leileilol wrote on Today, 01:19:creative's big brand standard corporate image to assume they're perfection ... they're also CPU/bus eaters (despite the "acceleration")! Didn't realize that until I went Realtek ALC.
Those two points are actually why I gave my old sound cards a rethink.
For my old PCs today, I actually favour VIA ENVY24 sound cards with dual crystal oscillators (sometimes they even have three crystals) - that is a brute strength approach to managing the mix of 44.1kHz (CD) and 48kHz (DVD) audio. But in the 1990s I completely dismissed ENVY24.
Instead, I looked at cards that would "accelerate" a particular A3D or EAX video game. They didn't accelerate frame rates though. Instead, they reduced the deceleration of optional and bloated special effects. So it's the special effects that needed more careful reviewing, and the special effects need speakers.
On that point, I remember very carefully testing some speakers methodically using The Matrix DVD. I had the big-brand Creative Labs Cambridge Soundworks 4.1 vs much cheaper Trust 4.1 and, although nobody believed me - I swear the Trust was so much better!
The Trust kit contained cheap satellites and something that that physically resembled a cheap subwoofer. But, crucially, the subwoofer didn't cover low frequencies and the satellites didn't cover high frequencies either - the whole kit really only produced the middle frequencies. But, the important sounds in polished films (e.g. voice and organic sounds) were also mid-frequencies.
When it came to tests the Trust speakers clipped some of the extreme sounds, but I could hear what everyone was saying without straining. The surround sound spatial elements worked perfectly - bullets that really felt like they zipped past the back of my head. It was actually good to watch The Matrix with that cheap kit.
CSW was different. CSW accentuated the big booms and tiny pings. I could hear more of the metal shells landing on the ground. I could hear more of the collapsing concrete buildings. This was a totally different experience. But, crucially, sounds didn't move - the extreme sounds were far-left or far-right, but they didn't clearly pass each other in the middle of the room. The middle frequencies where the story was, was a muffled mess - I need subtitles to clarify what Keanu Reeves was saying.
The magazines were telling us the SB Live + CSW were bargains, and I began to suspect magazines were being coerced by Creative Labs funding magazines with full page spreads of adverts.
