And for everyone who said that the X-Fi sounds better, all it does is applying some pretty DSP effect to the sounds. That and it also supports EAX better then anything else (too bad EAX blows).

For anything other then gaming, the Soundblasters are horrible. Get an Envy24 based card, those sound a lot better then any of Creatives cards.

Agreed. EMU1212m/EMU0404 (Depending on your preference - they each have a distinct sound signature) > Envy24 > Creative Anything

Yeah, I'm going to go with the fact that most of you don't own an X-Fi as well. I had an Envy24 (Revolution 7.1) and replaced it with an X-Fi and it easily sounds as good. Plus I get the added bonus of EAX and accelerated voices with the X-Fi. Plus the stereo upmixing higher quality in the X-Fi than pretty much anything you could find under $5,000.

Maybe some of you should read some of the X-Fi reviews. Most people agree they are a huge step up from the Audigy cards.

That "Huge Step Up" is a bunch of resampling 'crystallization' bullshit that I consider a negative rather than a positive. I'll stick to my original music, kthx.

Exactly, I'd rather have perfect sound reproduction than cpu usage speed up. Also I've decoded 5.1 and 6.1 audio, and got cpu usage low enough that I could decode DivX and XviD without a frame rate drop.

Crystallization is an option, and it isn't even a resampling method. It reshapes the sound output waveform without resampling. It's more like a hardware equalizer. I love how you play it off without even hearing it though as it does an really nice job in increasing the sound quality of pretty much every lossy format out there. But of course, you can turn it off, and with the X-Fi get an untouched audio stream since it doesn't internally resample anything. Not only that, but the physical layout of the X-Fi chip is a ring, so if you decide to turn any of the 'features' off, the sound data doesn't even have to pass though the given hardware.

But, anyway the major step up from the Audigy cards is the X-Fi does not internally resample to 48 kHz. It also offers a much higher quality DAC converter and a better signal-to-noise ratio than any non-professional sound card out there. But of course I'm sure you knew all of this. Actually, I guess you didn't as you won't be making such asinine comments if you did.

FIREFOX IS STILL BETTER

REFORMAT

USE LINUX!@!!!

Thanks for putting exactly what I was thinking in better words. :P

The X-Fi is not a bad-sounding card, period. They seem to be roughly equal to the lower-end Envy24 cards in terms of sound quality, but with much better gaming performance.

I actually had an AV710 at one time, but I went back to the Audigy 2 Value. The VIA drivers are a pain, UT2004 just doesn't get along well with non-Creative cards, and through my AKG K501 headphones, there just isn't that big of a difference in sound quality. ._.

You do realize that the E-MU 1212m/0404/1820/1820m/1616/1616m all use an EMU10k-based chip (you know, made by CREATIVE, haha), right?

I have to agree with you though, the E-MU 1010-based cards kick out some of the cleanest audio you'll find for under a few hundred bucks. Look up some reviews for the E-MU 1820M. You'll be blown away.

Ah, so it's worse than I thought.Actually, I have heard it, and I decidedly don't like it. I'm flat-out unimpressed and see no reason to change my gaming card from my Audigy 2 ZS or change my actual SOUND card from my Envy24.Only in the $300 version.

Really though what sound card produces substantially better quality than even a lowly Soundblaster 16? Out of every soundcard I've ever used, none. It's the quality of the speakers, not (unless your sound card really sucks) the capabilites of the card. In fact all my speakers and headphones couldn't even test the quality of the DAC between any modern soundcard, they're not sensitive (or expensive) enough for me to distinguish that.

It seems my sarcasm didn't go over particularly well on that one.

I was making a joke about how outlandish the performance claim was, and making a point that whatever testing method used (All we know is that it in some way involves an X-fi and Battlefield 2) has go to be very carefully chosen to pull off that kind of number.

The performance jump just sounds too similar to those OS comparisons where they run a machine with 256MB of RAM vs. 1024MB.

And for the record, no I don't have an X-fi, not that I have anything against them (Despite issues with Creative in the past).

Though it seems I'm an idiot none the less.