Debating Sound Cards

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SNIP3R

Gawd
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Feb 5, 2005
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Help settle my debate.

Auzentech X-Meridian or X-Fi Elite Pro?

What would you choose and why?

Sound card is used primarily for gaming, music, movies. Getting paired with Logitech Z-5500.
 
Elite Pro.

There's no real reason to use the X-Meridian in this situation as the DAC's on both these cards are better than the DAC's in the Z-5500 (meaning that DD or DTS encoding would be worthless). And since the X-Meridian and Elite Pro should have comparable sound quality (should sound the same for music/movies), as a gamer, the Elite Pro should be an easy choice due to it's advanced gaming support (vs the almost nonexistent support on the X-Meridian).
 
This is a hard one... Let see, Looking at newegg's price, $189.99 for the X-Meridian, $355.99 for the Elite Pro. Since you are only using Z-5500, I don't think that the receiver is really great in digital. In analogue I can't say which is better because I've never heard the Elite Pro before but I'm getting a better sound through analogue than digital with my Z-5400+X-Meridian. The Elite Pro supports EAX higher than 2.0 and it will give a little performance boost due to the hardware acceleration. Since it is not my money, I would suggest the Elite Pro, if it is my money... well I've made my decision lol.

BTW I've opened up my Z-5400's receiver, it uses the same Cirrus Logic's CS42526 chip like the Z-5500
Inside the SoundTouch™ Control Center lies a Cirrus CS494003 32-bit DSP to handle both Dolby® Digital and DTS® bitstreams including DTS® 96/24 data for unsupassed sound quality
Click to expand...
The chip has a lower part spec than both DACs on the X-Meridian and Elite Pro.
 
Dolby encoding brings benefit to sound quality, conditionally, only when the source surround sound is not in dolby already. That is in games. Because movies are in dolby, usually.
Anyway look what happens when you use sound card with various sources that you have mentioned.

movies with dolby/DTS: Salesmen here and there try to push dolby encoding cards and present them as a holy grail for movie watching but this is pure BS - movies are in dolby already there is no point in encoding them again. In fact an opposite might matter more - dolby decoding by the sound card hardware.
X-Fi that you consider can decode dolby in hardware and has multiple options e.g. for nightviewing so that sounds do not become very loud, bass is kept controlled etc.

movies - without dolby/DTS If you happen to have a divx movie with WMA sound - encoding it into dolby means audio will be further compressed, i.e. more information will be lost. If you connect it via analog this will not be the case. There is no reason to encode to dolby unless you have a high end receiver connected digitally with very good DACs and premium speakers $1000 each. But with such fine setup you might be able to hear inherent dolby deficiencies to do with compression and expansion!
My advise is to use analog connection with existing speaker set. Also because its DAC is nothing to write about.

games:
X-Meridian card is good for games if you want to game using high end receiver (as described above) but at the same time it is not a gaming card because it does not fully support EAX.

music:
Dolby encoding and EAX play no role here. What matters is the bit-perfect playback and proper digital to analog conversion. X-Fi has better DACs then X-Meridian, X-Meridian would be an option if you, again, had a receiver with premium DAC and high end speakers.
As for bit perfect playback I can set my X-Fi to clock at e.g. 44.1kHz rate when I play back CDs and 48kHz when I play back movies on DVD so that there is no resampling. I am not sure if you can avoid resampling with X-Meridian card.

I'd say If you are not musician you better off get X-Fi Fatality card for some $130 from new egg. Sure Elite Pro has better DACs but I very much doubt you would be able to to tell the difference between Fatality and Elite Pro if you use Logitech 5500 speakers. Not that these are bad, they are great for what you use them.
 
SNIP3R said:
Help settle my debate.

Auzentech X-Meridian or X-Fi Elite Pro?

What would you choose and why?

Sound card is used primarily for gaming, music, movies. Getting paired with Logitech Z-5500.
Click to expand...

Gaming: X-Fi (EAX 5, OpenAL support)

Music: X-Fi (24-bit Crystalizer)

Movies: Doesn't matter.

You won't be disappointed since anything paired with a z-5500 probably sounds awesome!
 
Now that I have both the X-Meridian and XtremeMusic, I must say that for me I like how music sound on the X-Meridian in analogue much more than the X-Fi in analogue, I don't know wheter this is due to the sound quality or just the sound signature of the card. I also like how musics sound on my Z-5400 in digital slightly more than the XtremeMusic in analogue. For me the 24-bit Crystalizer can't even makes musics sound better than my Z-5400 in digital. Just want to let you guys know that the X-Meridian will not reencode movies with DD/DTS, it will just pass it through. The X-Meridian can also give a bit perfect output as I tried before with the DTS wav file. By the way if you are only interested in digital, other Oxygen HD based cards are cheaper than the X-Meridian.
 
I'm using a Bluegears b_enspirer, its half the price of the X-Meridian, doesn't have an upgradable analogue out, but it is identical (DD, DTS) if using Spdif

For $100, I couldn't find a better deal.
 
matters on what order you prioritize music, movies and games.

the X-Fi is a damn great card for gaming if that's your #1 objective.
 
este said:
I'm using a Bluegears b_enspirer, its half the price of the X-Meridian, doesn't have an upgradable analogue out, but it is identical (DD, DTS) if using Spdif

For $100, I couldn't find a better deal.
Click to expand...

If you could find this card, this is the cheapest Oxygen HD based card and it is also identical when using SPDIF.
 
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