Soundblaster X-FI?

newls1

newls1

Supreme [H]ardness
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What is this, is this going to be a good soundcard? On there website, they "CLAIM" that it is the ultimate Soundcard for one reason they say it does ALL the cycles (or whatever) on the sound card itself, the CPU does nothing, which in turn, has the possiblity to give you more FPS in games. There website has a count down for when it comes out, and its down to 1 day now. Any feed back, would be great, and opinions please. I will buy one if this is cracked up to be....
 
newls1 said:
What is this
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It is a sound card.
newls1 said:
is this going to be a good soundcard?
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Obvisoully it will be, its their newest one. Why would they release something thats worse than before?
newls1 said:
On there website, they "CLAIM" that it is the ultimate Soundcard for one reason they say it does ALL the cycles (or whatever) on the sound card itself, the CPU does nothing, which in turn, has the possiblity to give you more FPS in games.
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Is that hard to beleive? Seems about right since they focus on the ultimate gaming expirance with decent sound.
newls1 said:
There website has a count down for when it comes out, and its down to 1 day now. Any feed back, would be great, and opinions please. I will buy one if this is cracked up to be....
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Its not comming out in a day. If you look at it, they are releasing more info about it in 1 day. The date for release is unannounced yet.

From what we do know, their will be a PCIe version. It may JUST be PCIe 1x interface, but that has not been announced either.

It will have on board memory too. And more than likely will be about 200+ $

I am getting one, because It provides good enough sound for me, and games will be excelent.
 
Actually, they have already said it will first be coming out in PCI form (not PCIe). And they have not said anything about price.

Does it bother anyone else that the perception of computer audio is so backwards that most people attribute the value of a particular audio solution not to the quality of the experience, but to what percentage of CPU is used (lower being better)? Its so bad that even Creative's marketing department is using this perception to market their new product to gamers. When we talk about video, everyone wants AA, pretty shaders, special effects, etc. When it comes to sound, the judgement of quality is binary - either you hear it or you don't. Some people would not even consider that one soundcard could sound better than another. But those same people are willing to spend $100s of dollars on tons of speakers for their l337 gaming rigs even though said speakers are hooked up to their onboard audio. Nevermind the fact that they could get a much more immersive experience by spending $100 on a quality pair of headphones - no dealing with tangled speaker wires and complaining family members.

Does this basically boil down to the fact that humans are primarily visual animals?
 
thomase said:
Actually, they have already said it will first be coming out in PCI form (not PCIe). And they have not said anything about price.

Does it bother anyone else that the perception of computer audio is so backwards that most people attribute the value of a particular audio solution not to the quality of the experience, but to what percentage of CPU is used (lower being better)? Its so bad that even Creative's marketing department is using this perception to market their new product to gamers. When we talk about video, everyone wants AA, pretty shaders, special effects, etc. When it comes to sound, the judgement of quality is binary - either you hear it or you don't. Some people would not even consider that one soundcard could sound better than another. But those same people are willing to spend $100s of dollars on tons of speakers for their l337 gaming rigs even though said speakers are hooked up to their onboard audio. Nevermind the fact that they could get a much more immersive experience by spending $100 on a quality pair of headphones - no dealing with tangled speaker wires and complaining family members.

Does this basically boil down to the fact that humans are primarily visual animals?
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umm.... well a sound card is a sound card. They all play sounds and music just fine. Its all about how good they do it, how fast. If they help out and take the load off the CPU great! Now this is just for general computing / gaming. If you are into high end stuff, or a professional, or have a 500$ 7.1 setup, then a higher end "better" sounding card is the way to go. But if you just want to be a general user, and game and stuff... creative is alright.

I dunno about the visual stuff. I am sure we are. Look at TV and radio. The radio sucks, but <3 TV :)
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
They all play sounds and music just fine. Its all about how good they do it, how fast.
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This is exactly what I'm talking about. Games are much different then music. For music, you are just playing something that is pre-recorded. In general, it will take a fixed amount of computational power to play back a digital audio recording given a certain hardware architecture. With games, the CPU is responsible for synthesizing a realistic audio environment based on what is happening in the game, in real-time. If you have more CPU power, you should be able to model the acoustic environment more acurately (ie. more refections, absorbtion of sound waves by different materials, etc.). Presently, there is a lot more that can be done to increase the realism of interactive audio in games.
 
Here is a good example of the level of interactivity I'm talking about.

If you live in a house with lots of rooms and you have a cordless phone, I'd imagine you might have trouble finding it when it rings. Say for example its in the living room on the couch under a cushion and you are currently in a bedroom. When the phone rings, you hear the sound coming from the doorway of the bedroom, even though the actual direction where the phone rests might be through the wall off to the right and behind you. As you move through the house, you get closer and closer to where it is, but you can't figure out exactly what room its coming from until you actually get there. When you finally do get to the living room, the sound is muffled in such a way that you know it must be under a couch cushion.

Even though we probably have enough CPU power today to come pretty close to simulating such a situation, no one seems to be interested in atacking the problem. Interactive audio in games has a long way to go....
 
thomase said:
Even though we probably have enough CPU power today to come pretty close to simulating such a situation, no one seems to be interested in atacking the problem. Interactive audio in games has a long way to go....
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You must admit, though, it is getting better.
 
doom 3 has amazing sound, the industry is getting better...

i just hope replacing my audigy 2 za with a HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 was a good idea :p
 
That's ironic. Doom3's sound is pretty bad. They use a basic software engine without any kind of environmental effects. They didn't even use HRTF 3D positional audio. Only 2 speaker configurations are supported (4.1, 7.1, out of luck). All of the samples are recorded at 22KHz. Its sounds a lot better with the 1.3 patch where the Audigy 2 ZS is supported through OpenAL.
 
thomase said:
That's ironic. Doom3's sound is pretty bad. They use a basic software engine without any kind of environmental effects. They didn't even use HRTF 3D positional audio. Only 2 speaker configurations are supported (4.1, 7.1, out of luck). All of the samples are recorded at 22KHz. Its sounds a lot better with the 1.3 patch where the Audigy 2 ZS is supported through OpenAL.
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yep its an uphill battle to get people to notice. Think of the legions using onboard ac97 and just don't know any better. They pop in a pci soundcard and feel like kids all over again :D.

I had hoped Nvidia was going to muscle it's way into the soundcard market. Another major player would shake the market out of its rut imho.
 
I would think the X-Fi should be out soon considering Battlefield 2 already has support for it.
 
I wonder what feature's of the X-Fi it is using? I heard something about 3D positioned voice chat with the X-Fi. I'd imagine that would be something useful for a game like Battlefield 2. However, I can't think of anything particularly special about voice chat audio that prevents it from being 3D positioned with existing sound cards. Maybe there is a buffering issue that results in current games using normal low-level DirectSound output for voice chat instead of DirectSound3D? If there is some kind of issue, I suppose the solution could be packaged in as part of the next EAX standard.
 
klee1359 said:
When will this sound card be released ?

Any clues ?

klee :confused:
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Well the SoundBlaster site says it will be about a month before more information appears about the chip. So maybe around then, more information on the actual card will appear.
 
iownyou14 said:
Well the SoundBlaster site says it will be about a month before more information appears about the chip. So maybe around then, more information on the actual card will appear.
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i hate creative, hyping up another crap product
 
The level of immersion increases significantly, IMO, when games take advantage of the higher levels of EAX. Unfortunately, in order to hear those effects, you need an Audigy (or better). When I bought my original Audigy and my first 5.1 set of speakers, I thought I was gonna crap my pants, the sound from games like Ghost Recon was so good. However, as has been said, there hasn't been much in the way of innovation since the Audigy came out. Hopefully the X-Fi will introduce some new capabilities in games. What computer audio needs is an open API, like OpenAL, to become widespread. As long as creative has us boxed in to buying their cards in order to hear the best sound in games, the industry will remain stagnant. The example I always cite is LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth. This game has good sound, but only if you have an EAX 3 capable card. Otherwise, I am stuck hearing stereo. It's like the audio industry is still stuck in the 3dfx days, when glide was the only api in town. The only reason graphics have advanced the way they have is because ATi and nVidia can both program their cards to run DX and OpenGL games.

 
Also, where in the world is the dolby digital live support? Jeebus, as many gamers are hooking their computers to TV's and receivers these days, DDL needs to become widespread, badly.
 
i'm buying a video card soong and I am wondering because I play games should I wait and get a xi-fi or whatever you all are talking about or should I just go ahead and get an audigy 2 zs? I wasn't wanting to spend a ton on my graphics thought.
 
Destonomos said:
i'm buying a video card soong and I am wondering because I play games should I wait and get a xi-fi or whatever you all are talking about or should I just go ahead and get an audigy 2 zs? I wasn't wanting to spend a ton on my graphics thought.
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I wouldn't personally wait around for an X-Fi in your case, it's probably going to be awhile before it hits the streets.. when it does it's going to be pricey to boot. Just shop around for a ZS on sale, sometimes you can find them at stores for like $60'ish with rebates. (I got mine at BestBuy for about that)
 
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