Bye Bye X-Fi

M

masaville

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 6, 2006
Messages
401
After years of being a Creative Labs customers I finally threw in the towl and abandoned my X-Fi. I just had enough of their medicore software and drivers, terrible customer service, and atttitude of 'we can't do anything wrong'. On top of that, having no working Vista drivers available for their cards as of yet shows you where their priorities are (those beta drivers are terrible).

Yesterday I picked up an Auzentech X-Meridian card and what I can tell you is that it was worth every penny. The Meridian is a fantastic card offering Dolby Digital, DTS, and so much more. With built in optical in/out, 7.1 surround support, and many, many other features it is definitely making inroads. Installation was a piece of cake and the drivers and software worked flawlessly.

So what about gaming and general audio? Through my Z5500 speakers and Sennheiser headphones it trounced the X-Fi in 5.1 while gaming. There were actually sounds present that I couldn't hear in using the X-Fi in 5.1. The sound was rich, clear, and very impressive. In music and movies it was equally as good as the rich gaming sound, if not better. I have yet to get into hooking it up to my receiver so I can really see what it can do and I'm really looking forward to that. At this point all I can say is wow - finally a kick ass alternative to CLabs!

Creative has gone the route of Microsoft where they convey the message to their customers that it's their way or the highway and I'm relieved not to have to use their products anymore. The Meridian is one hell of a card and if you're fed up with CLabs, I'd strongly recommend that you check it out. Worth every penny!!!
 
Nice to know that you enjoy your card, just don't get too excited because every card has its good and bad side. As for the comment on Vista, I'm actually still waiting for the 64bit driver for my X-Meridian so I can't say that X-Meridian has a better driver support for Vista. Btw the sound from this card is really amazing for me.
 
Yup, gave up on Creative as well. I have the new HT OMEGA CLARO 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card coming today.

Can't wait to get it. Has solid caps / and the all the connections you would ever need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829271002

I undestand the drivers feature a low memory foot print and no bloatware.

If someone from Creative is listening. We all f * * * 'ing hate the drivers and the bloatshit we have to install with our sound cards. And the prices? Why are they so expensive for the best cards?

Go back to the drawing table, get back to basics, give customers REAL value, great drivers, NO bloatcrap / ware and maybe we might get interested again.
 
rthefley said:
Yup, gave up on Creative as well. I have the new HT OMEGA CLARO 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card coming today.

Can't wait to get it. Has solid caps / and the all the connections you would ever need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829271002

I undestand the drivers feature a low memory foot print and no bloatware.

If someone from Creative is listening. We all f * * * 'ing hate the drivers and the bloatshit we have to install with our sound cards. And the prices? Why are they so expensive for the best cards?

Go back to the drawing table, get back to basics, give customers REAL value, great drivers, NO bloatcrap / ware and maybe we might get interested again.
Click to expand...

LOL that made me laugh. Bloatware is right.
 
alg7_munif said:
Nice to know that you enjoy your card, just don't get too excited because every card has its good and bad side. As for the comment on Vista, I'm actually still waiting for the 64bit driver for my X-Meridian so I can't say that X-Meridian has a better driver support for Vista. Btw the sound from this card is really amazing for me.
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Totally agree with you. There are always good and bad to both, but from what I've seen so far I'm so glad to have switched.
 
Yeah, They have gotten a pretty warm reception from users. They are fantastic sounding cards. You may consider changing your Opamps, it helps unveil more quality that is there.
If your using Digital connection to your Z5500's I advise you to try analog aswell.
Enjoy. The X-Meridian club is getting bigger and bigger everyday. Enjoy.
 
i have the HDA Mystique, and while it sounds good. my creative xfi xtreme music is alot better for games. I hear alot of niks and nacks when playing fear for example.
 
I REALLY long for the day when somebody makes a card that's good for music AND games that ISN'T creative.

No optical surround out? Seriously come the f%^& on.

Drivers? support? rofl unbelievably slow even in gaming terms where games always take forever to come out.
 
Yup, I ditched my X-Fi for an X-Meridian. Great card. No more crackling.
 
Audioguy said:
Yeah, They have gotten a pretty warm reception from users. They are fantastic sounding cards. You may consider changing your Opamps, it helps unveil more quality that is there.
If your using Digital connection to your Z5500's I advise you to try analog aswell.
Enjoy. The X-Meridian club is getting bigger and bigger everyday. Enjoy.
Click to expand...

Can I get a link to the OPamps? How do you pop them off anyways?
 
You can try to get them from Digikey or RS-Components. You will only benefit from new OPAMPs if you use analogue. You can use a chip puller to take out the OPAMPs but you don't really need it, I use anything that I think can help me to take them out but you need to be careful not to bend the legs.
 
Major side benefit of this with Vista is the death of EAX. Creative used EAX and game developers to gain market share and eliminate the competition. It let them get away with their bloatware and the lamest optical out ever. I had some really nice Aureal based cards back in the day, then the support/companies dried up. Hercules Game Theater would probably be my favorite out of the old cards.

I have the Xplosion in my HTPC and love it to death! What it does for my stereo mp3's and videos is awesome!
 
I actually just went back to Creative from M-Audio. The M-A x64 drivers were causing blue screens, but the X-Fi works great in x64. Although, while the card is installed it eats 256mb of my RAM :mad:
 
Major side benefit of this with Vista is the death of EAX.
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Yeah good thing Vista killed off support for OpenAL/EAX. Oh wait, both still exist in Vista...:rolleyes:
 
If you have a X-Meridian you need to change out the opamps even though the sound amazing out of the box. There are lots of different ones you can use. You can do some research in the DIY audio sites etc if you want reviews on the different chips.;)
 
Audioguy said:
If you have a X-Meridian you need to change out the opamps even though the sound amazing out of the box. There are lots of different ones you can use. You can do some research in the DIY audio sites etc if you want reviews on the different chips.;)
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I wouldn't say that you need to but you will eventually think about it after some times.
 
i effin hate my x-fi platinum! I thought it was all good, great sound, no crackling, nothing was wrong.

This f@#$ing thing makes 8lb 6oz baby jesus with gold fleece diapers wanna cry. The crackling was brutal, after a restart it would continuously restart by itself at Windows screen PLUS more crackling right before it rebooted. After 7restarts on its own it would finally get to my desktop and be ok for oh point2 seconds and once again the crackling.

I finally uninstalled the bitch and gave up. I'm now trying to deal with newegg on gettin a new sound card. I've read good things about the XMeridian and another i can't quiet recall atm.

Creative can suck my nads.
 
The non-Creative cards don't perform well with games..if that's what you do.:p
 
i only game a little bit. I mean maybe an hour or 2 at most on my pc. Though i did go a bit overkill when i built a "gaming pc" :rolleyes: but whatever.
 
nvusgt said:
i only game a little bit. I mean maybe an hour or 2 at most on my pc. Though i did go a bit overkill when i built a "gaming pc" :rolleyes: but whatever.
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Heh..I'd wait for the new Vista drivers coming out this month. The other highend cards do horribly in games, there was a benchmark a while ago that compared the x-fi vs the other highend cards and the other highend cards sometimes did worse than onboard audio..:p
 
dangit i just got an RMA number.

WTF mang, whats a person supposed to do. If i reinstall this thing it'll FUBAR my pc. I also got the newest effin driver, so its not that either.

BAH!
 
I guess I have been lucky so far, still no problems with my XFI Xtreme Music.

I pretty much only play BF2 and 2142 so it is good to have an XFI as the enhanced XFI sound in those games is AMAZING with my HD555 headphones.

I also run my XFI on Vista with no problems...I have always used the latest driver from Creative's site as well so I never had to install any of the bloatware (I just got my XFI this last christmas).
 
nvusgt said:
dangit i just got an RMA number.

WTF mang, whats a person supposed to do. If i reinstall this thing it'll FUBAR my pc. I also got the newest effin driver, so its not that either.

BAH!
Click to expand...

Maybe try updating your bios?
 
The crackling is mostly because the jacks creative uses are a piece of work *cough* sh-- *cough* I've fixed both my Audigy and X-fi be re soldering new jacks on the card. That fixed my cards problems. YMMV
 
when i migrated from pc speakers to dedicated audio equipment i spent nearly a year trying to get and audigy 2 to give me all of the audio out of games movies and music alike. things like only pass through work for movies then no LFE channel is directed (digital or analog) and ,with all the money creative makes, they wont encode... well any thing at all. everything from uninstall, reinstall over and over to kxDrivers to get the right LFE tought me to swallow my pride (money and time) to try out the underdogs. went to bluegears and never looked back.

gamming rig is on an asus a7n8-e delux so no problems there... soundstorm is a beautiful thing and the only reason i keep upgrading that old A** thing
 
SKiZZ said:
The crackling is mostly because the jacks creative uses are a piece of work *cough* sh-- *cough* I've fixed both my Audigy and X-fi be re soldering new jacks on the card. That fixed my cards problems. YMMV
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My X-fi doesn't crack.
 
aznx said:
My X-fi doesn't crack.
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Neither does mine. But it did on mine when I tried to upgrade my A8N-SLI to an A8N32-SLI. I ended up getting an GA-965 DS3 and C2D then never looked back LOL!
 
I had an X-Fi temporarily before I went to pro-level cards from M-Audio. The X-Fi was decent for what I used it for. I used it to transfer all my 4-track demos to my computer. It worked fine for me for that purpose. I'm not that big of a gamer, so I can't really comment on that part of it. But for music, the M-Audio is just as good as the X-Fi. Ultimately, the X-Fi didn't give me enough inputs and outputs. I wanted at least 8 balanced analog 1/4" inputs. I had to go to pro-level cards to get that though.

I personally experienced no reboots or crackling with the X-Fi. If I would've, I would've taken the card out immediately and thrown it away or try to sell it after telling whomever would buy it what problems I had with it. I did end up selling it though. I have also experience absolutely no problems with the M-Audio cards, besides for the fact that they don't have Vista drivers yet, but Creative really doesn't have fully functional Vista drivers either from what I read.

Bottom line: With my three M-Audio cards, I have 10 analog ins/outs and 2 spdif ins/outs and midi. I am going to upgrade to an M-Audio 1010 to get all I need from one soundcard.
 
Lyquist said:
I had an X-Fi temporarily before I went to pro-level cards from M-Audio. The X-Fi was decent for what I used it for. I used it to transfer all my 4-track demos to my computer. It worked fine for me for that purpose. I'm not that big of a gamer, so I can't really comment on that part of it. But for music, the M-Audio is just as good as the X-Fi. Ultimately, the X-Fi didn't give me enough inputs and outputs. I wanted at least 8 balanced analog 1/4" inputs. I had to go to pro-level cards to get that though.

I personally experienced no reboots or crackling with the X-Fi. If I would've, I would've taken the card out immediately and thrown it away or try to sell it after telling whomever would buy it what problems I had with it. I did end up selling it though. I have also experience absolutely no problems with the M-Audio cards, besides for the fact that they don't have Vista drivers yet, but Creative really doesn't have fully functional Vista drivers either from what I read.

Bottom line: With my three M-Audio cards, I have 10 analog ins/outs and 2 spdif ins/outs and midi. I am going to upgrade to an M-Audio 1010 to get all I need from one soundcard.
Click to expand...

Ever hear of or tried an EMU 1212?
 
I was gonna buy a 1010 awhile back to go with my 12 channel Mixer. Then I was gonna use a older soundcard on the channel inserts for realtime effects. 16/48 isn't to bad for effects I guess. The M-audio gear such as the 1010 and it's little brother 1010LT have been coming down in price these days. They are quality peices of recording gear. Though if I had my choice I would take the 1010 the external DAC/ADC is better then PC internal. Theres nothing like the look of a rack unit built into your PC/recording desk. What is the price your looking at?
 
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