Asus Phoebus vs Creative Sound Blaster ZxR £185 or £200

ViRuS2k said:
Well i will let you guys know what is better,

ordered the creative ZXR. today and it was shipped today. so im going to pick the best card out of them both..... +`s are optional opamps that you can change on the ZXR aswell though i will find out tomorrow what is the top dog ;)
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Will be interested to hear what you think. Please do get back to us and let us know.
 
Get a DAC it's digital and is a one purpose tool designed to meet a specific need only. If all you need to do is get good sound out of a pc it's the way to go these days if you have good £100 upwards headphones or a £300 upwards hifi. It's subjective but I consider a basic £150 DAC an upgrade from a Xonar STX. for those with more money than me the Rega DAC is the next step.
 
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Happy days, just had confirmation my ZxR is ready for dispatch, should have mine in the next day, or so. Got mine at a competitive price! I also love topcashback!
Rroff said:
Common issues being popping/crackling and the screen going black with the game sounds looping - sometimes recovering sometimes not (never happens when using onboard sound), also with creative cards getting random sound drop outs in some recent games for 10-20 seconds that are accompanied by erratic mouse input until the sound comes back.
Nelly said:
I bet if you taken one of those GTX 470's out, the problem goes away... SLI eating up all the Bandwidth.
Rroff said:
The thought crossed my mind but I also tried them in my older gaming PC which only has a single GTX260 with the same results. Wish I'd thought to try on the i7 setup I built recently incase its anything daft like not liking the LGA775 architecture.

Tho I think its just poor drivers - when I tried the daniel k drivers on my x-fi all the problems went away but they lacked some of the features I was using at the time.
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I had the same problems with a Sound Blaster Audigy, with a single ELSA GLADIAC GeForce 2 GTS 32MB, using an Athlon setup - crackling, common occurence back around 2001 - had to use some adhoc latency patch to fix it, something to do with the VIA chipset.

Then when I was using a Sound Blaster Live with a GTX 295, same issue but unticking SLI fixed the issue, so some sort of latency problem, this was also with a AMD chipset i.e. 790FX.

Never had any issues since, but not tried SLI since then either...
 
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bemaniac said:
Get a DAC it's digital and is a one purpose tool designed to meet a specific need only. If all you need to do is get good sound out of a pc it's the way to go these days if you have good £100 upwards headphones or a £300 upwards hifi. It's subjective but I consider a basic £150 DAC an upgrade from a Xonar STX. for those with more money than me the Rega DAC is the next step.
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Get a DAC because it's digital? :P One purpose? Sounds like a soundcard!
 
Got it installed guys.

Sound is amazingly good.
though i havent figured out how to change modes yet, like for instance,

Music mode/ movies mode / games mode ?????? i gather this card does not have 3 diffrent settings like on the XFI lineup ?

1 setting does all im guessing.


sound is amazing though and very clear, no distortion at all.

its a keeper, in my book from the 2 hours of use... :)

+ i can get proper surround with this compaired to the phoebus as in i can select 5.1 setup in windows control pannel and headphones in the software and then i go into game its either 5.1 or i set game to 5.1 and i get perfect surround unlike the phoebus its all done in its software...

also the opamps you get with this card are better than the opamps in the phoebus + the 124db does not hurt bass sounds awesome on dance tracks lots of detail in the lows / mids and highs.
also the hardware is full spec fine gold...

also the breakout box has cable braiding wich is a + aswell.

overall extremely happy.
 
ViRuS2k said:
Got it installed guys.

Sound is amazingly good.
though i havent figured out how to change modes yet, like for instance,

Music mode/ movies mode / games mode ?????? i gather this card does not have 3 diffrent settings like on the XFI lineup ?

1 setting does all im guessing.


sound is amazing though and very clear, no distortion at all.

its a keeper, in my book from the 2 hours of use... :)

+ i can get proper surround with this compaired to the phoebus as in i can select 5.1 setup in windows control pannel and headphones in the software and then i go into game its either 5.1 or i set game to 5.1 and i get perfect surround unlike the phoebus its all done in its software...

also the opamps you get with this card are better than the opamps in the phoebus + the 124db does not hurt bass sounds awesome on dance tracks lots of detail in the lows / mids and highs.
also the hardware is full spec fine gold...

also the breakout box has cable braiding wich is a + aswell.

overall extremely happy.
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Very good, it was the right choice for you I think.

there is no gaming or movie mode or anything like that. Much simpler and easier to use. It's basically just plug in your headphones and play :-)

Glad it worked out for you.
 
ViRuS2k said:
Got it installed guys.

overall extremely happy.
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Give it a month or so and please post back. By that time you'll have had time to experience what it really has to offer and any bugs of course - 2 hours isn't much time at all.

In my experience Creative have always suxored bigtime when it comes to drivers and the crackle/pop has been prevelant on a number of generations of cards. I hope they have learnt and changed but in the 10 years or so of me using exclusively creative cards I had nothing but problems. Asus however have been impeccable with the two cards I have owned (DX2 and STX). i heard about the pheobus problems when it was first launched and generally avoided it like the plague.

gl & hf
 
My last two Creative cards (Original Fatality Soundblaster and my current Titanium HD) have had a few driver issues but I also saw driver issues on my friend's Xonar so I don't think either is immune.

I've had some good results from the third party Pax drivers with my soundcard :) Shame Creative themselves can't get it quite right to begin with. Maybe it's different with these new cards.
 
zoomee said:
Give it a month or so and please post back. By that time you'll have had time to experience what it really has to offer and any bugs of course - 2 hours isn't much time at all.

In my experience Creative have always suxored bigtime when it comes to drivers and the crackle/pop has been prevelant on a number of generations of cards. I hope they have learnt and changed but in the 10 years or so of me using exclusively creative cards I had nothing but problems. Asus however have been impeccable with the two cards I have owned (DX2 and STX). i heard about the pheobus problems when it was first launched and generally avoided it like the plague.

gl & hf
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LOL Asus have terrible driver problems as well. Don't be niave. I have installed 100's of cards from both creative and asus and you are living in a dream world if you think Asus drivers are any better.

Besides that, you are wrong about the Z series. I have mine installed since October and you know what I have had no problems.
 
melmac said:
LOL Asus have terrible driver problems as well. Don't be niave. I have installed 100's of cards from both creative and asus and you are living in a dream world if you think Asus drivers are any better.

Besides that, you are wrong about the Z series. I have mine installed since October and you know what I have had no problems.
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Good for you mate.

Look around and you'l see some others reporting problems.
In fact, I believe creative did a recall on some ZxR versions.
http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=699322
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1744947

This is what pee'ved me off when I first got my X-Fi Fatal1ty. Creative actually changed the design all whilst refusing to acknowledge there was an actual problem with existing cards (they added a heatsink to the X-Fi chip). Sneeky tactics like that pee me right off. I wonder how many people they havn't made aware of the 'recall issue'...

Suppose at least their offering a replacement to those affected, maybe they've learnt from years of losing customers after poor customer service
Anyways - hf
 
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zoomee said:
Good for you mate. hf
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Well Don't take just my word for it, there are lots of users on this and other forums who have purchased a Z series card, have had them for months and there have been no issues reported. So you can rest assured that the drivers on the Z series have been really good so far and it looks like Creative have stepped up.

Also you said earlier that the Essence STX is far superior in quality to the creative ZXR just check the specs. Can you point out what specs the STX is far superior in please? I am just curious.
 
melmac said:
Also you said earlier that the Essence STX is far superior in quality to the creative ZXR just check the specs. Can you point out what specs the STX is far superior in please? I am just curious.
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Well the frequency response is better for a start ;)
I also note there's no statistics around THD for the creative.

Feel free to compare yourself bud:
http://uk.store.creative.com/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-zxr/1-21383.aspx
http://uk.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Cards/Xonar_Essence_STX/#specifications

To be honest there is one thing I will give the creative card and thats the fact it can handle true 5.1 surround (through analogue) which the STX doesn't (but the Pheobus can). However the STX will probably be superior for 2.0 music as its designed first and foremost for excellent music reproduction unlike the other two cards which are for 'gamers' so it's down to personal preference, oh and cost.

anyone who's serious about music/sound will know that 5.1 cans are a gimmick, and your better off using 2.0 cans (with dolby headphones which all these cards support) so it really negates the advantage both the pheobus and zxr have unless your needing 5.1 analogue output. 5.1 via SPDIF still works though.

£119 for an STX at mo, pheobus is £185 and Zxr is £192.
Yes technically not far apart so why spend the extra on either the pheobus or zxr (unless you absolutely need the gimmics - i.e. external mic and 5.1 analogue).
 
Wow, what can I say. Picked up my ZXR today. LOVE IT. Coming from a X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional Series (PCI) edition. Yes its old, such a difference! Clarity, crispness everything with this card is so much better. Refined software, true analogue 5.1, trust me you will notice this straight away!! :)

I may be a bit biased as it has made my weekend :D
 
Just ordered my zxr, been waiting for stock for a while now :)
I'm also coming from the same card supernaut but pcie version
 
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