Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum In House Review

[bapenguin]

Up today for all you PC Gamers is a review (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7521) of Creative Lab's latest offering into the PC Sound Card Market.

http://www.evilavatar.com/images/reviews/xfi/xfi.gif

[NoName]

Good review Bap. I have a Sound Blaster X-fi Plat and I love it. I didn't know that the sounds in games could get that good!

The break out box is so worth the extra few bucks to get the platinum version, there's inputs for everything under the sun on that thing. The sound recording mode is surprisingly advanced having more things than any common user would know what to do with.

Another great thing about this package is the software, Creative actually has some interesting programs to go with the card.

[bapenguin]

Another great thing about this package is the software, Creative actually has some interesting programs to go with the card.

Yeah I wanted to mention some of them but the review just got too long. I really dig their Tag Cleaner program which automatically assigns the correct ID3 tags to Mp3s. Works really well.

[NoName]

Scary enough, with a real mic port on the front of the break out box (not a mini port), the computer's really good for karaoke too. One of the programs that come with the card is a karaoke program, that squelches the voice (mostly) in a song. It works really well.

At least my gf can sing well... I think I could make a small child cry if I attempted it.

[AniAko]

Excellent review bud. It's a weird industry. I in particular, don't typically care about sound quality. If it's got a decent range, 5.1, and dialog shines through, I typically could care less. I don't care because to make my experience better than what I've just stated costs mucho buckos. Then again, audio has always been this way. If you want to hear something good, you have to pay out the nose for it.

[motorhappy]

I sat through the X-fi demo at E3. I'm not an audio guy by any stretch, but I've been feeling tempted to invest in one. The 'crystalize' and 'expand' features really need to be heard to understand how cool they are.

[Jetherik]

Good review BA! Can you comment on the box it self - what does it have in the way of mic and guitar ports (how many?). Is it better box then the Audgiy 2 pro?

[bapenguin]

Good review BA! Can you comment on the box it self - what does it have in the way of mic and guitar ports (how many?). Is it better box then the Audgiy 2 pro?

I'm not sure what "guitar ports" are but, it does accept the larger headphone connection rather than the 1/8" mini plug. It comes with an adapter for that. There's also SPDIF in, Optical in, Midi in and Componsite stereo in. I didn't have an Audigy 2 pro, so I can' t comment on the difference.

[spacerat100]

looks nice but I don't see anything that screams to me "blow $300 on me!" but I also already have an audegy 2 plat

[AniAko]

looks nice but I don't see anything that screams to me "blow $300 on me!" but I also already have an audegy 2 plat

It's the fate of Audio. People will drop $400-600 on a video card for top of the line. But not for audio. Average people notice visual differences easier than audable differences, but the same leaps and bounds made in a $50 to $500 video card can be found in a $300 leap in sound cards.

[51|RandoM]

The breakout box is the same connectors as the audigy 2 pro, minus the two firewire ports.

I have one, and it is ok, wasn't really worth the upgrade from the 2 zs I had, but the front ports are very convenient now that I'm using a headset+mic in multiple games and also playing my consoles through my pc often.

I have noticed one issue, which I'm hesitant to blame on my particular build. Using the optical digital in on the breakout panel, if I'm in game mode, it gets random drop outs. If I switch to entertainment mode, no dropouts from the panel. The input is from a ps2, which I'm displaying on my monitor, while playing the audio for the game through the x-fi and some creative 7.1 setup. That means it isn't a horsepower issue, I reckon, since the pc isn't really doing anything anyways.

Doesn't matter, now that I have a workaround, I just hate switching modes all the damn time. Go into battlefield in the wrong mode, and you end up stuck with medium quality, no eax, until you remember to exit it, switch to game mode, go back in, switch game back to x-fi and high. Real pain.

[KhitomerRouge]

Another card to look into is the BlueGears X-Mystique (http://bluegears.com/xmystique.html). It's a card that can do real-time Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding (aka Dolby Digital Live). If you've got your PC hooked up to a decent DD5.1 system, then it's well worth the ~$80. If you're a music purity freak, it also does bit-perfect playback, as well as passthrough of DD/DTS from DVDs. They've got two more models in the hopper, both of which support real-time DTS encoding in addition to DDL. The higher end model is priced to compete with the X-Fi, but has better quality onboard amps. Again, that's mainly for those who are huge audiophiles as opposed to hardcore gamers.

[51|RandoM]

I still haven't figured out a real need for DTS/DD ENCODING. Decoding? sure, encoding? nope.

[bapenguin]

I still haven't figured out a real need for DTS/DD ENCODING. Decoding? sure, encoding? nope.

Encoding would be if you were gaming on a PC to a home theater receiver. You'd want the stream to be in DD or DTS to get surround sound...of course you could just use line input to the receiver for the front, rear and center channels.

[DoubleUranium]

Do you still need to keep the original driver CDs forever and ever like with other fine Creative products?

[MasterKwan]

Creative has a decent online driver auto-update when you visit their site. You don't absolutely need to keep the driver CD around.

That being said, until the most current driver dump (Nov 15) this POS wouldn't run right on many Nforce 4 machines. In my case there was constant static whenever the disks did something heavy duty. The Nov 15 drivers seem to have solved all of my problems so, I'm reasonably happy with it now. If you buy it, do youself a favor and install the new drivers.

[Edwin]

Other than the card that KhitomerRouge recommended, are there any other sound cards out there that are just as good? I would rather not give Creative any more money as they screwed me over several times in customer service and some other stuff.

[MasterKwan]

I've looked long and hard for a better card. I have a graveyard of cards. I'm still looking for one that does surround sound through the optical interface SPDIF like the old sound storms did (pro-logic).

Most other cards aren't a whole lot better than the built in AC-97. Say what you will about creative (I hate them too) their cards sound damn good though and for gamers where you want maximal FPS, the co-processors built into the Creative cards offload alot of audio processing.

[bobbler]

If I didn't despise Creative so much I might enjoy my X-fi more. Overall its a pretty good card and those features they are touting (crystallizer and all that jazz) actually work pretty well. Since Creative is the only solid choice for gaming/music/movies, I can't complain too much -- I wish Nvidia brought out a PCI version of the SoundStorm (and put more effort into it), it would be nice if the soundcard realm had a bit more competition.