Alternative to Xi-Fi

conuk

conuk

conuk

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Getting a bit sick of the random screeching and blips with the Xi-Fi....

anybody got a decent alternative card to recommend?

Dont wanna pay super money .... but will consider whats is about.

Thanks.
 
I'm sure people will recommend the Asus Xonar bit it is a bit pricey. I don't think there is much choice in terms of soundcards, this is one area that needs competition because Creative have dominated the market for too long and not even by having great products, simply because there isn't an alternative. Most of the cards from the past made by other manufacturers are lacking Vista drivers.
 
Got a M-Audio Revolution 5.1, just released Vista 32 drivers, but no 64 yet. M-Audio 2496/192 got Vista 64 beta drivers.

Why are soundcard companies so rubbish in driver support?
 
I'm running an X-Fi XtremeMusic on Vista 64 Ultimate. No problems whatsoever, although this is on a build stretching back to October '07, when some good drivers were released.

I think Creative's support before that left a lot to be desired. Since then I've upgraded drivers only once (last week), and no snags.

All that said, there seems to be a huge element of luck involved in Creative's cards, and as has been said before - its hard to find a decent rival.
 
If you game the Auzentech Prelude and Asus Xonar are great, but both cost well over £100. Rob is right we need some more choice for new gaming cards in the 50quid region. Studio grade sound cards like the E-MU, M-Audio and RME's really wouldnt be suitable for gaming, running very high quality audio settings in certain games would really dig into the cpu occupancy as these cards simply wouldnt offload any audio processing.

For gaming I still use my audigy 4, does the job and has proven to be a great choice for gaming, I could get better but I would sooner spend the money on a top not home theatre sound card.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_Systems

In 1993 E-mu was acquired by Creative Technology (the Singaporean parent company of Creative Labs) and began working on PC soundcard synthesis. Throughout the 1990s E-mu made many different rackmount keyboard-less synthesizers. In 1998, E-mu was combined with Ensoniq, another Creative Technology acquisition. In 2001 the Proteus line of modules was repackaged in the form of a line of tabletop units, the XL7 and MP7 Command Stations, which featured 128-voice polyphony, advanced synthesis features, and a versatile multitrack sequencer.

During 2003-2005, E-mu designed and published a series of high-fidelity "Digital Audio Systems" (computer sound cards), intended for semi-professional / computer audio enthusiast use. They were released under the name E-mu, however bearing a "Creative Professional" label. The card names are number-coded: 0404, 1212m, 1616, 1616m, 1820 and 1820m, where 1616 is a CardBus version and the rest for PCI, while "m" denotes extra high - quality analogue outputs and inputs. The 1820m is touted as the series' flagship product. All of the cards have drivers for Microsoft Windows 2000 and up (32- and 64-bit). Apple Macintosh support appeared to be pending, but may have been affected by Apple's migration towards Intel.

While the core DSP of the cards is the same as used in Creative's Sound Blaster Audigy2 cards (and hence capable of 24-bit 192 kHz PCM sound), official press releases for the E-mu sound cards have emphasized Creative's lack of input on the design, and the in-house development of the cards and drivers — that is, they wanted to distinguish their "own" series from Creative's signature Sound Blasters. Notably, the cards and drivers entirely omit internal wavetable MIDI synthesis, Creative's proprietary EAX sound routines and basically anything commonly associated with the "father company". Although the cards were rushed into market and originally came bundled with fairly raw drivers (which have subsequently received periodical major improvements and even additions beyond the advertised specifications), they have generally met with rather favourable reviews.
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I've had the X-Fi Extreme Music since it was released and a great card for XP the drivers were brill but since Vista came along the drivers have just went downhill. I recently moved from an AGP system (no problems running Vista on the X-Fi) to a PCI-e system where it has given me all sorts of problems with screeching and scratching over the speakers in certain games. I have tried the usual fixes to no avail but will try another new motherboard using MSi at the moment with VIA chipset which could be the cause. It would be great if Creative could just sort out their drivers and get the card working in Vista. Their excuse when Vista was released was that the card was only made for Xp but the card should work in any operating system reguardless. I for one really like Vista and have tried on various occassions to return to Xp but Vista just draws me back..
 
JoeMama said:
Could you please point me in the direction of where to download these 64 bit beta drivers?

JM
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From M-Audio site

Release Notes:
Windows Vista 64-Bit Drivers are currently in a private beta program. These drivers are not yet available for general download. In order to access the drivers at the present time you must become a member of the Vista 64-Bit Beta driver group.

If you'd like more informaiton on how to become a part of the M-Audio Software QA Beta program to participate in the Vista 64-Bit driver beta, please follow this link.
 
Isn't the Auzentech basically an X-fi though? I can't remember exactly.

Are they generally better than the CL X-fi's or?
 
badbob said:
From M-Audio site

Release Notes:
Windows Vista 64-Bit Drivers are currently in a private beta program. These drivers are not yet available for general download. In order to access the drivers at the present time you must become a member of the Vista 64-Bit Beta driver group.

If you'd like more informaiton on how to become a part of the M-Audio Software QA Beta program to participate in the Vista 64-Bit driver beta, please follow this link.
Click to expand...

I was aware of that :)
Your post seemed to indicate that beta drivers were actually available.
 
The last creative card I used was a AWE64 gold :D Since then used on board. Now I've got some decent headphones and amp, the only logical choice was the xonar. Not really fussed about surround systems personally (more a music person).
 
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