Alternative to Xi-Fi

Kainz said:
If you can find it...

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/auzentech/meridian1.php
http://techgage.com/article/auzentech_x-meridian_71/1
Click to expand...

Not great for gaming, uses a fair amount of cpu occupancy. With 128 voices ultra high quality audio setting in Battlefield 2142 it can use as much as 40% cpu occupancy!! TBH it would almost be rude to use that card in a gaming rig, its beautifully designed pcb layout and silly high grade dac's produce the most natural and organic sound which is pretty much unrivalled by any soundcard!! The X-FI's sound dull and tinny in comparison. I have just spent an unreasonable amount of cash on some Burr Brown OPA627 opamps to fit to my card. With These opamps and quality lossless audio you have a setup that can rival a £2000 cd player :)
 
Hesky82 said:
Not great for gaming, uses a fair amount of cpu occupancy. With 128 voices ultra high quality audio setting in Battlefield 2142 it can use as much as 40% cpu occupancy!! TBH it would almost be rude to use that card in a gaming rig, its beautifully designed pcb layout and silly high grade dac's produce the most natural and organic sound which is pretty much unrivalled by any soundcard!! The X-FI's sound dull and tinny in comparison. I have just spent an unreasonable amount of cash on some Burr Brown OPA627 opamps to fit to my card. With These opamps and quality lossless audio you have a setup that can rival a £2000 cd player :)
Click to expand...

Wow, not seen that card before. It looks good. It's a shame they didn't bother giving it balanced outs really, but then it would use more slots....
 
well I like me x-fi music and fatal1ty headset they work fine but them I'm on XP. Wouldnt touch vista cept at work where I have no choice. Perhaps when it matures like xp has.
 
well im not using Vista.... just XP - decisions decisions...

Creative : rubbish drivers

Competition : better drivers but loads of extra CPU cycles.

Ouch.
 
made a decision : Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI Express.... just checking this will work with the Bad Axe II board I got ?
 
MikeHunt79 said:
Out of interest, has anyone done a test to see how many extra CPU cycles a non-creative card uses (if any)?
Click to expand...

More of an FPS comparison but you can see the difference between a very good card and the hardware accelerated EAX HD optimised X-FI cards

imageviewjt5.png


I think with today’s insanely fast cpu's it less of an issue, but you will be surprised how much of a hit it has on some games frame rate.
 
Last edited:
You would think having a sound card would 'offload' work from the cpu...Not the other way around :P
 
Hesky82 said:
Not great for gaming, uses a fair amount of cpu occupancy. With 128 voices ultra high quality audio setting in Battlefield 2142 it can use as much as 40% cpu occupancy!! TBH it would almost be rude to use that card in a gaming rig, its beautifully designed pcb layout and silly high grade dac's produce the most natural and organic sound which is pretty much unrivalled by any soundcard!! The X-FI's sound dull and tinny in comparison. I have just spent an unreasonable amount of cash on some Burr Brown OPA627 opamps to fit to my card. With These opamps and quality lossless audio you have a setup that can rival a £2000 cd player :)
Click to expand...
True, but who plays some cruddy BF game? :) I'd rather have a quality board producing gorgeous sound then using it for bloated pc titles. Everytime I play tracks over my meridian I'm always amazed at the sounds it throws out, and thats from useless AAC's and MP3s. Soon to be switching over to FLAC though.

How much did those opamps set you back? I noticed that the Auzentech webby are now selling them too.
 
conuk said:
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.
Click to expand...
I'm currently thinking of going for the M-Audio Revolution 5.1 or the Auzentech XFI Prelude. The only downside is I'm probally putting money into Creative buying the Auzentech card. . . . :(

Can anyone 110% confirm the drivers for the Auzentech Prelude fully work with Vista 32/64bit?
 
Kainz said:
True, but who plays some cruddy BF game? :) I'd rather have a quality board producing gorgeous sound then using it for bloated pc titles. Everytime I play tracks over my meridian I'm always amazed at the sounds it throws out, and thats from useless AAC's and MP3s. Soon to be switching over to FLAC though.

How much did those opamps set you back? I noticed that the Auzentech webby are now selling them too.
Click to expand...

You need eight OPA627AU opamps to do all channels on the XM, this is because they are single-channel opamps unlike the duals it already runs. Each 627 opamp cost £11.40 from Digi-Key and to use them they need to be soldered on to an SO8-to-DIP adaptor. It will cost just over 95quid to do all channels :rolleyes:

The 627's are pretty much unmatched sonically but there stupid expensive. If you fancy a decent upgrade from the stock opamps, you can pick up some LM4562 or OPA2134PA which are dual DIP chips, they are "drop in replacements" and improve the sound of the analogue outputs at a fraction of the cost of the 627/637’s :)

Its worth noting that because the DAC and analogue stages are so well designed on the X-Meridian you dont see quite as much improvement as you would if you were to pop a better opamp in the X-Plosion or X-Fi Prelude cards. Its simply because the audio stage sounds awesome untweaked anyway.

FLAC is my choice lossless audio, lossless WMA is pretty impressive to, but its amasing how much better good MP3's sound on the Meridian when compared to other top end cards.
 
Last edited:
£11.40 an op-amp! :eek:Blimey!

FWIW, I've found op-amp rolling makes a very small difference, and it can be hard to tell sometimes... But it often depends on what op amp was used in the first place. I often just bypass them if I can. :)
 
I only have a 5.1 system so only needed six of them, your right the difference can be slight, but it’s a difference for the better and I’m well chuffed with the improvement the 627's have made, I feel it was £70 well spent. Next task is to bypass the output caps and fit a digital clock generator to replace the crystal oscillator that is fitted to the card. Soundcard modding, tis the new craze :)
 
You guys weren't kidding when you said the X-fi was a pain. I am still on XP SP2 and it's been a nightmare trying to get the X-fi Fatal1ty I bought off the MM to work and I haven't even installed Vista x64 yet (I am not looking forward to that). It's sort of working now despite the latest drivers bluescreening my machine several times on boot.
 
Meh, it’s nothing to with the X-FI card itself it’s just Creative. A few years ago a friend and I just couldn’t get the drivers for his old Creative Sound Blaster to install correctly without causing nasty BSOD, my old Audigy did the same on a few installations. Another friends Audigy 4 did the same a few times also. There simply useless, they will sort it out in the end just like they did with XP but it will probably be when vista is eol and a new OS is just around the corner.

How on earth they can have such good hardware designers/engineers yet have such lousy software writers is just beyond me!
 
well since starting the thread Ive jumped ship - went for the Asus Sonar PCI express version... will pop it in tomorrow and let you all know what I think.

First time not having a Creative card so the pressure is on.
 
conuk said:
well since starting the thread Ive jumped ship - went for the Asus Sonar PCI express version... will pop it in tomorrow and let you all know what I think.

First time not having a Creative card so the pressure is on.
Click to expand...

Do report back here please fella, I'm very interested to hear what you think about it (sorry pun unintented lol).
 
I got my xonar d2x a few days ago, running to through a Meier Arietta amp to some Beyerdynamic DT 880's. I am pleased with the sound quality! Obviously a step up from the on board. I've not had any driver or sound issues (using XP 64bit).

I know this doesn't really matter but I may as well say, it looks cool! has a real feeling of quality about it, down to the gold backing plate and colored LEDs inside all the rear sockets (no more faffing around round the back looking for them!)
 
Odd question are the back LED's labelled? I remember reading something somewhere that said Asus forgot to label therefore making the LED's a bit of a guff.
 
Just pulled the PC out to have a look for you. They all have labels as well as being lit in the usual colors.

EDIT: Like this:

end-733.jpg

light2-800.jpg
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom