. Granted it was a lot better than the Audigy 2 ZS which had no bass, but it's not at the same level as the HDA-Mystique. I assuming the DDL added the bass in, which sounded great. It wasn't overpowering and it came in quite clear; I could actually pinpoint how close a grenade exploded toward me. It's not like the bass sounds bad on the Elite Pro, it's just not how I am use to it I guess. What cutoff frequency do you use? I can never seem to get mine just right, it's either too much or too little.
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cut off frequency is a pain. I used bass sweeps on my Avia discs that panned from the front to the sub. Even then I still could not get it perfect, so I lowered the Sub DB on the receiver by 1 or 2 and it sounds good.

What you say about the digital out. Yea it would be nice to use the digital out if it converted signals to Dolby Digital. A 100 bucks to use a digital out?
 
The best anology i can come up with for the crystalizer is: Hot, slopy, satisfying... Audio... in your ears.

The only problem i've noticed is that you need to balance the gains or it goes into crossover.
 
Kritter said:
The best anology i can come up with for the crystalizer is: Hot, slopy, satisfying... Audio... in your ears.

The only problem i've noticed is that you need to balance the gains or it goes into crossover.
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I could say the same thing about sex, but I will be dam if I would have to spend 100 dollars for it when I have a right hand. See my analogy:)
 
As a note i've tested X-fi's hardware SRC and found it superior to Foobar's SSRC. Noticebly so. By contrast the X-FI SRC engine has superior dynamics and soundstage. I'ts not that subtle either.. As for crystalizer, it sounds nice on my crappy computer speakers, but I turn it off on my headphones. It really depends on your speakers.
 
The BIGGEST upgrade the X-Fi offers (more than the crystallizer or whatever CMSS algorithm they have out now) is the fact that the X-Fi doesnt do anything to the original digital audio source. It has TRUE 24-Bit Cirrus Logic and 24-Bit Wolffson DACs, which are unlike the crappy DACs found on my Audigy 2zs.

Go with the X-Fi - if you're an audio purist, you wont need to turn on the Crystallizer (which is really an EQ that enhances audio, useless if you're an audiophile) to experience the difference.

Is there a difference? Technically speaking, yes.

Will you hear it (not the Crystallizer)? Depends on your MP3 encoding bit rate and depends on how good your speakers are.

If your audio system costs $5000 and you love to game - yet you're restrained to your computer.... you'd be a fool to not go with the X-Fi.

If your audio system is $50 - and you have the Audigy 2zs... then there's no point in going up to the X-Fi.

If your audio system is $500 - and you have the Audigy 2zs... going to the X-Fi is your judgement call.
 
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