Any new sound cards coming out soon?

hernaldo · 10 Sep 2010 at 13:38

Hi there, just curious if anyone knows if a successor to the X-Fi etc will be around in the next 12 months or so?

Thanks

Marsman · 10 Sep 2010 at 14:04

There is the X-Fi Titanium HD, but as of yet, I don't think Creative has a release date set for the UK. AFAIK, you can only buy it in Hong Kong, or from their HK website. It is a stereo card though, similar to Asus' Essence, so no good for people with 5.1 analogue speaker systems.

Interestingly, Techradar has a review of it, but the page comes up blank. They gave it 3/5. So either it's not as good as people hoped, or true to Creative form, the drivers are dodgy, which gimped the cards performance. Although, not really fair to review a product until the drivers are working as they should be, if indeed that is the case for the 3/5 rating. Wont know really, until the page is working, or there are more reviews.

fozzybear · 10 Sep 2010 at 15:06

There's a preview here.

fozzybear · 10 Sep 2010 at 15:11

Marsman said:
Interestingly, Techradar has a review of it, but the page comes up blank. They gave it 3/5.

It worked for me.

We liked:
Even with the improvements in on-board sound, there's still a place for add-in cards, whether you're gaming, watching movies or listening to tunes. The X-Fi Titanium HD has some impressive specs that appeal to audio purists.

We disliked:
It's just too niche, and too expensive. You could easily argue, for example, that any improvement in sound quality over a cheaper card using the same chip is going to be drowned out by the noise of your PSU.
If you want this kind of audio quality, you're probably not using your PC as your main entertainment device.

Verdict:
Even with the improvements in on-board sound, there's still a place for add-in cards whether you're gaming, watching movies or listening to tunes.
The X-Fi Titanium HD has some impressive specs that appeal to audio purists. A fair shot at the high end, but other hi-fi cards are cheaper and better.

toony12 · 11 Sep 2010 at 15:12

http://vr-zone.com/articles/vr-zone...laster-x-fi-titanium-hd-previewed/9020-6.html

Can anyone explain to me where i plug my toslink cables into this new soundblaster card? I have the digital optical toslink cables, do i need to throw them all away and buy different cables???

Uriel · 11 Sep 2010 at 16:16

The X-Fi Titanium HD looks like the soundcard equivalent of the G92 Geforce 8800GTS to 9800GTX refresh. Same chip, different name. Everything CMSS related has been renamed to THX TruStudio but it's the same thing.

I think the big changes coming to PC audio soon will be software, rather than hardware, based. Stuff like MyEars and Blue Ripple will be bringing X-Fi like audio capabilities to any PC. It'll still be worth upgrading to soundcards and DACs for the pure audio quality boost but for features, the days of dedicated gaming soundcard may be numbered.

toony12 · 12 Sep 2010 at 14:04

toony12 said:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/vr-zone...laster-x-fi-titanium-hd-previewed/9020-6.html

Can anyone explain to me where i plug my toslink cables into this new soundblaster card? I have the digital optical toslink cables, do i need to throw them all away and buy different cables???

can anyone help with this? can you plug a toslink cable into this card and if so where does it connect? thanks

Flanno · 13 Sep 2010 at 02:08

Marsman said:
There is the X-Fi Titanium HD, but as of yet, I don't think Creative has a release date set for the UK. AFAIK, you can only buy it in Hong Kong, or from their HK website. It is a stereo card though, similar to Asus' Essence, so no good for people with 5.1 analogue speaker systems.

Interestingly, Techradar has a review of it, but the page comes up blank. They gave it 3/5. So either it's not as good as people hoped, or true to Creative form, the drivers are dodgy, which gimped the cards performance. Although, not really fair to review a product until the drivers are working as they should be, if indeed that is the case for the 3/5 rating. Wont know really, until the page is working, or there are more reviews.

You can buy the Titanium HD from a well known auction site. They come directly from a Creative distributor in Signapore. I bought one. It sucked. The build quality was poor. Very cheap plastic especially the clear bit which was smudged on the inside. Could only get it recognised in device manager using a 16x PCI-E slot. Also sound quality wasn't on par with the Xonar Essence STX when listening to music over headhones and the drivers were gimped.

I never got around to testing the OPAMPS on the Creative, but by all accounts they have 3 decent quality ones like on the Asus card, and they are user replaceable. I guess this card will be marketed in Europe eventually and it looks on paper like it combines all the advantages of the Asus card (high s/n ratio, heaphone amp, replaceable opamps) with all the features of previous creative cards (EAX or TruStudio, CMSS3D etc..).

In the end I bought an external DAC for my music, and stuck with the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty/Head Amp for games as I wanted CMSS3D which I prefer to Asus's Dolby Heaphone mode.

Marsman · 13 Sep 2010 at 10:35

toony12 said:
can anyone help with this? can you plug a toslink cable into this card and if so where does it connect? thanks

Yes, the optical cable will plug into one of the sockets. Likely it will be the 3.5mm style types. If you have the other more common type, you can get an adaptor, like this: