Analog Devices AD1985 or Sound Blaster X fi? \ VOGONS

Analog Devices AD1985 or Sound Blaster X fi?

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First post, by Rikintosh

Posted on 2021-08-03, 17:39

Rikintosh Offline

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I'm more than 2 years acquiring old hardware to build cool machines for my retro-games, currently I'm building a good old 3.2ghz pentium 4 478, with an Abit IS7 motherboard. This motherboard appears to have decent audio as it has digital audio connections. I have a Sound Blaster X Fi SB550 here that I was planning to use in this setup, but I'm in doubt if I wouldn't be wasting the onboard "analog devices" sound card.

What can you tell me about this?

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Reply 1 of 1, by swaaye

Posted on 2021-08-03, 19:17

swaaye Offline

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If it's an SB0550 that appears to be an X-Fi Elite Pro and is a high quality card. It will certainly outperform the analog outputs on the motherboard and be better for games because it has hardware 3D audio and EAX 1-5 support. It also has good software support for XP through Win 10.

The Analog Devices chip is just a basic codec and relies on software to support 3D audio features. If it has workable EAX support at all, it will at best be EAX 2.0. It could be interesting to try it though. I think it might use Sensaura audio libraries for 3D support. Sensaura was used for products like Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Hercules Game Theater XP, nForce APU (Soundstorm), and the original XBox.

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