Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium HD Sound Card Review @ [H]

Riddleofsteel said:
So I need an IC puller, a soldering iron, now where do I buy the op-amps? Thank you.
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No soldering iron needed. It's in a socket. No way do you want to do soldering on a complex PCB like a sound card :)

Look on forums like Head-Fi - they'll tell you what opamps will sound like what. Buy them off Digikey or something.
 
EarlKeim said:
They both have excellent headphone performance. The Titanium HD has a headphone "out" not an amp as we mistakenly believed. That was my mistake, not Creative's.
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Perhaps an edit to your review would be in order? It still says the card has a headphone amp. I love the card regardless :cool:, though I did buy it thinking it had an amp per your review.
 
PlayLoud said:
Perhaps an edit to your review would be in order? It still says the card has a headphone amp. I love the card regardless :cool:, though I did buy it thinking it had an amp per your review.
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I am torn, cant decide between this and the essense. I have to say i am inclined to creative as my main purpose is gaming.
 
cukoodukoo said:
I am torn, cant decide between this and the essense. I have to say i am inclined to creative as my main purpose is gaming.
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I again question this line of thinking: Unless you want lots of old games with EAX/DirectSound support, you don't need the Creative. No games save Battlefield games really use hardware audio rendering. And BF2 had an issue where if you enabled X-Fi support and were in the middle of an artillery strike, your game crashed and likely caused a blue screen.

Also, the Essence has SOME EAX support.
 
Just got one of CL for $75. Awesome Card!!!!
Better settings just like the review said. Sound quality is great. Auto detection is great also.
Adjusting the settings with this card is easier then the Essence STX, which I found confusing at times.
The X-Fi is more of a gamer card, but is excellent for music also. Bass options are much better and hits harder with the X-Fi.
The STX to me, is for the audiophile listener, the X-Fi is for everyone else.

5 Stars
 
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BoogerBomb said:
ASUS isn't known for their great support of their soundcards either.
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Maybe not but for my needs I got a better soundcard that "worked" without having to mess around with drivers from solo coders trying to "fix" well known problems.

Ok it's an older card and I'm still using it on my old pc (might as well I paid for it!) But it leaves a bad taste in the mouth with Creative's little ploy they couldn't even get CMSS to upmix 2 channel audio (aka MP3's etc) with Win Vista and 7 properly. This pretty much sucked because it's pointless having a 5.1 setup with this.

That's not much to ask even from a legacy audio product you know I might have bothered to update to a creative card if they had sorted that out. Anyway all I can say is the Asus thrashes the life out of the old creative if you thought CMSS was good (when it worked ala Win XP) sorry to say the Xonar sounds so much better it makes the old card sound pretty lousy being blunt.

:cool:
 
The older Creative card, the X-FI Titanium original worked quite well for me under Windows 7 64 bit using the following:

1) No driver packs from any "amateur coders"
2) Driver version 2.17.008
3) Creative Console Launcher 2.61.35
4) DTS Connect Pack for Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium series 1.03.08
5) Dolby Digital Live Pack for Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium series 3.00.06
6 Alchemy for legacy games (EAX, Direct Sound hardware 3D) 1.41.02

Very stable for over a year with that combination. I used digital and analog connections.
 
I'm sure it did the issue was I believe one that was notable on the original Audigy, Audigy 2 ZS and Audigy 4 series though they had their own problems even with XP (esp notable switching back to 2 speakers for some odd reason without any user changes to settings)

This pretty much sums up the issue and solution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster#Driver_software_modification_.28soft_mod.29

And there are a ton of threads about this too which I won't bother to bore anyone with. But..when it did work properly the Audigy 2 ZS was probably good enough for many I'm not sure folks update their soundcard that often.

2 things bothered me (and still do to a degree)
First off that creative didn't address the problem for owners of these cards
Secondly that we had to rely on a "lone dude" from Brazil to actually sort most of the problems out

And lastly..creative did their very best to put an end to his work and modificantions. However good this new card is it does not inpire confidence in the company for future products. Not the kind of corporate attitude to customers that I would expect and it has caused a lot of bad feelings for people. Even to this day Creative has not addressed these problems and many suspect that is to encourage users to "move to newer cards"

It worked I did just not to a creative one..big PR disaster for the company
 
rampantandroid said:
Why? What does it add? EAX25 support?!!?

The X-Fi adds NOTHING at the end of the day. A sound card is just a sound card.
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Nope, the sound in games sound better than the STX. I don't even use EAX25 or whatever.
I get a boomier sound out of the HD. I found the STX to have a more neutral sound. But whatever you tell yourself is gold I guess. :rolleyes:

If you think a sound card is just a sound card, then you're in the wrong section of the forum.
 
WorldExclusive said:
Nope, the sound in games sound better than the STX. I don't even use EAX25 or whatever.
I get a boomier sound out of the HD. I found the STX to have a more neutral sound. But whatever you tell yourself is gold I guess. :rolleyes:

If you think a sound card is just a sound card, then you're in the wrong section of the forum.
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EAX25 is a joke. They're up to EAX5 I believe and no one gives a shit anymore. And in games they sound better? Huh? Again, unless you're somehow talking about the 3D Audio acceleration in games, that's bullshit. If you want something boomier from the STX, go buy the op-amps.

And by a "sound card is just a soundcard" I mean "in gaming, the STX is as good as the X-Fi" I'm NOT referring to the ANALOG quality. Go look at my earlier comments ffs.

Boomier sound is NOT the same as "better for gaming." YOU'RE in the wrong forums if you think that. But I guess I shouldn't expect audiophiles on this forum, I should shut up and go back to Head-fi.
 
I have a P8Z68-PRO motherboard with (2) video cards in SLI and a PCI XI-FI card sandwiched between them. I mainly use it for gaming with Sennheiser HD595's and it works great! I want to upgrade the stock 2 slot coolers on the GPU's with aftermarket 3 slot coolers, which only leaves a single 1x PCI-E slot at very top of the motherboard. So, I buy a refurbished Titanium card for 50 bucks and plug it in. It's tight but, I got it to work, unfortunately between 50 and 100% volume there is constant static (increases with volume). The old PCI sound card had zero static. I tried Beta drivers, unplugging the nearby CPU fans, spread spectrum...and the problem persists. I also tried removing a video card and plugging the titanium in a lower slot, and the static disappeared. I suspect the noise is coming from the PCI-E BUS when both video cards are plugged in.

Do you think a titanium HD would eliminate the static? I don't think it will, but could always try one and return or sell it.
 
WetMacula said:
I have a P8Z68-PRO motherboard with (2) video cards in SLI and a PCI XI-FI card sandwiched between them. I mainly use it for gaming with Sennheiser HD595's and it works great! I want to upgrade the stock 2 slot coolers on the GPU's with aftermarket 3 slot coolers, which only leaves a single 1x PCI-E slot at very top of the motherboard. So, I buy a refurbished Titanium card for 50 bucks and plug it in. It's tight but, I got it to work, unfortunately between 50 and 100% volume there is constant static (increases with volume). The old PCI sound card had zero static. I tried Beta drivers, unplugging the nearby CPU fans, spread spectrum...and the problem persists. I also tried removing a video card and plugging the titanium in a lower slot, and the static disappeared. I suspect the noise is coming from the PCI-E BUS when both video cards are plugged in.

Do you think a titanium HD would eliminate the static? I don't think it will, but could always try one and return or sell it.
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How could the noise come from the PCIe bus? Either it's the power, and the sound card should be filtering it...or it's digital and that cannot contribute to the noise.
 
WetMacula said:
Do you think a titanium HD would eliminate the static? I don't think it will, but could always try one and return or sell it.
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Sounds like EMI (electromagnetic interference) from the GPUs. The Ti HD has shielding but I haven't seen any tests on how effective it is.
 
Thought I would report back. I installed the titanium HD and to my surprise the static is gone!

The fit is extremely tight with a silver arrow installed (I covered the metal pieces on the card with electrical tape and put some felt pads on the heat sink above it. I tested both the CPU and GPU's at load, and the temps were no different. It is a shame the HD does not have 5.1 analog outputs or a fat headphone jack. After putzing around with some mp3's and a few rounds of BFBC2, I do notice slightly better sound, but without the aforementioned missing features, it is not worth the extra money in my opinion. I mainly use this computer for gaming with Sennheiser HD595's and will test it out over the next few weeks, if the hurricane has mercy.

On to the next phase...acquiring (2) accelero xtreme plus coolers and seeing if the Zalman vrm heatsink will play nice with the AXP top.
 
WetMacula said:
On to the next phase...acquiring (2) accelero xtreme plus coolers and seeing if the Zalman vrm heatsink will play nice with the AXP top.
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It does :)

Skakruk said:
So is there actually a difference between using the front panel phones jack and the card mounted one? I thought this card didn't have a headphone amp, and I'm getting confused by earlier posts...
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The connection to the front panel jack picks up EMI on a lot of rigs. Test yours to see if there is any sound quality difference. The Ti HD does not have a headphone amplifier.
 
Draygonn said:
It does :)


The connection to the front panel jack picks up EMI on a lot of rigs. Test yours to see if there is any sound quality difference. The Ti HD does not have a headphone amplifier.
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The difference from my reading is that the front panel header wont push headphones higher than 30ohms impedence while the port on the back of the card will go up to 300 ohms.
 
Skakruk said:
Hey when I change the master sampling rate in audio creation mode I get a burst of 'hiss' in the right channel only. It only lasts a second and fades out, but I'm pretty sure I've heard the hiss when replaying a recording in audacity - I thought it was a defect in the recording, but when I listened to the same section again I couldn't hear it. Do you think this card is faulty?
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Thats normal when changing the master sampling rate.
 
Skakruk said:
Why is it from only one channel?
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I know nothing of why it happens. As long as it sounds good...

--
I had to do a workaround with the Ti HD to add my Buttkicker without killing the SQ and soundstage. Since I couldn't run the RCA's and headphone jack at the same time I was able to use the knowledge from this review about the optical being able to run at the same time as the headphones (RCAs in my case). I picked up a FiiO D3 optical DAC and use it for the Buttkicker, leaving the RCAs clean for the E9. Was an extra $30 but works like a charm.

I also turned off my Windows Explorer Navigation sounds to bypass the 44.1kHz switching to 48kHz when using Windows Explorer glitch.
 
rampantandroid said:
I again question this line of thinking: Unless you want lots of old games with EAX/DirectSound support, you don't need the Creative. No games save Battlefield games really use hardware audio rendering. And BF2 had an issue where if you enabled X-Fi support and were in the middle of an artillery strike, your game crashed and likely caused a blue screen.

Also, the Essence has SOME EAX support.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the input.I practically play BC2 all the time.Whats your experience in BC2 regarding able to spot the enemy from the sound?
 
cukoodukoo said:
Thanks for the input.I practically play BC2 all the time.Whats your experience in BC2 regarding able to spot the enemy from the sound?
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I honestly haven't played BC2 since I nabbed my STX - but I can load in sometime this week. I'm pretty sure BC2 uses Open AL though, so it should work as expected...
 
After owning the HD for a week, connected only to Sennheiser 595's through the back port, I too have the sound disappearing problem when switching modes (only seems to happen while switching modes while audio is playing....a game or media player). I have a Z68, windows 7 x64, and an SSD. Restarting fixes the problem. Don't hold your breath that Creative will provide a fix.

I also discovered, to get the best 3D positional sound in a game, set the drivers to game mode, set speakers to 2/2.1, then check CMSS-3D. Uncheck all other effects except for EAX. Set your game to 5.1. Using "headphones" makes everything sound like shit.

Between the horseshit drivers, sound disappearing, the lack of a 1/4" jack, and the inability to connect monitors and cans at the same time...this card is not worth the money or the hassle.

I'm going to try the STX, before returning it. On a positive note, the card "sounds" good with these headphones and I get Zero static through the back or the front ports on a 650D case.
 
OK, I'm a stubborn Engineer that won't quit until all permutations of troubleshooting a problem have been exhausted. The sound disappearing problem when switching modes only seems to occur only when the encoder (in game mode) is set to something other than OFF (I got it to crash twice in a row when set to DTS). Reboot, set it to OFF, then try switching modes. I can't get it to crash now. I conducted the latest test playing a FLAC song in zoomplayer. Try yours and report back.
 
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Skakruk said:
How do you disable X-RAM? Did you mean you disabled the X-RAM setting from within a game?
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It's a regkey that the driver will obey. I can look it up if you like, but I think the info is on the unreal engine 3 forums. X-RAM is a total piece of shit that once disabled, I saw marked stability increases in some games, and other games made no difference. IE: Creative is making you pay for a bullshit marketing ploy.

Skakruk said:
The Essence doesn't have any EAX support worth mentioning. EAX is temperamental enough with genuine Creative hardware and drivers, attempting to use the third party emulated kind is a fool's errand. I had the STX, it was a superb card but not the best choice for gaming.
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These guys disagree

Summing it up, the 3D sound implementation on the Xonar Essence STX is not without drawbacks, but the X-Fi Prelude is not ideal, either. The Xonar was only defeated in a game that had been specifically optimized for the X-Fi. In the other games, the cards were roughly equal.
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You need to enable GX mode for it to work.
 
Skakruk said:
I'm sorry, but in my experience it was absolute rubbish. Had it been as good as those reviewers claim, I would still be using the STX today. God knows, I would much prefer the ASUS interface - these X-Fi drivers are doing my head in.

Incidentally, the biggest problem I experienced with the STX's drivers was related to the emulation/GX mode. The services it was reliant on would prevent certain programs from launching. I wonder if they ever fixed that...
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I've really had no issues with GX mode... albeit I don't use it too much.
 
I just removed my X-Fi Titanium HD and enabled the onboard realtek 889 HD codec. My GOD it sounds TERRRRRIBLE. I can't believe people can't tell the difference between onboard and add-on soundcards. The onboard codec had terrible reproduction of FLACs. They sounded like if I was listening to an analog radio. Same with ventrilo. People sounded like I was talking to them through a two way radio. But I must hand it to realtek for making a pretty nice audio control panel.

Now creative is going to release Core3D. I will probably wait for Core3D HD :) But I can't imagine the best onboard audio I heard was the nforce audio back in the Athlon XP days. I thought by now the onboard audio companies would atleast come to parity with creative by now.
 
After spending 3 hours online and on this thread looking if my Klipsch promedia 5.1 system (has the 3 plugs) would work I still am mystified. I realize you can buy a adapter for the 2.1 system as stated before. But what would I have to do for the 5.1 system???? Or will this not work with this soundcard as there is no adapter that I was able to find for it.

Thanks a ton in advance, I really want to make this sound card and the Klipsch 5.1's work.
 
The sound card is only capable of 2.1 analog playback. For 5.1 playback, you would need to use an optical cable connection. Then you would need to activate the card's Dolby digital or DTS Connect functions to encode your audio for passthrough to be decoded by a receiver or speaker set of capable of 5.1 playback of digital content.
 
Mr Mean said:
I just removed my X-Fi Titanium HD and enabled the onboard realtek 889 HD codec. My GOD it sounds TERRRRRIBLE. I can't believe people can't tell the difference between onboard and add-on soundcards. The onboard codec had terrible reproduction of FLACs. They sounded like if I was listening to an analog radio. Same with ventrilo. People sounded like I was talking to them through a two way radio. But I must hand it to realtek for making a pretty nice audio control panel.

Now creative is going to release Core3D. I will probably wait for Core3D HD :) But I can't imagine the best onboard audio I heard was the nforce audio back in the Athlon XP days. I thought by now the onboard audio companies would atleast come to parity with creative by now.
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+1... agreed... on nearly every statement except Core3D... those cards look BARE... but I guess only the released product and an [H] review will show true results.
 
Oh man, it seems like this card has more problems than that ASUS Striker
680I Board which I took a sledge hammer to after 3 RMA's and send it back to them
in bits and pieces a few years back :D

Does anyone know of any workable sound card to use that has no issues?
 
A bit confused... it seems that the general recommendation is to go for creative cards if your into games.. cause of EAX and CMSS works better then Asus equivalent?

But then i read a user review of the titanium HD how EAC and CMSS will sound like in a fps game. It makes the sound more realistic. It will dampen the sound if the soundsource is far from you and also for example if you inside a house you dont hear footsteeps outside the house as good. This got me worried because thats exactly what you dont want, you want to hear everything, even behind walls and shit. Easier to position long range enemies is not as important as close ones!
He also mention that he thinks for competitive gaming EAX should be turned off. Which makes me wonder that for fps gaming asus cards is as good as creative ones?
 
mmaker said:
A bit confused... it seems that the general recommendation is to go for creative cards if your into games.. cause of EAX and CMSS works better then Asus equivalent?

But then i read a user review of the titanium HD how EAC and CMSS will sound like in a fps game. It makes the sound more realistic. It will dampen the sound if the soundsource is far from you and also for example if you inside a house you dont hear footsteeps outside the house as good. This got me worried because thats exactly what you dont want, you want to hear everything, even behind walls and shit. Easier to position long range enemies is not as important as close ones!
He also mention that he thinks for competitive gaming EAX should be turned off. Which makes me wonder that for fps gaming asus cards is as good as creative ones?
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Again: No recent games use EAX afaik. No one is actually considering the GX mode the Xonar has.

All of this aside...a GREAT way to a cheapish setup:

Check X-Fi card with shitty DAC.
http://www.amb.org/audio/gamma1/ - build one. It's simple.

End result? Optical to gamma 1, output is a very clean signal. Upgrade to a gamma 2 for better opamps and all. Comparing my X-Fi and Xonar to the gamma 1 with a 5VDC regulated wall wort using SPDIF...the end result is nothing short of stunning.
 
hmm sounds fun.. thx for link

so gamma1 you think is alot better then stx??
 
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mmaker said:
hmm sounds fun.. thx for link

so gamma1 you think is alot better then stx??
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I think that given an external power supply, it sounds FAR cleaner than any internal sound card will. The biggest problem with audio is NOT what opamps you use, if you have EAX or anything else. It's how clean your power source is. In a PC, you cannot do much about that, short of replacing your PSU - which until I got this DAC working I was considering.

The problem the DAC can fix is that it allows you to use an external power supply, which will be cleaner. On top of this, if you grab the cheapest X-Fi, then connect a DAC to the X-Fi's optical or coax outputs (spdif) you still can take advantage of the 3D audio, equalizer, effects and everything else the DAC does (contrary to what someone else said in this thread.)

I finished the gamma 2 add on board last night in about an hour and a half:
http://rampantandroid.com/images/DAC/IMG_0804.JPG
http://rampantandroid.com/images/DAC/IMG_0805.JPG
http://rampantandroid.com/images/DAC/IMG_0806.JPG
http://rampantandroid.com/images/DAC/IMG_0807.JPG

As for my Xonar? I'll likely sell it now and go back to the X-Fi with XRAM killed and all that.
 
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