It may take a few years still before those X-Fi's become like €5 each though...I'll just wait and see 😜
But speculating about the future of hardware history is always fun 😁

A3D was amazing at the time. I remember seeing it demoed with two tinny desktop speakers and being amazed at the illusion of sorround sound.

EAX and creatives other technologies are really not very impressive by comparison.

You can get amazing headphone downmix all the way back to the original Audigy chip. I still use Audigy cards today thanks to DanielK's Audigy Support Pack that works with even 7x64.

BTW, I find A3D to be overrated and frustratingly buggy. I know - controversial opinion alert. Aureal cards also don't have a very good headphone mode compared to what you get from an Audigy or X-Fi with CMSS.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Every now and then I read about Aureal and it's 3D sound. […]
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Every now and then I read about Aureal and it's 3D sound.

I'm wondering if the X-Fi card and CMSS-3D will get a similar reputation down the track.

If you have never witnessed a good X-Fi card + decent HiFi headsets + CMSS-3D, then I highly recommend you do. It's really something that needs to be experienced.

I smile when I imagine that one day the next generation will build vintage Windows XP machines and talk about things like this 😀

I have been a Creative Labs whore forever and with the latest X-Fi cards they have sounded even better on my Sennheiser Headphones.

The trick is to not skimp on the sound quality of the headphones 😉

However, I also have a decent set of Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 speakers and these also sound great from the X-Fi cards.

I have played around with the CMSS some but have found many games already have good support in-game for surround sound.

I have yet to try this out using my headphones yet however.

BigBodZod wrote:

I have yet to try this out using my headphones yet however.

Audio is very subjective but I really like what CMSS + headphone mode does for all sources. Definitely try it out.

I recently upgraded my Tualatin-1575 rig's sound card from an SB Live! to an X-Fi and I was actually very impressed by the difference it made. Not only does it sound much better than the Live, but it also seems to have increased overall system performance.

-With the new X-Fi installed, CPU usage actually stays at 0% when playing audio in Foobar2k (used to be 2%)
-When playing high-res FLAC files over a network (6-ch, 24-bit, 96KHz, ~8 mb/s), CPU usage now hovers around 8-12%. Used to be 14-20%.
-Software decoding of 5 mb/s 720p H.264 and 8.5 mb/s WMV-HD video is now smooth. When I still had the Live installed, it would sometimes struggle during complex scenes.
-Boosted 3DMark01 score from 11,340 to 11,610.
-No more occasional pops/clicks in games.

All from a sound card upgrade. Whodathunkit?

It's a shame that no games use OpenAL these days. X-Fi cards can accelerate the audio and do full spatializing in all directions. Combined with EAX, the audio becomes extremely delicious.
I'd appreciate some recommendations of games that utilize EAX 5 fully.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I recently upgraded my Tualatin-1575 rig's sound card from an SB Live! to an X-Fi and I was actually very impressed by the difference it made. Not only does it sound much better than the Live, but it also seems to have increased overall system performance.

Yup the Live has relatively poor output quality on its front-speaker output. If you use the kx drivers you can use the rear-speaker output as front. The rear output is noticeably higher quality. kx drivers are not useful for gaming though.

I had the X-Fi Platinum connected to my Marantz SR5002 receiver using the 7.1 channel setup for PC gaming. I switch to the co-axial digital out via the X-Fi's digital out expansion kit when watching movies via my PC. (The system was connected to my LCD TV). With about twenty plus speakers (including few tweeters) surrounding my room, plus a big SONY subwoofer in one corner, it was a real blast. I sold off the X-Fi, and my motherboard-C2Q system. Right now, only my PS3 is taking advantage of the digital setup.

silikone wrote:

It's a shame that no games use OpenAL these days. X-Fi cards can accelerate the audio and do full spatializing in all directions. Combined with EAX, the audio becomes extremely delicious.
I'd appreciate some recommendations of games that utilize EAX 5 fully.

It was a decision by Microsoft with Vista. They completely replaced the audio stack or something along those lines. I was surprised Creative did so well despite this!

There was a time when I was a Battlefield 2142 addict. The X-Fi with a decent pair of headphones = gaming bliss.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is another game that is fantastic. You can hear the rain fall on a tent for example and all with positional audio. Also makes "hearing" enemies really easy.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

-Boosted 3DMark01 score from 11,340 to 11,610.
-No more occasional pops/clicks in games.

All from a sound card upgrade. Whodathunkit?

I think this is bullocks. Sorry mate, but 3Dmark doesnt use sound for benchmarking purposes. By default, it is only enabled for demo.

It may be though, that your Live! had issues (typical for Live!) with your MoBo (pops/clicks in games). When you finally plugged out a 'problem' out of the system, it may be that overall responsiveness increased. Be as it may, the 3Dmark score should not be affected by SB.

I think I'm secured on that part. Got the X-Fi Fatality FPS (PCI) with the box, front panel bay, remote and the rest included for 30 dollars on a local advertisement site earlier this year 😀

I doubt they will produce many more soundcards directed for gaming, so this may be the time to pick one up. The only downside is that when you upgrade to a Core I7 these days it can be tricky to find a motherboard with a PCI slot. I know there is a PCI-E version as well, but that doesn't have the same amount of connections in the front bay.

Using it in my modern system, but I haven't tried out CMSS-3D, still need to get a good headset for that.

vetz wrote:

I think I'm secured on that part. Got the X-Fi Fatality FPS (PCI) with the box, front panel bay, remote and the rest included for 30 dollars on a local advertisement site earlier this year 😀

I doubt they will produce many more soundcards directed for gaming, so this may be the time to pick one up. The only downside is that when you upgrade to a Core I7 these days it can be tricky to find a motherboard with a PCI slot. I know there is a PCI-E version as well, but that doesn't have the same amount of connections in the front bay.

Using it in my modern system, but I haven't tried out CMSS-3D, still need to get a good headset for that.

Yeah, the PCIe model doesn't have as many connections on the front panel I/O box but I myself only use the headphones jack and sometimes use the mic input jack.

I can see if somebody is looking at using some of the missing inputs on the older model, could be an issue for sure.

I'll just say that CMSS-3D Headphone is the one thing that made me forget about surround speaker systems altogether, and also the thing that got me into Head-Fi. Now I'm packing a Stax SR-Lambda as my headphone of choice...excellent, but expensive. (And it's still way more affordable than the flagship SR-009...)

I am pissed at the state of gaming audio these days, though. Microsoft had no reason to remove DirectSound3D from the Vista sound stack, or even to remove the control panel for setting the default MIDI device, among other things. But no, now we have this software-mixed XAudio2 and FMOD Ex crap in today's games that treat headphones as one-dimensional left/right panning devices, and while it's possible for CMSS-3D Headphone to at least provide a virtual 7.1 mix with such games, native DirectSound3D and OpenAL still sounds superior by far because you're getting that true 3D binaural mix.

To make matters worse, Creative isn't really even trying anymore with these new Sound Core3D devices, which don't do OpenAL in hardware, and THX TruStudio Surround, which sounds much worse than CMSS-3D Headphone from a positional standpoint in my book.

I have a feeling that we wouldn't be in this rut had Aureal survived. They were the only ones to give Creative any significant competition in the gaming audio space. (Well, Gravis could have done so earlier if the Ultrasound hadn't been released at a time when game developers were already standardizing on the Adlib/Sound Blaster architecture...)

Until then, I guess we have to put up with games with graphics shaders out the wazoo that sound worse than games released in 1998. (That's when Thief: The Dark Project was released, and that series still remains my gold standard for audio design in games.)

I got my X-Fi several months ago, then I bought my first set of 5.1 speakers. X-Fi was second hand, and about $35. A good old Xtreme Music. Speakers, brand new good old model, Logitech X-530.
And yea, the X-Fi sounds better than previous soundcards, even with my old stereo speakers. Much better with the Logitech.

vetz wrote:

I think I'm secured on that part. Got the X-Fi Fatality FPS (PCI) with the box, front panel bay, remote and the r

Bargain!

Watched a X-Fi Xtremem Music go for ~ 30 bucks over here. 🤣 I put it 1 dollar hoping I would get it 😜

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

vetz wrote:

I think I'm secured on that part. Got the X-Fi Fatality FPS (PCI) with the box, front panel bay, remote and the r

Bargain!

Watched a X-Fi Xtremem Music go for ~ 30 bucks over here. 🤣 I put it 1 dollar hoping I would get it 😜

You just never know, sometimes you can get lucky 😉

elfuego wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

-Boosted 3DMark01 score from 11,340 to 11,610.
-No more occasional pops/clicks in games.

All from a sound card upgrade. Whodathunkit?

I think this is bullocks. Sorry mate, but 3Dmark doesnt use sound for benchmarking purposes. By default, it is only enabled for demo.

It may be though, that your Live! had issues (typical for Live!) with your MoBo (pops/clicks in games). When you finally plugged out a 'problem' out of the system, it may be that overall responsiveness increased. Be as it may, the 3Dmark score should not be affected by SB.

3DMark01 isn't the only benchmark that increased. 3DMark03's CPU test also increased after the X-Fi install. Also noticed the other day that NFS was not as jittery.

It's almost as if the Live! was hogging resources even when it wasn't pumping out sound.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

It's almost as if the Live! was hogging resources even when it wasn't pumping out sound.

Live! is a bit special for the PCI bus interaction. You should configure your chipset accordingly. (f.e. Delayed Transaction off, PCI Latency 32 or lower)

I usually use the kx driver for SB Live! which works very well for my usage profile. It also has a standard 15 pin sub-d midi/gameport while the XiFi has already a 'special' connector.

As for the XiFi, I still have one in storage. It went there at the time when Creative was not able to deliver a stable 64 bit driver for the PCI soundblasters using the PCI remapping. There was a moment when I was so fed up with BSODs that I removed the card entirely. This went along with other issues as recording from line-in often just delivered noise (the line-in live playback routing was ok). In retrospect I would say the XiFi was not useable in 64 bit windows for several years after release.