New sound card advice

[Animalpak]

Something different but that should equal or even better than the sound blaster X-Fi Fatality.

Currently happy with the x-fi fatality but I noticed that many functions are little exploited in games. Sometimes I prefer the filter Dolby or DTS over that CMSS 3D, Crystalyzer.

My target, music and games faithfully reproduced.


Asus Xonar PCI-EX 1X drew my attention... Has anyone ever tried ?

 

[sai-]

I have the Xonar DX and it's absolutely amazing for the $50 that I paid for them. They were open box on some website (can't remember which). Coming from an X-Fi XtremeMusic, the discontinued model - similar to XtremeGamer, the sound quality on the DX is very good. The software emulation of EAX effects is pretty much indistinguishable and in some instances better. I used to get a lot of sound glitches with the X-Fi, the DX doesn't have that problem. Paired with a Sennheiser HD555, it's a fairly solid entry level 'audiophile' set up. Because of the soundstage of the headphones and the Xonar's DolbyDigital Headphone or w/e, you can pretty much hear everything in games. In that respect, it's not really that much different from X-Fi's, I couldn't tell you that there was a significant advantage. But you get really good sound quality.


Like the Creative sound cards, Xonar has a bunch of different modes for music, movies and gaming. Plus a bunch of other things that you can tweak.

 

[Zubasa]

Something different but that should equal or even better than the sound blaster X-Fi Fatality.

Currently happy with the x-fi fatality but I noticed that many functions are little exploited in games. Sometimes I prefer the filter Dolby or DTS over that CMSS 3D, Crystalyzer.

My target, music and games faithfully reproduced.


Asus Xonar PCI-EX 1X drew my attention... Has anyone ever tried ?

The Xonar series are some of the best PC sound cards all around.
If you are a big fan of the analog output, get the Essence STX.
Grab the HDAV if you are big on movies and like HDMI out.