Blah, Creative sucks... Too bad nVidia stopped making Soundstorm chips after the nForce2; their real-time AC3-encoded digital output was the first significant innovation in PC sound hardware to come along since the invention of PCI sound cards.

I'll bet Creative didn't even invent this on-board technology that they're selling to motherboard manufacturers -- they probably bought some small company that developed it and then put the Sound Blaster label on it, like they've been doing with all "their" new products for at least the past 6-8 years (when they bought out Ensoniq in order to enter the PCI sound card market).

These days, I'd rather have an on-board 5.1 Realtek chipset than a fancy Audigy/Live card or on-board chipset any day of the week.

These days I'm using an nForce2, although it has a Realtek codec attached to the nVidia MCP instead of a Soundstorm. The only thing I miss about not having an Audigy is that I can't use the kX drivers.

Agreed. Yep. I am also using the same sound codec as you.
It's called something like nVIDIA VAPU/Sonata (ALC650) [Realtek].
Too bad it's not the real thing (Soundstorm). 😒

PS - I also agree with you. Creative have sucked since they entered Sound cards PCI market. SB16ASP was good for its time, though.

I suspect that this Creative's move responds to the fact that they have seen how much have their soundcard sales fallen since motherboards have built-in audio chips. The average PC user simply doesn't buy a sound card and uses the built-in audio, so Creative has here a great interest in entering into this market. Even more, most people who are audiophiles and buy high-quality sound cards simply don't buy Creative's products, but other better hardware such as Terratec soundcards. So I don't see any kind of "altruism" in this Creative's move.

el_pusher: Yeah, Sonata rings a bell - I definitely know I have an ALC650 (my board is a Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2). Do you use the nVidia drivers, or do you use the Realtek ones? I've been meaning to try the Realtek drivers instead to see if they give me any extra features or compatability as a tradeoff for bypassing the nVidia APU and doing all the processing in software.

shadowfax: You hit the nail on the head. Creative would have stayed ahead if they actually came up with new ideas to stay relevant in the marketplace, but now onboard sound has caught up to them and even power users/gamers like me can't justify spending another couple hundred dollars for any small gain that may result from purchasing a PCI sound card.

HunterZ: I am currently using the latest "combo" driver for nForce2 from nVIDIA. Right now it's working fine for me, so I haven't done no further testing. "If ain't broke, don't fix it".

My NF2 mobo has ALC650 as well. It sounds horrible thanks to the craptastic analog circuitry on the mobo. Mobo audio is almost always terrible, and is at best passable. If you have remotely decent speakers you will hear the difference between almost any real sound card and the integrated stuff.

BTW, if you don't have MCP-T you don't have hardware accleration. And also the real "Soundstorm" NVAPU in MCP-T still goes thru a cheap codec and across the noisy motherboard. Unless you use digital optical out.

I've used NF2 MCP, MCP-T, SBLive, Audigy2, and MANY other sound cards. The Audigy 2 is the best thing out there for gaming and general quality sound. It is the most well-rounded card out there, bar none.

I really like the Audigy 2 ZS...apart from the occasional errors which seem to be it's fault (though I have no proof as to what causes it). Basically its the best out there....but thats only because we don't have much choice if you want EAX and good performance for gaming.

el_pusher: It turns out I actually have an ALC655, although I'm not sure what the difference is. Hopefully bigger is better (number-wise).

swaaye: Interesting. I guess that means I really should try the Realtek drivers then, since I'm not getting hardware acceleration on my MCP?

Also, in response to your statement about the noisy codec issue: IMHO, the main cool-factor feature of the Soundstorm is the real-time AC3 encoded 5.1 output, and it's a waste if you're not taking advantage of that. Since I don't have Soundstorm, I use analog. I don't really notice any noise, but I think I'm less sensitive to it than are many audiophiles.

swaaye & avatar: Most third-party hardware supports up to EAX 3.0, and few games use anything newer. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, for me, any technical benefits offered by Creative cards are overshadowed by my loathing of the company's philosophies. I think if you switched to something like a Soundstrom chipset, you'd find that it's really not as bad as Creative would like you to think. Creative's lack of innovation combined with developers' lack of interest in EAX 4/5 has really allowed its competitors to catch up quite a bit.

In fact, I think a huge number of games use RAD Game Tools' Miles Sound System API/SDK for 3D sound in games, and it is able to transparently use EAX or DirectSound3D. Other games tend to use DirectSound3D directly, and a few use OpenAL. In short, no game that I know of that's been developed in the last 3 years or so has used EAX as its sole supported 3D sound API.

With all that having been said, I still occasionally miss my old setup of an Audigy 2 Platinum with the kX Project drivers. I had one of the most complex setups that anyone had seen, with automatic in-DSP ProLogic decoding of stereo streams mixed together with 5.1 DirectSound3D streams so that I could heard both Surround Sound encoded music *and* 3D sounds in games. Morrowind sounded incredible with that setup!

I play Doom 3 and use the EAX 4 HD patch....you have to hear this to understand. It is amazing compared to EAX3. 🤣 From what I've seen in the FEAR betas and demo it will also support EAX4. After all...it did just come out.

It also seems creative is working on something new, I've seen an option to use it before.

I think Soundstorm is pretty decent. I do think the drivers are subpar though. A friend of mine uses a Dolby Digital Soundstorm setup I rigged up for him. He plays a lot of EQ2 on it and I've noticed some audio bugs. And Far Cry had some serious problems in 5.1 with audio placement. The center channel didn't work right at all. However, he doesn't give a rat's ass about keeping it working right so I've pretty much given up. I had a 5.1 setup going for him but he slowly disconnected it and now he's down to a 2.0 😀.

EAX 2 is the maximum supported by 3rd parties. EAX 2 is from 1999 or so. EAX 3 and 4 support some fancier stuff that is often supported. Doom3, FEAR, most Miles Sound System games, Deus Ex 2, Thief 3, Republic Commando to name some support EAX HD (3/4). If you want to see a fantastic Miles Sound System implementation load up Painkiller. It supports the most 3D audio APIs I've ever seen. Pretty amazing. And it sounds great! The recently released FEAR demo has good sound, and situational music.

I just know that what's on my motherboard is awful compared to even a SBLive. I used a laptop with a Realtek ALC205 chip (they all use the same drivers) which was passable usually. It had some big troubles in some games though, like Halo I believe. My current notebook has some even less capable AC97 made by Sigmatel. I also have the Audigy 2 Notebook card which is very nice, but expensive.

The Realtek chips are definitely my favorite AC97 parts though. The drivers emulate hardware sound channels which help it do 3D Audio (but with serious implications for CPU usage). It supports several 3D audio standards including EAX2 and DS3D. It can sound pretty good assuming the analog circuitry allows good stereo separation and freq response.

Audio is almost as important as graphics as I see it. Most people are oblivious to this. Unless they experience what they are missing on a good surround sound setup. I've been messing with the options for sound and gaming since I got my Sound Blaster Pro in '93. I moved up to wavetable MIDI a year later. Heh, nothing since has really compared to that improvement.

Honestly though I think the sound that comes out of Audigy 2 is ahead of A3D 2.0. I own a Monster Sound MX300 and played around with it a few months back with Half Life. HL was one of the premier examples of A3D 2.0. The sound is pretty good. However the MX300 has HORRIBLE DACs and as a result the audio is pretty muffled sounding. A3D offers fantastic 2-speaker audio basically, but 4-speaker isn't as hot. Audigy 2 can produce some stunningly clear audio with fantastic positioning. I'm not sure how responsible EAX HD is for this though. DS3D does most of the positioning duties. Unfortunately DS3D itself is pretty old tech as MS hasn't done much with it since DX7....

So audio could definitely use some competition to push ideas around again. Aureal was pretty good at this. Problem is Aureal sucked ass at doing business and ran themselves into the ground ala 3dfx-style. Aureal was actually built from the remnants of Media Vision (remember Pro Audio Spectrum?) who also crashed and burned. Creative may have some pretty aggressive business tactics but they have been a force in PC audio for almost 2 decades now while almost everyone else died off for one reason or another. Good business decisions may be "evil", and Creative may be somewhat "evil", but they do make good stuff and the engineers behind their chips (EMU/Ensoniq mainly) sure as hell know what they're doing.

The audio levels seem to change when I have my setup in 5.1 vs 2.1 audio (louder per-channel audio in 2.1). Also, I'm not sure if I'm just going deaf or what, but everything coming out of my speakers seems to be quieter than it was 3 years ago -- that is to say, I need to have the level on the speakers higher. Don't know what that's all about, since I still have ears that are far more sensitive than anyone else I know. Sorta annoying, though...(I wonder if the fuse in my amp just isn't working so well and should be replaced.)

swaaye: The problem is that Creative itself doesn't innovate any more (if it ever did). Instead they buy out every new innovator and sell their products as Sound Blasters. Their PCI technology was a result of buying out Ensoniq, and they didn't do anything to improve on that until they bought out E-mu and used their chips to make the Live and Audigy series. They won't add proper AC3 5.1 output (ACTUAL real-time output for ALL of the sound card's mixer, not just pre-encoded AC3 from a DVD or whatever) because they can't buy out Dolby.

I don't think we're going to see any competition in sound hardware for a while because of Creative's business tactics. This is probably why onboard sound has caught up to the same level of capability as PCI sound cards (except maybe for the Audigy) - and has even shown some innovation of its own (such as the Soundstorm's real-time 5.1 AC3 encoding).

I really can't tell where things are headed, but I do believe that supporting Creative's parasitic, innovation-retarding busniess model can only keep things from improving. As a result, I'm going to be giving their compsetitors a chance for a while (like I currently am with my nForce2 MCP + Realtek ALC655).

The one thing that surprises me is that Creative backs OpenAL. Call me biased, but I think it may be because they want to control it just enough to make sure it remains inferior to EAX - the same way Microsoft has their hands in OpenGL.

Speaking of EAX, I really get a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to proprietary APIs that companies push on developers in hopes of maintaining a stranglehold on their respective markets. Direct3D, EAX, and Glide all immediately come to mind. Glide was a big nail in 3dfx's coffin because they kept pushing it when nVidia came along with superior Direct3D and (especially) OpenGL support.

Snover: Maybe your speakers are wearing out... Or maybe you turned down the mixer levels in your sound card? A fuse shouldn't affect anything - it should just blow out if there's a power surge.

For some reason, the rear speakers on my Z-5500D's (yeah, I finally got them after 3 and a half months) seem too quiet - I have to run them at maximum. It could be the acoustics of my room I suppose. Whenever I move, I'll try to place the rear speakers closer - like maybe on the side walls instead of the back, but slightly behind my head...

I know what you mean HunterZ however I'm not one to complain as long as consumers (us gamers) get quality. So far creative hasn't given me any reason to hate them....hell, because of their past quality I went out and bought a Zen Micro as opposed to an I-pod and I've never been happier.

Creative has something new coming which will be the sound equivalent to a GPU....and it sounds exciting.

I've been impressed with the Intel D925XECV2 motherboard that is the heart of my Intel P4 640 3.2gHz system. Intel includes the Sonic Focus version 1.52 "Intel Audio Studio" application for free with their motherboard, which uses the Realtek "HD Audio" AL880 codec. Since the Dolby-Digital Live 5.1, EAX 1.0, 2.0 support are included at the cost of some Intel CPU cycles, it seems as if it is a good trade-off. The Dolby-Digial live is output from either the 5 analog audio outputs or the coax or optical S/PDIF outputs.

In my case the output from the Intel D925XECV2 is via a built-in S/PDIF optical port to the Creative Inspire GD580 speaker system decoder. The GD580 'decoder' does the Dolby-Digital, ProLogic II and DTS surround-sound audio formats. Sure the five attached computer grade speakers from Creative don't compare to my dedicated home-theatre system, but for casual music and computer games the Dolby-Digital Live 5.1 takes any game from the past DOS-era and gives it that more modern all-inclusive 'surround-sound' feel. Heck, it even helps Sid Meier's Gettysburg! and Antietam! from the late 1990's Win9x era.

Key with the Intel provided "Intel Audio Studio" is NOT to allow the Realtek control console "SoundMan" to be autoloaded at the same time. You will get conflicts in the use of the floating-point processor which will lead to a BSOD in Windows XP Pro (SP2). The Intel installer is not smart enough to allow a user to use EITHER the SoundMan or the Intel Audio Studio front-end only. It configures both to load, with BSODs then possible if more than one user is active with Fast-Switching in WinXP. No need for the SoundMan console in most cases, except to load briefly to control the 44.1kHz/48kHz/96KHz and 24-bit settings. You then have to kill it with the TaskManager, it has no shutdown.

I understand the Intel includes the Sonic Focus produced "Intel Audio Studio" version 2.x with all their new dual-core capable motherboards (D945x or D955x) at no cost, so all Intel customers gets Dolby-Digital Live with the Sigmatel 9220/9221 audio codecs. Not everyone's cup of tea, but the money saved on a seperate PCI soundcard could go towards extra RAM etc...

I understand that the nVidia Soundstorm will be brought back in the future for AMD motherboards so that built-in Dolby-Digital Live will be available for that part of the x86 market.

I hope that Creative dies a slow, profitless death as future motherboard HD Audio kills off demand for their soundcard products and crappy, bloated drivers.

dvwjr

Well the minute a high speed card that can deliver great sound without hurting my framerate I'll switch away from creative 😉 Onboard is not for me...

Btw - this is what I refering to: http://www.soundblaster.com/products/x-fi/technology/

Heh, I wonder who Creative bought out to get their hands on that...

avatar_58 wrote:

Well the minute a high speed card that can deliver great sound without hurting my framerate I'll switch away from creative 😉 Onboard is not for me.

I think that Intel is counting on the future dual-core CPUs not being busy enough with current coding standards for Win32/64 games. The fact that a second CPU core is available to handle audio threads may lead to diminishing returns for seperate APUs which do not have to handle the bandwidth of say VPU or CPU.

Your frame-rate won't be hurt on a dual-core CPU from Intel or AMD. Have to keep those processors busy somehow...

dvwjr

I guess it depends on whether the audio cards can figure out a technology that can't be reasonably done on CPUs, like with 3D graphics. Something like audio wavetracing could benefit from a dedicated processor. That tech seems to have been abandoned for some reason though.

Dual core does raise the usefulness of APUs into question though. A sound board with quality components for good output may be all that's needed.

The new Creative xfi sound card processor is 400mhz as opposed to Audigy 2's 200mhz. 400mhz of dedicated processing power! Woohoo!

I was wondering....does anyone know of a site that compares sound quality between USB Audigy vs PCI audigy as far as interference goes? Wondering if external USB sound card is of better quality. (Even tho I hate using USB for such a purpose). Would be nice to see PCI-E external devices.....