Auzentech Sound Card based on X-Fi

Im getting one of these for sure, if it does eax5 and ddl in windows xp

was about to buy a normal xfi card but will wait now
 
I checked with Auzen about this card - and they are NOT writing the drivers for it, Creative are - and that's BAD news as Creative are getting a LOT of flak in the support forums for the really shoddy state of their Vista drivers for X-Fi. Not the best situation for Auzentech to find themselves in. Though the Auzen rep that emailed me said they WOULD do the drivers if/when Creative open up the sourcecode to them...
 
I have an X-Fi music. Would I notice a difference that and a Auzentech card? For mp3 and gaming use?

I'm really pleased with the X-Fi music, I've had it for over a year now and I cant imagine it sounding better. I use Sony hi-fi speakers or Sennheiser HD-595 headphones when I listen/game.
 
Same audio processor, same drivers, different DACs.

I don't think it'll make that much difference unless you have pretty high end gear and very high standards when listening to music (in which case you'd probably have a card made by M-Audio etc.)
 
The only I can see anyone wanting one of these over the standard X-Fi is for the DDL support. If you don't need it why would you bother?
 
I was pretty excited about this card and have been for a while but I think someone just summed up my sudden disappointment, it's X-Fi with better DACs (I don't know what DACs are but still).

All the DD Live and DTS Interactive is not supported by a chip like it is on Auzen's other stuff so it's probably going to be using CPU time, this is a poor proposition. I think I may just buy a normal X-Fi and a seperate Terratec DD Live card and run them both in Vista and save a bit of money as I go. I'll have to wait and see.
 
DACs are quite important - Digital (to) Analog Convertor - so higher quality DACs mean that the information being transfered in Digital will be transfered better to our speakers, basically if the theres no bottleneck, better DACs will result in a better sounding card, as they'll be recreating the analogue signal that little bit better from the digital source.
 
Thanks for the explanation. I kind of assumed that was what better DACs would do and you've confirmed it.

I'm no audiophile so although I do appreciate that the Prelude will be the best possible version of the X-Fi, I just expected it to do more, namely live surround sound encoding. Although they claim it will do it in the future it looks to me as though it will be an almost software solution which to me is a waste of time or rather CPU time.

Never mind.
 
Really stupid question that I probably know the answer to, but why dont Creative such standard encoding? Do they just want to push their proprietary standards?

Its not like the Dolby standard is a competiting standard - its one of the de facto ones just like DTS...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
If you have an X-Fi already, then you can replace the Op amps etc to make you card sound better, just depends how good you are with a soldering Iron :D

That Auzentech card is so expensive. I would agree that it may be a bit much for gaming (although i'm probably sulking as i've just surrended given up my DD Live Motherboard and Pioneer surround sound equipment for use with the 42" Plasma, and now using headphones with the PC lol.)

Matthew
 
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