which sound card should i get

fafa21 · Apr 28, 2009

Should i get an Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional or ASUS Xonar D2 7.1 Channels. i have a logitech G51 and an asus supremefx 2sound card which is all messed up in 5.1 mode also there is a big difference in the sound quality from xp to vista really weird. i like to listen to music and also play games. Also I have vista and xp. i would go for the creative card but i understand it has horrible drivers. So which card is better and what should I get? Is there another card that would be better I don’t want to spend more then 150.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132001

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102019

KainXS · Apr 28, 2009

the drivers aren't that bad anymore, every now and then you get a crackling sound though

fafa21 · Apr 28, 2009

So does everything work like it's supposed to on the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional. and the sound quality is good?

kenkickr · Apr 28, 2009

I really enjoyed the X-fi Titanium Pro I had before I traded for a 4850. I've really been thinking about getting another one. My biggest issue with the Asus cards is you have to give them aux power were as the X-fi you don't have to and I don't think your going to hear that much of a difference between the two.

Darren · Apr 28, 2009

fafa21 said:
Should i get an Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional or ASUS Xonar D2 7.1 Channels. i have a logitech G51 and an asus supremefx 2sound card which is all messed up in 5.1 mode also there is a big difference in the sound quality from xp to vista really weird. i like to listen to music and also play games. Also I have vista and xp. i would go for the creative card but i understand it has horrible drivers. So which card is better and what should I get? Is there another card that would be better I don’t want to spend more then 150.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132001

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102019

I agree, Creatives drivers suck, but the neither the ASUS or X-Fi Titanium range is suitable for you. Those cards are specifically for home cinema junkies that are looking to complement Dolby Digital and DTS encoding with their receiver/amp via fibre or coaxial.

The Logitech G51 are really bottom of the barrel speakers and a professional sound card would be a waste of money, you'd be hard pressed to notice a substantial difference as those cards are catered for a different market (non PC). You'd be better off buying any cheap $30 soundcard.

erocker · Apr 28, 2009

I love my cheap SB Xfi Xtreme Audio card. Nice clean sound and it's loud.

HeadlessChicken · Apr 28, 2009

i would get the xonar personaly, that or a
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829271001
the HT omega striker 7.1, it should be a better choice then the xonar and the drivers are def better then the x-fi(creative drivers suck ass)

thats just my opinion tho, i would get the htomega card if I was in the market for such a card

ShRoOmAlIsTiC · Apr 28, 2009

x-fi titanium. driver are no longer an issue. card works great for me in vista. its great for gaming specially with eax games. I think the pci express fixed the crackling issues. most audiophiles will tell you the asus but i think thats mainly from all the issues creative have had in the past. there are also alot of other drivers to choose from besides creative. PAX and Daniel_K drivers have brought these cards along way.

KainXS · Apr 28, 2009

erocker said:
I love my cheap SB Xfi Xtreme Audio card. Nice clean sound and it's loud.

wow, you actually bought the xtreme audio, . . . wow

human_error · Apr 28, 2009

ShRoOmAlIsTiC said:
x-fi titanium. driver are no longer an issue. card works great for me in vista. its great for gaming specially with eax games. I think the pci express fixed the crackling issues. most audiophiles will tell you the asus but i think thats mainly from all the issues creative have had in the past. there are also alot of other drivers to choose from besides creative. PAX and Daniel_K drivers have brought these cards along way.

Nope, had to send a creative xfi titanium back at christmas as due to a driver issue the sound was constantly crackling and didnt work at all in my current rig or a spare pc i had with a pci-e slot (but when i sent it back the shop tested the card and said it worked fine, so it wasn't a faulty card). Creative were no help so im now running with an asus xonar d2x and it sounds fantastic with no driver issues at all.

Of course the creative driver issues are a lot more uncommon and others with the same mobo as me can run xfi titaniums with no problems, so your milage may vary.

HeadlessChicken · Apr 28, 2009

ShRoOmAlIsTiC said:
x-fi titanium. driver are no longer an issue. card works great for me in vista. its great for gaming specially with eax games. I think the pci express fixed the crackling issues. most audiophiles will tell you the asus but i think thats mainly from all the issues creative have had in the past. there are also alot of other drivers to choose from besides creative. PAX and Daniel_K drivers have brought these cards along way.

why should somebody have to use moded drivers on new hardware to get it working as advertised?

mrw1986 · Apr 28, 2009

I got my Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional for free brand new through a rewards program at work...I will say its a badass card! If I had to pay for a card though...I would probably get a high end Asus or Auzentech.

silkstone · Apr 28, 2009

Why don't you get an audigy and then install xi-fi drivers?

erocker · Apr 28, 2009

KainXS said:
wow, you actually bought the xtreme audio, . . . wow

You act as if you know something that would lead to my ultimate demise using this card :rolleyes:

, but yes I got it a while ago, looks just like the Audigy with more caps. Never had a problem with it and it sounds great and I get more db's with this card than any onboard I've used, and the Audigy, HT Stiker, and some Turtle Beach card I had. I do only use either my Bose 2.0 speakers or headphones, so things like 5.1 and 7.1 performance I don't care about. Never had a driver problem, sound distortion, or any other unwanted noise. If I really want to listen to music extremely loud I just use my Onkyo receiver and Acoustic Research speakers. (I never said I bought it either

)

EiSFX · Apr 28, 2009

Well in vista the creative Drivers sucks cuz for some reason they can't get there mic to work i have to install the drivers and use the MoBo built in sounds card for the mic

erocker · Apr 28, 2009

EiSFX said:
Well in vista the creative Drivers sucks cuz for some reason they can't get there mic to work i have to install the drivers and use the MoBo built in sounds card for the mic

It's possible your card's mic jack is bad. Being around a lot of musical equipment, it seems input/output jacks go bad somewhat regularly. My mic works fine in Vista and I'm using the latest drivers from Creative.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156007 <-- I'm very interested in giving this card a try.

ShRoOmAlIsTiC · Apr 28, 2009

HeadlessChicken said:
why should somebody have to use moded drivers on new hardware to get it working as advertised?

the newest drivers x-fi drivers work fine. I was just saying there are more options then just just creative drivers if the drivers are going to be the deciding factor that scare him away from the card.

EiSFX · Apr 28, 2009

erocker said:
It's possible your card's mic jack is bad. Being around a lot of musical equipment, it seems input/output jacks go bad somewhat regularly. My mic works fine in Vista and I'm using the latest drivers from Creative.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156007 <-- I'm very interested in giving this card a try.

nope the mic port is just fine i have read right on the creative site they do has this problem and they know it and they still haven't done anyting to fix it all they care about is let just get the sound working and let ppl worry about the other stuff on there own

and you see your useing an X-Fi audio which isen't even really a full X-Fi card the audio is just a rebadged Audigy with some software features that the real X-Fis use if you had a full blowen X-Fi you will see what i mean

in Vista and on creative cards the mic dosen't work with there drivers and you have to use built in for your mic port and whats funny is that exactly what a creative tech support guy tol me to do he diden't even say anything about there lazy ass coders and there crappy ass drivers

and creative are the onlys ones that for some reason can't get the mic working in there drivers what do they have working in there driver labs fricking hamsters

enterco · Jul 9, 2009

fafa21 said:
Should i get an Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional or ASUS Xonar D2 7.1 Channels. i have a logitech G51 and an asus supremefx 2sound card which is all messed up in 5.1 mode also there is a big difference in the sound quality from xp to vista really weird. i like to listen to music and also play games. Also I have vista and xp. i would go for the creative card but i understand it has horrible drivers. So which card is better and what should I get? Is there another card that would be better I don’t want to spend more then 150.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132001

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102019

If you play, go for X-Fi Titanium.

I did some game benchmarks with onboard audio (no hardware acceleration) and with X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro. I might say that a FPS increase up to 15%, maybe more is good, and definitely useful for a gamer.

If you go with Asus, please let me know how much helps Xonar to FPS increase in OpenAL titles, compared to onboard audio. I expect plus/minus 0%.

X-Fi Titanium definitely worth the money if you play games written with OpenAL audio API, which are more than 50% of the titles I heard about, you'll get a significant performance gain in titles which uses 100% your CPU (UT3 engine based, for example). Check http://www.openal.org for a list.
If you don't play, onboard Realtek 889 and/or Asus Xonar should be enough, you'll get better value/price ratio, X-Fi is expensive if you don't play games.

Ketxxx · Jul 9, 2009

Asus Xonar DX, no question. Review

MN12BIRD · Jul 12, 2009

KainXS said:
the drivers aren't that bad anymore, every now and then you get a crackling sound though

I got these crackling sounds on my NForce (570 Ultra) chipset motherboard. I got the latest drivers and updated the BIOS and it helped reduce the problem but it was still there. But when I moved the card over to an Intel setup P45 chipset based board the crackling sounds were completely eliminated. The problem was only on the PCI version (not the PCI-e) as it had something to do with PCI bus requests. Also it seemed to be mainly happening on certain NVidia (NForce) chipsets.

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which sound card should i get

fafa21

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KainXS

fafa21

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kenkickr

Darren

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erocker

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HeadlessChicken

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ShRoOmAlIsTiC

KainXS

human_error

HeadlessChicken

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mrw1986

silkstone

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EiSFX

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enterco

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