Which sound card?

[Electric]

Yes Sir, I mentioned the Operational Amps as you have quoted. The Xtreme Music and E lite Pro does-not share the same PCB design true. But i was talking about the sound quality/Fidelity. A modded Xtreme Music can sound Like a Elite Pro or better. It cant cope with the Prelude or the Xonar but something is better than nothing eh?

 

[btarunr]

Apart from listener-opinion based judgment, did any modder compare the two (Modded <insert card here> and Elite Pro)? Any RMAA benches?

 

[Electric]

I personally don't measure audio by numbers/benches. I cant find anything on this subject either. Moddded Xtreme Music Vs Elite Pro was just my humble opinion and my experience.

 

[selway89]

Interesting stuff, although as I have said very happy with it so far. Not a single issue unlike the last 2 X-Fis I had. Just need to buy my dads Mission 781 speakers and stands they sound so so so nice hehe.

I may think about changing the opamps and caps but thats not set in stone as yet.

 

[imperialreign]

just want to jump in on the mod debate . . .

the only thing we can really do with the Xtreme Musics and Fatal1ty cards (and the Xtreme Gamer as well), is reduce the amount of noise, and increase the clarity of the output - by replacing or removing capacitors and the OPAMPs.

The actual dynamic range that the card is capable of playing back at, and the THD+N quality is entirelly dependant upon the DAC on the card. Being able to check these capabilites through loop-back testing will run into a wall with the ADC on the card as well; meaning, even if the DAC is capable of 115db DR output, but the ADC is only capable of 103db DR input, loop-back testing will only show 103db DR in testing; and most card specs are based on loop-back testing by the manufacturer.

But, even still, the small variations between many of the DACs chosen on the higher end cards level very negligible changes that are extremelly hard to notice . . . especially in the case of 8 channel DACs.

All the PCB components, though, play a big part in the actual clarity of the playback, and the amount of distortion and noise one might experience. Capacitor choice, OPAMP choice, even VRM choice as well - whether they decided to include an EMI shield or not, also. Component degradation will play a big role in audio playback over time, and in the case where mediocre PCB components have been chosen by the manufacturer, playback quality a year after install will not be the same as when the card was brand new.

 

[ChromeDome]

i modded my SB Audigy SE to an SB Xtreme Audio deal. sounds good, some added enhancements

need new speakers, 'tho

 

[hat]

I don't believe CPU useage is an issue. Modern processors, espically Core 2s (core 2's are technically better but AMD's processors are still good) are far too powerful to be concerned with audio processing. That's like pissing in a lake to get the water level up--doesn't really matter.

 

[btarunr]

I don't believe CPU useage is an issue. Modern processors are far too powerful to be concerned with audio processing. That's like pissing in a lake to get the water level up--doesn't really matter.

Yes, this includes the Athlonx2's

It's not just CPU off-load that people buy X-Fi for, but several gamer-friendly features. CPU accelerated audio cannot hardware mix upto 128 voices, which is why several games 'crackle' on onboard / HSP audio when way too many voices are asked to be mixed by the game to the CPU. After decompression, every 16-bit PCM sample weighs 640 kbit. imagine 8 of these....and now with modern games doing 24 bit at 96 kHz...1280 kbit / channel / sample. Imagine how much of FSB bandwidth and memory bandwidth that would chew into.

Of course, if YouTube and pr0n are all you need a sound-card for, we get back to pissing in lakes.

 

[ChromeDome]

all my pr0n sounds excellent with my newly modded card