My PC liked to BSOD about 2-3 times daily as well, that was fun. There was no noticeable framerate gain, but then, I'm on a quad-core, so onboard sound isn't going to eat up too many resources. Rather then let you browse for the game's exe or root folder, you have to use the registry path. Alchemy was simple to use if your game is detected, but if the game isn't detected (IE, the Witcher), you'll spend awhile on google. I don't like changing modes between gaming/entertainment, and even if I did like it, it generally requires a reboot to do it, or you get that dreaded "close audio applications" message. On the downside, Creative's drivers are anything but transparent. Like the onboard, I was getting that crackling noise, so it's not the cards, it's most likely the speakers. For instance, the police radios seemed to come in clearer over the game music. Still, I felt like the X-Fi was doing a better job of separating sounds. It's true what they say, that we have a short memory when it comes to audio. Otherwise, it's useless to me.Ĭreative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic:Īfter roughly a week of using onboard, I installed the X-Fi, ran the latest official drivers, and the latest Alchemy. If they could make it so that you can have the pre-set load with a specific application (IE, Windows Media Player, Itunes, etc), and unload when you load anything else (like, a game), that would be perfect. For those who want to mess with that kind of thing, it has some equalizer pre-sets. Bass reproduction is decent, which was a knock I had on my wife's ALC850 setup. On the positive side, the audio drivers are transparent, and you don't have to mess with the card any. I falsely assumed this was my mobo, but when I heard the same exact noise from the X-Fi, I've decided it's either a partially blown speaker, or just a bug in the game. The sound quality sounded fine, however, there was one song on NFS:MW where I could occasionally hear crackling when I should hear a guitar. The first time I did the setup, I was using the most recent driver available, 1.94. So, I'm just going to highlight what I noticed from each audio solution. Since I'm not an audiophile, an in-depth comparison from me would be laughable at best. The only game tested was Need For Speed: Most Wanted, which uses DirectSound3D, so it's an Alchemy supported game. I'm no audiophile, and I'm using a cheap 2.1 speaker setup, the Logitech X-230.
I still had the X-Fi XtremeMusic in my old system, which I was dismantling.Īnyway, I ran the system for a week with onboard, then installed the X-Fi, then went back to onboard. I was building a new PC, and the mobo came with Realtek's ALC885 HD Audio codec, which is currently their highest end codec (their numbering scheme is retarded). So, I've decided to do one in case anyone else ends up in my situation. I went looking for these head to head comparisons a few weeks ago, but couldn't find any.
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