Creative's new audio chip: The X-Fi

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BO(V)BZ

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 15, 2003
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Picked up this over at ExtremeTech, the first glimpse of Creative's newest DSP engine for their next line of PCI-Express sound cards.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1813719,00.asp

My notes: STILL won't do 96khz/24bit playback, instead fakes it using a multiband trick to break up the audio spectrum, process it, then spit it back out. Also, if you want to play back sound at a native 44.1khz, you have to manually enable a special mode, the DSP won't simply switch to it. However, at least 44.1 and 48khz sample rates are supported natively, which is nice. I really was expecting more, it's basically a more powerful Audigy2, which incidentally has been around for a full 7 years.

Also, no DICE, so no Dolby Digital encoding. I was really hoping for DD-Live support, preferably over HDMI, but no luck on that.
 
looks like darwins theroy should take over

this chipset is stagnant so i hope the company dies. long live HDA! they took a chance and I hope like hell it pays off for them
 
Hmm, maybe they spent all this time implementing proper bass management rather than adding new features?

:rolleyes:
 
They didn't mention anything about DD Live, so until the sound card comes out, we won't really know. It may well be incorporated. I'm actually quite displeased that it won't come out in a PCI-express flavour. When will we actually put these slots to use?!
 
stevie:

While it didn't explicitly SAY it DOESN'T have DDL, it also didn't explicitly say that doesn't include a free monkey in each box.

I'm thinking the monkey is more likely.
 
BO(V)BZ said:
stevie:

While it didn't explicitly SAY it DOESN'T have DDL, it also didn't explicitly say that doesn't include a free monkey in each box.

I'm thinking the monkey is more likely.
Click to expand...

WOOHOO!!!MONKEYMONKEYMONKEY!!!!

I don't know, some might call it stagnant, but I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it...

If you're building a mass-market product, you have to maintain mass-market prices, which means maintaining a mass-market feature set.

Is Creatives stuff brilliant in every way?

Not a chance.

Does it totally fulfill the needs/requirements of 95+% of the people who'll buy it?

Abso-fucking-lutly it does.

Bitching about Creative being crap is like complaining that your Ford isn't a Mercedes, utterly redundant.

Oh Dear, Creative owns the market, you know what that means? it means no one gives a shit about what the Creative doesn't do.
If they did they'd buy something else.

Note: I'm not pro-Creative, I'm just realistic (and I use an Edirol UA-25 for music, which incidentally, also requires manual switching between sample clocks)
 
However Creative's Ford is equal or more expensive than HDA's Mercedes.

-wil
 
Why bother with Dolby Digital encoding over HDMI? Doesn't HDMI support uncompressed multi-channel digital audio?

If so, with the advent of HDMI, DICE should be dead and buried. Encryption SHOULD be less computationally intensive than compression in this case.
 
thats if you get hdmi. (i think i got it right)
you can just stick with what they got now...

?
 
Until we see some real info about the HDA, it will remain a Civic :D
Again, we'll see if they release this card with DD Live. Maybe the first vanilla version of the card won't include it, and they'll roll out their premium PCI-ex model with DD Live and a front panel and charge the usual $250+ for it.
 
No PCI Express at first....bah!

And the article states that we will probably have to get the higher-end card to get the better DACs. Sounds like Audigy2 ZS vs. Audigy 4 all over again...bah!

Also, vanilla card comes with 2MB SDRAM, and top-of-the-line comes with 64MB SDRAM. Interesting.

I wonder if the SPU will have a heatsink on it?
 
steviep said:
Until we see some real info about the HDA, it will remain a Civic :D
Again, we'll see if they release this card with DD Live. Maybe the first vanilla version of the card won't include it, and they'll roll out their premium PCI-ex model with DD Live and a front panel and charge the usual $250+ for it.
Click to expand...

What is this HDA?
 
MartinX said:
Does it totally fulfill the needs/requirements of 95+% of the people who'll buy it?

Abso-fucking-lutly it does.

Bitching about Creative being crap is like complaining that your Ford isn't a Mercedes, utterly redundant.

Oh Dear, Creative owns the market, you know what that means? it means no one gives a shit about what the Creative doesn't do.
If they did they'd buy something else.

Note: I'm not pro-Creative, I'm just realistic (and I use an Edirol UA-25 for music, which incidentally, also requires manual switching between sample clocks)
Click to expand...

Sure, they appeal to 95% of people, but again, so does Bose and McDonalds. It really wouldn't hurt them to actually fix the features that are broken, such as their resampling / BM.

I'll be the first to agree, in terms of sound processing, it sounds like a huge advance, but it doesn't seem that they take sound quality concerns nearly as heavily.
 
thomase said:
Why bother with Dolby Digital encoding over HDMI? Doesn't HDMI support uncompressed multi-channel digital audio?

If so, with the advent of HDMI, DICE should be dead and buried. Encryption SHOULD be less computationally intensive than compression in this case.
Click to expand...

Yea, uncompressed would be nice, but currently there is no receivers that support HDMI1.2 , which support that. The best that you can get is HDMI1.1 which supports DTS/DD.

I say start small, but with the nature of HDMI you can always upgrade your drivers to support the next revisions as the format grows. If Creative really wanted to look forward, they woulda tacked one of those ports on the board.

EDIT: Scratch that, I know that Denon receivers can transmit DVD-A PCM streams uncompressed, so I guess that would be fine. Not that we have to worry about that sort of forward thinking from Creative anyways.
 
BO(V)BZ said:
stevie:

While it didn't explicitly SAY it DOESN'T have DDL, it also didn't explicitly say that doesn't include a free monkey in each box.

I'm thinking the monkey is more likely.
Click to expand...


lol. it works the other way too... just because it says it's 24bit.. doesn't mean it's really in the box! :p
 
magnetik said:
lol. it works the other way too... just because it says it's 24bit.. doesn't mean it's really in the box! :p
Click to expand...

Point is they would mention it if they had it. Good marketing.
 
d34dly said:
Point is they would mention it if they had it. Good marketing.
Click to expand...

I was just "joking" (reason for the smiley) for the fact that creative "mentioned" they had 24bit recording in their Audigy line but when in fact it never was 24bit and Creative had to have a class action lawsuit placed against them for them to even admit to it. bad marketing.
 
BO(V)BZ said:
Picked up this over at ExtremeTech, the first glimpse of Creative's newest DSP engine for their next line of PCI-Express sound cards.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1813719,00.asp

My notes: STILL won't do 96khz/24bit playback, instead fakes it using a multiband trick to break up the audio spectrum, process it, then spit it back out. Also, if you want to play back sound at a native 44.1khz, you have to manually enable a special mode, the DSP won't simply switch to it. However, at least 44.1 and 48khz sample rates are supported natively, which is nice.
Click to expand...
Are there any cards that do support 96/24 without recoding it? I thought it was kind of stupid how they focused all their processing power on conversion, isn't that need a result of the windows kmixer bug? The kmixer bug can be fixed (only point is music listening though, and you can't get other sounds at the same time I think, so much for stupid event wavs) so I don't understand all the conversion stuff.
 
the creative booth at E3 was all about getting guys to chant the soundblaster name. They tried to show off the difference in sound quality when it was too loud to hear someone screaming right next to you.

"All about the framerate" was something they chanted. Seriously. Did it sound better? Well, it sounded like they tweaked the sound through an EQ, nothing more. I wasn't impressed.
 
magnetik said:
I was just "joking" (reason for the smiley) for the fact that creative "mentioned" they had 24bit recording in their Audigy line but when in fact it never was 24bit and Creative had to have a class action lawsuit placed against them for them to even admit to it. bad marketing.
Click to expand...

I was just saying that if they had something that major, you think they would have mentioned it.
 
BrkDncr said:
"All about the framerate" was something they chanted. Seriously. Did it sound better? Well, it sounded like they tweaked the sound through an EQ, nothing more. I wasn't impressed.
Click to expand...

I dont buy sound cards for frame rates, i buy them for SOOUUUNDDD. besides, if it chews up a couple hundred CPU cycles, i'll just overclock that much more :)
 
GodsMadClown said:
You digging that HDA Mystique?
Click to expand...

yes i love it. once i figured out how to set it up right, it was awesome!
 
Uh, onboard mobo audio will work for 95% of people. Creative needs to do a better job of differentiating its stuff from what people get for FREE on their motherboards, and this new chipset just ain't it.
 
Frangible said:
Uh, onboard mobo audio will work for 95% of people. Creative needs to do a better job of differentiating its stuff from what people get for FREE on their motherboards, and this new chipset just ain't it.
Click to expand...

I agree my ALC880(D) will suit me just fine until I buy an HDA Mystique. Aside from freeing up a few extra cpu cycles I dont see any reason to go out and buy a new Creative card. Dolby Digital Live encoding tho, that'll get me.
 
d34dly said:
So you would agree that it's worth it?
Click to expand...

i'd only recommend it if you have a receiver connected to your computer, or atleast speakers that will accept coaxial or optical inputs with a dolby decoder
 
bjornb17 said:
i'd only recommend it if you have a receiver connected to your computer, or at least speakers that will accept coaxial or optical inputs with a dolby decoder
Click to expand...


You bet your ass I do. So is the support there? Any problems getting it to work with games and such?
 
i remember when i purchased my audigy 2zs, what a waste of money that was... never again
 
Well, the X-Fi was announced today. They sure make it sound good on paper! :p For real, A 3.4ghz audio processor? Sounds like a gamers dream. Probably wont actually sound better than an Audigy 2 though. Just IMO.
 
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