Creative X-Fi announced!

[xortam]

I still have my Diamond MX-300 Aureal card in this P2B-S box ... though I moved my speakers up to the HTPC box which has a modern graphics card.

[Jon P. Inghram]

If it's extreme, does that mean it goes up to 11?

[Nowhere]

...
With the added power, I hope they'll introduce some form of A3D. IMO they HAVE to, otherwise the soundcard business will be dead for Creative and we'll all end-up with AC'97 and some crappy Realtek DAC (like on sooo many motheboards already).

Even if their drivers are crappy, they're the only ones left that develop real soundcards and not AC'97 for the masses...

I don't agree they have to...even when they had superior competitor they kept wallets of customers, now EAX is the best thing that's on the market :/ . Customers don't care about true technical superiority and quality of sound, apparently only numbers mean something to them. So Creative will be able to sell them in a few years this new 10.1, 64bit, 392 kHz card...

And there are still competitors...too bad you almost can't buy them in Europe :/ (I'd love to buy Chaintech 710 card based on Envy - cheap and very high quality of sound when used as 2.1)

[Jon P. Inghram]

The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a soundcard as an electronic apparatus designed to transform digital information to and from analog signals. The marketing division of the Creative Corporation defines a soundcard as "A magical device that makes your music sound better."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Creative Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of PC audio correspondent.

Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Creative Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

All CD music is in 16-bit resolution, which is typically compressed from an original 24-bit studio recording. When converting CD music to MP3 format, the music is compressed yet again. These types of compression result in a compromise of audio quality and clarity. The Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor drives new applications that can enhance MP3s by bringing them back to 24-bit quality, and allows the user to upgrade the music to multi-channel surround sound. This enhancement enables virtually all MP3 music to sound even better than it did on the original CDs.

[Paddy]

The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a soundcard as an electronic apparatus designed to transform digital information to and from analog signals. The marketing division of the Creative Corporation defines a soundcard as "A magical device that makes your music sound better."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Creative Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of PC audio correspondent.

Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Creative Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

Nice

[Taz]

[az]

Very very good JPI!

Also, I really fail to be impressed by how many transistors this new chip has. Important is what comes out of the jacks, not how many watts the soundcard wasted in getting the signal out (well, that matters, too, but I fail to see how more transistors would help reduce power draw ).

AZ

[Dr Mordrid]

JPI is so spot on it's scary

Dr. Mordrid

[Goc]

Hhehehhehehhe... Great, JPI!

[Kurt]

I don't agree they have to...even when they had superior competitor they kept wallets of customers, now EAX is the best thing that's on the market :/ . Customers don't care about true technical superiority and quality of sound, apparently only numbers mean something to them. So Creative will be able to sell them in a few years this new 10.1, 64bit, 392 kHz card...

And there are still competitors...too bad you almost can't buy them in Europe :/ (I'd love to buy Chaintech 710 card based on Envy - cheap and very high quality of sound when used as 2.1)

Creative's audio market is shrinking. AC97 was bad enough for the soundcard market, but now Intel is introducing HD audio. If Creative doesn't get better, Intel will just be the number one audio supplier, as with the integrated graphics.

[Nowhere]

Well, I was thinking more in relation to other manufecturers of addon cards. Nobody can really do anything about integrated. Most people simply don't care about sound, as long as it is present.

[Kurt]

Most people simply don't care about sound, as long as it is present.

That's where AC97 comes into play and ruins the day. AC97 got integrated in almost every chipset, you basically have a difference at board level for the DACs (which are generally Realtek now anyway).

[Heiney]

Powerful rose-colored nostalgia goggles in effect in here. Have any of you actually used a Vortex-2 based card recently? Did you really enjoy the horrible frequency butchering DACs, bad drivers limited to Win98, and the awesome power of 11KHz audio in a sort of "blurry" 3d space?

Well I loaded up HL2 to experience the power of A3D 2.0 back in October on a Diamond Monster Sound MX300, before HL2 was released. I would NEVER trade my Audigy 2 ZS for anything A3D. EAX 3 & 4, along with improvements to the overall spatialization and DAC quality have totally, completely outclassed those old cards.

BTW, a SBLive! sounds better than most Aureal Vortex 2 cards. Those Aureal based cards had horrible analog signal quality.

[Wombat]

Powerful rose-colored nostalgia goggles in effect in here. Have any of you actually used a Vortex-2 based card recently? Did you really enjoy the horrible frequency butchering DACs, bad drivers limited to Win98, and the awesome power of 11KHz audio in a sort of "blurry" 3d space?

None of this has anything to do with A3D as a technology, which really is/was superior to EAX as a technology.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Someone over at Hydrogenaudio posted this picture that cost the lives of many Bothans to leak out of Creatives development labs: