Can you beat the prelude?

R

Randominal

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 14, 2007
Messages
239
for a number of months now ive been promising myself that id buy the prelude but never actually got round to buying it. Ive noticed that there are a couple of new cards in this price range that have appeared, are these better, or is the prelude still the best card to get in that price range?

I have sennheiser HD 595s btw
 
Yeah gaming, especially with XP, is entirely Prelude or the X-Fi titanium.
 
yes i want it for gaming but a bit of listening too
@spaceman how does the x-fi titanium compare?
 
They are about the same really. You can change some things about the Prelude dac but if you are using the sound card for digital output then whatever is cheaper bro.
 
My only concern with the X-fi Titanium would be the quality of the components. I still haven't seen a review that mentions the op amps or caps. The price of the Titanium is also about 1/2 of what the original X-fi was, which doesn't seem to indicate better hardware.

I recently upgraded (or side-graded) from an X-fi Fatality pro to a Prelude, and the sound quality improvement is noticeable.
 
The specs on the Prelude seem to indicate better sound quality. I don't think the Titanium is even on the same level as the older Platinum model; its fine for gaming, but if you are a stickler for quality and have speakers to hear the difference you may notice. The Titanium is PCI-E, though, and if you have 4GB of RAM with certain hardware combos a PCI X-Fi can cause some crackling.

Personally I only saw it with 4GB of RAM and SLI enabled. But using the PCI-Express bus instead of the PCI bus made it go away. Something to with how the chipset handled the PCI bus + memory bandwidth + video cards.

It is hard to tell beforehand if this will afflict users, so if you go the Prelude route and you have 4GB of RAM you may want to get it from a retailer with a return policy just in case. Although based on your sig you should be OK, if its up to date.
 
I haven't found another sound card yet that can beat the Prelude, IMO.

I own both the Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1, and the Razer Barracuda (CMI8788 based) sound cards. I have used both cards on Win XP Pro x64. Win XP Pro x64 and Vista x64 use a similar codebase leveraged from Windows Server 2003 x64.

Both cards are very good, imo. The Auzen excels at compatibility with games (native OpenAL HW support and EAX) and bug fixes, including (more recently) frequent driver updates from Auzentech's driver team. If you use analog output using stereo mini cables, the Auzen sounds much better due to the OPamps. You can also swap out different compatible OPAmps to suite your preferences.

I use my Prelude with Dolby Digital mixed with Creatives slough of sound enhancements for all audio on my system over Digital-Optical. DTS is still being developed for the Prelude.

The CMI-8788 based cards excel at both DTS and Dolby Digital (AC3) support out of the box. If you want to play everything in Dolby Digital or DTS for gaming and movie watching, combined with lower driver-CPU-overhead, go with a CMI8788 card. The CPU-driver-overhead-benefit is only marginally better.

Something to be aware of though, is that the CMI-8788 based cards are really only limited to the Xonar now. As Stephane Bae, President of Auzen points out, (http://www.auzentech.com/site/company/letters.php#plus1) it seems that CMI decided to only allow ASUS, exclusive rights and supply for their CMI-8788 chips...so, everyone else is basically hosed as far as driver development goes for their existing CMI-8788 sound cards. CMI effectively pulled a "Creative" move...pissed me off some.

So, if you weigh in current driver development, cost and support, I would say go with the Auzen Prelude. Auzen is doing a good job of actively developing their drivers and acknowledging and fixing their driver bugs over the past 8+ months in my experience. If you register your Prelude via Auzens website, they also will extend your warranty for an additional year. Plus, the Prelude sounds fantastic in 5.1 surround with Analog or Digital too!

That's Z's point of view.

-Z
 
thank you all
especially Balthazor and Zsheezor
i do only have 2 gigs of ram and it will probably stay that way for a while so prelude seems like a good option especially since ill be using the HD 595s mainly and the fact that the prelude is more compatible in games and such.

im glad you pointed out about the regular driver updates at auzentech since i thought they were rather few and far between. clearly thats not the case but i remember having to wait a long time for the drivers that fixed the mic input problem in ventrilo

thanks again
 
Randominal said:
thank you all
especially Balthazor and Zsheezor
i do only have 2 gigs of ram and it will probably stay that way for a while so prelude seems like a good option especially since ill be using the HD 595s mainly and the fact that the prelude is more compatible in games and such.

im glad you pointed out about the regular driver updates at auzentech since i thought they were rather few and far between. clearly thats not the case but i remember having to wait a long time for the drivers that fixed the mic input problem in ventrilo

thanks again
Click to expand...

You're welcome :) . It is true, that driver updates from Auzen were lacking for some time. After the "Daniel_K" incident affecting both Creative and Auzen, Auzen stepped up the pace of their driver development...at least thats when they decided to release more frequent updates.

Their latest driver sounds great (RC7) and was released in the first part of September. NO MORE popping issues for me!

-Z
 
I am having a horrible time with Vent and the Prelude (Vista64). Low output volumes and its got one HELL of a stutter for lack of a better term. People say it sounds like Steven Hawking stuttering out of his voice box. I have tried all I know how to do. Am I just screwed????
 
I'll went from the ExtremeGamer Fatality Pro to P5 onboard audio (optical) to the Prelude (optical via coax adapter). I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the Gamer and onboard. Now, I'm not running 5.1, so maybe my experience isn't comprehensive. After installing the Prelude I can say there's a big improvement in all audio (games, music, TV, video) compared to both the Gamer and onboard.
 
jpinks said:
I am having a horrible time with Vent and the Prelude (Vista64). Low output volumes and its got one HELL of a stutter for lack of a better term. People say it sounds like Steven Hawking stuttering out of his voice box. I have tried all I know how to do. Am I just screwed????
Click to expand...

Vista 64 = bad news. Why did you get that OS?
 
I havent had any issues with it since I built this pc. I wanted to be able to use my 8 Gig of ram. I never had a problem with TS but Ventrilo is making me INSANE. Its like talking thru a FAN!!
 
jpinks said:
I am having a horrible time with Vent and the Prelude (Vista64). Low output volumes and its got one HELL of a stutter for lack of a better term. People say it sounds like Steven Hawking stuttering out of his voice box. I have tried all I know how to do. Am I just screwed????
Click to expand...

have you tried using the latest drivers on auzentech's website - rc7?
 
Yes I am using the RC7 drivers. It still does it I dont have a clue as to whats causing it.
 
Thanks for posting this info. I wondered why Sondigo just stopped selling their Sondigo Inferno soundcard. That is pretty lame of C-Media just selling their chips to one vendor. And you would think they could be sued over that.

Zsheezor said:
I haven't found another sound card yet that can beat the Prelude, IMO.

I own both the Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1, and the Razer Barracuda (CMI8788 based) sound cards. I have used both cards on Win XP Pro x64. Win XP Pro x64 and Vista x64 use a similar codebase leveraged from Windows Server 2003 x64.

Both cards are very good, imo. The Auzen excels at compatibility with games (native OpenAL HW support and EAX) and bug fixes, including (more recently) frequent driver updates from Auzentech's driver team. If you use analog output using stereo mini cables, the Auzen sounds much better due to the OPamps. You can also swap out different compatible OPAmps to suite your preferences.

I use my Prelude with Dolby Digital mixed with Creatives slough of sound enhancements for all audio on my system over Digital-Optical. DTS is still being developed for the Prelude.

The CMI-8788 based cards excel at both DTS and Dolby Digital (AC3) support out of the box. If you want to play everything in Dolby Digital or DTS for gaming and movie watching, combined with lower driver-CPU-overhead, go with a CMI8788 card. The CPU-driver-overhead-benefit is only marginally better.

Something to be aware of though, is that the CMI-8788 based cards are really only limited to the Xonar now. As Stephane Bae, President of Auzen points out, (http://www.auzentech.com/site/company/letters.php#plus1) it seems that CMI decided to only allow ASUS, exclusive rights and supply for their CMI-8788 chips...so, everyone else is basically hosed as far as driver development goes for their existing CMI-8788 sound cards. CMI effectively pulled a "Creative" move...pissed me off some.

So, if you weigh in current driver development, cost and support, I would say go with the Auzen Prelude. Auzen is doing a good job of actively developing their drivers and acknowledging and fixing their driver bugs over the past 8+ months in my experience. If you register your Prelude via Auzens website, they also will extend your warranty for an additional year. Plus, the Prelude sounds fantastic in 5.1 surround with Analog or Digital too!

That's Z's point of view.

-Z
Click to expand...
 
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