At the top of the list, of course, is the X-Fi. Thumbing through Creative's catalog of products, you can see some of the SoundBlasters of yore, like the SoundBlaster 16, still for sale. Back in the virtual world, my reverie gets cut short by an artillery borage. Oh, Creative has had their competition, but by tooth or by nail, it pretty much owned the entire sound card market since. I knew that for better or worse, Creative was here to stay, and AdLib was their first casualty. Shortly after AdLib put out their card, Creative put out the SoundBlaster and put Adlib out of its misery. Now we have cards with 7.1 channels, 24 bit/96 kHz sampling, 3D positional audio and games that can really use it.
#Creative sound blaster x fi xtreme software
It had 2 channel FM synthesis and a meager software bundle. I was playing Battlefield 2 online the other night, testing the X-Fi out and thinking back to playing Wing Commander with the first sound card for the PC, the AdLib. This review brought to you by the letter j.Does anyone out there remember playing Wing Commander without a sound card? Yeah, I'm so old-school that even old-school doesn't have a name for us ( Ed: I think they do, they call you "old") and games didn't use sound cards. M. who allowed this review to be written. Special thanks to Hilbert and P.OSHAUNESSY for sending an X-Fi our way! Cheers! To old friends made new again, and to Mrs. I would like to thank Hilbert for being smart, patient, and rather tall. Without a doubt, the X-Fi is the best Creative sound card to date. If it isn't I'll eat the paper this was written on. It was faster than our Envy24 based Terratec DMX 6-fire and sounded a little bit better while doing it. I should think the X-Fi is faster than the Audigy2 ZS in any and all applications. The X-Fi has all that good hardware and it is put to good use. Performance wise, what's the point? There's Creative and then there's everybody else. Some games don't sound right at all, which is a real shame and the X-Fi will not help. It can bring you that much closer to the horror of war. That, my friends, is impressive. In games like Battlefield 2, where the audio is very carefully done, the X-Fi can create a real sounding game.
There's no doubt that the hardware is capable, it's the software where the real problem lives. Hopefully soon we'll see a version that provides that unmistakable sound of realism. Speaking of games, EAX is getting better and better with each new release. I'd wait until Emu puts out their version of the X-Fi.
Speaking of outputs, the analog outs are doubled up for 7.1, which you guessed it, you'll need to buy or make special cables. Another big question is that now that dual-core CPU's are becoming prevalent, will the need to have audio acceleration be any incentive for developers? Creative will have to fight to get some better support for EAX. And lastly, Homey don't play PCIe. The X-Fi was developed specifically for PCI and will have to go through a serious revision for it to work with PCIe.įor gamers and music fans, though, this is the best Creative sound card to date. Musicians looking for something to provide basic recording and effects, the X-Fi will be okay, but not great. You have to buy special cables, which are available from an undisclosed location. Easily, the first thing is that you don't get digital I/O in any standard form. I think this time Creative got it just perfect with the X-Fi. It has a rare combination of new features that work great and has a mixture of the best qualities of all the past sound cards we have reviewed. I can't stop playing music with it. I can't stop playing games with it. The big question is, is it worth it? The X-Fi is expensive, but I think it is worth it. You know, when I submitted the Audigy 1 review to Hilbert many years ago, he fired back an email asking if I really meant to call it, "The SoundBlaster Oddity." It really wasn't a bad card, but it didn't live up to its hype either.
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