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My X-Fi experience...

L

Lyquist

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 21, 2004
Messages
3,368
I got an X-Fi Music yesterday and installed it. To be honest with you, I can't really notice a big difference from my Sound Storm that I switched from. I am using the Klipsch Pro Media 2.1 speaker system. Are there better 2.1 speakers out there??? All I've played so far are MP3's, so maybe I need to play something else to really hear a difference.

I am also haveing a problem bringing up the DVD-Audio player. Whenever I try to access it, I get a blue screen of death, and I have to hit the reset on my computer to reboot. This is with the most current drivers off of Creatives site. Maybe I will do a full format and re-install to see if that fixes it. Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Is there anything else that I can use to listen to DVD-Audio? Where would I get DVD-Audio from? All this is very confusing to me.

I like the software that comes with the X-Fi. I usually leave it in entertainment mode because I'm not much of a gamer. I only paid $80 for it, but I really thought that I would notice a major difference, but I just don't.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could do to make things sound better? I'm willing to buy another set of 2.1 speakers if there is anything out there better than what I have currently.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate your help.

Lyquist
 
I just got one also. I had a SoundStorm and then upgraded to a new board for my X2 and it had Realtek which I used for 4 days and picked up the X-FI.

Soundquality, I'm sure is better than SoundStorm on my ASUS A7N8X-Dlx, but like you I probably wouldn't tell the difference. One thing that is a heck of a improvement is the 24 bit Crystalizer. Turn that on and crank it up. I can take a flat sounding MP3 and help it alot.

EAX-HD, since you are not a gamer, not much there for you, but when I played BattleField 2 for the first time, I was floored. EAX-HD along with that 3D positioning tech the X-FI has is amazing. My previous experiences with any form a EAX were with my Live! and my SoundStorm and I just simply left them off as it was not to my liking.

Since the SoundStorm is very lean on the CPU cycles, not much of an improvement in that area with the X-FI, but over Realtek AC-97 codecs, I had around a 10FPS increase in BF2 with the X-FI.
 
JustinSane said:
Damn. Comin from my sound blaster live! i heard a HUGE difference. lol
Click to expand...

Maybe upgrading from a Live! that is the case, but I doubt it, as the Live! had pretty damn good sound quality. The SoundStorm was also pretty good as well. But I can tell ya, onboard AC-97, there is a HUGE difference.
 
Especially if you were using the digital out from the SoundStorm there probably isn't much of a difference. As far as the drivers go, there were "beta" drivers floating around that I am currently using. I don't know why they never announced them on Creative's website or actually made them official. Do a search and you can find a thread on here that has a link to them. It might fix your DVD-A problem but I doubt it. Do you have that many DVD-A's to play anyways? And if you do, don't you have a DVD-A player?
 
Lyquist said:
I am also haveing a problem bringing up the DVD-Audio player.
Click to expand...


If you have a dual core CPU on an nvidia chipset, you may have to set CPU affinity to one cpu or the other on the DVD Audio process after you launch it.

You can also modify the DVDAudio executible with an affinity masking tool so you never have to mess with manually setting affinity (look here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781 )

If your on a single core, then I would say you have a hardware resource issue, disable unused ports in bios and / or try different PCI slots until it all works.
 
Thanks for your help. I don't know much about DVD-Audio. WOn't a regular DVD Player in my computer play it? This is all confusing to me for some reason. To be honest, I notice very little difference between my old soundstorm and the X-Fi. I'm not a gamer, so I can't really test that way.

I don't have a dual core machine. I have an AMD 2700+ XP overclocked to 2.3GHz. It does everything I want it to do, but I do have an nForce2 chipset on my motherboard. Maybe my drivers are old. I just don't like getting blue screens when I try to open up the DVD-Audio player from Creative.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Lyquist

P.S. I wansn't useing the digital out on my soundstorm. I was just using the regular line out. (The light green one).
 
Turn on the "24-bit Crystalizer". It significantly ups the quality of sound on your computer.

...to me, anyway. :)
 
I did turn it on. I noticed a little bit of a difference. Maybe I would notice a difference with a regular CD or some DVD-Audio if I could get the player to work without bluescreening on me.
Is there any DVD-Audio on the disk that Creative sends with the X-Fi?? THanks in advance.

Lyquist
 
Lyquist said:
Thanks for your help. I don't know much about DVD-Audio. WOn't a regular DVD Player in my computer play it?
Click to expand...


Yes and no. Most DVD player software does not playback 24 bit 96KHz audio, so they play back one of the DTS or Dolby streams that most DVD-Audio disks also include.

There is a version of Interaudio's WinDVD that will play back 24 bit audio tracks, but it's the higher cost version (also available is a plugin for the oem versions but you have to buy it extra) It also has the same problems.

You may want to try underclocking the CPU or memory just to see if it makes a difference.
 
I don't want to mess around with my overclock just for one application. It works flawlessly with everything else. I just may end up reinstalling to see if that will work if I have the time.

Lyquist
 
Lyquist said:
I got an X-Fi Music yesterday and installed it. To be honest with you, I can't really notice a big difference from my Sound Storm that I switched from. I am using the Klipsch Pro Media 2.1 speaker system. Are there better 2.1 speakers out there??? All I've played so far are MP3's, so maybe I need to play something else to really hear a difference.

I am also haveing a problem bringing up the DVD-Audio player. Whenever I try to access it, I get a blue screen of death, and I have to hit the reset on my computer to reboot. This is with the most current drivers off of Creatives site. Maybe I will do a full format and re-install to see if that fixes it. Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Is there anything else that I can use to listen to DVD-Audio? Where would I get DVD-Audio from? All this is very confusing to me.

I like the software that comes with the X-Fi. I usually leave it in entertainment mode because I'm not much of a gamer. I only paid $80 for it, but I really thought that I would notice a major difference, but I just don't.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could do to make things sound better? I'm willing to buy another set of 2.1 speakers if there is anything out there better than what I have currently.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate your help.

Lyquist
Click to expand...


this is where Creative's marketing is a little bit mis-leading. The X-Fi Xtreme Music and whole X-Fi series doesn't really make an improvement with musical quality. Its more of a gamers soundcard. The X-Fi has better surround features, positional sound, and bigger omph for gamers.

For the serious audiophile, use the EMU line or something else, NOT the X-Fi
 
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