Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro advice

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I am looking to upgrade from on-board (AC 97 chip) to a decent quality sound card and the Creative X-Fi series looks pretty good.
I do not need the front bay options because my case is tucked away and therefore of no use.
My wife has loads of old vinyl records she wants transferring over the PC/Disk/MP3 Player and I noticed that the X-Fi Elite Pro has this option by way of a pre-amp. Also, I am using 4.1 Klipsh speaker setup on the PC (pretty good PC speakers and base) which my wife tends to use for blasting her music and I tend to stick with my Seinnheiser HD600 headphones for my gaming...Does this card work well with headphones (any extra juice going into them by the amp when compared to standard sound cards?).

I know a lot of the features of this card will be lost on me and the cost is rather high compared to the vanilla flavoured ones...But since I need to copy all the vinyls and then some more (sister's, father's etc...) and the fact she is going halves with me ;) , it look s viable money-wise now.

What do you chaps think?

Any advice or recommendations would be very much appreciated as this will be a major upgrade in the sound department for me.


Cheers


PS, I also though that there might be a little extra future proofing game-wise when they eventually support some of the features this card has to offer (I think there are only a couple at the moment)...
Do I sound like a desperate upgrade junky trying to convince himself that he needs a fix by any chance? :D
 
I'd go for it, I've got one and it's a brilliant card. They work brilliantly with headphones for gaming since they've got this CMSS-3D headphone surround option which actually gives some very convincing virtual surround sound. It should sound amazing with your HD600 :)

As for transferring Vinyls, I've never tried it but it does come with some software for doing exactly that so it should be nice and easy.

Plus you've got X-Ram and EAX 5 and such which might come in handy in the future, and you've got a great sounding card for the moment. You know you want it :D
 
The Elite Pro is pretty much the most versatile card right now. For game it is every bit as good as the other X-Fi card.. and for music it sports better DAC/Op-amp to other X-Fi card. It's not likely to become the bottleneck in your sound system when used with your multimedia speakers (even the Klipsh). Having said that, the Senn's are demanding cans too and you will push the card unamped. It'll still sound far, far than the AC 97 though, assuming it is anything like the Beyerdynamic (which makes a very big difference going from onboard to decent sound card). The bottom line, it is the best PC source you can get if you want gaming and music in one. It's not quite the end-and-all, but it is a major step forward :)
But as far as I know, the break-out box does not act as a dedicated amp. It does have some op-amp to drive headphones, but perhaps not as good as the the speaker line-out (which goes to the speaker). What I do is to attach my Grado (easy to drive) to the break-out box, use a splitter to the front speaker line out and attach my front speakers/headphone amp to it (switching the amp on and off allow me to control whether I want sound out of my headphones or not, which is handy). But really, that's knitpicking, I know some people on head-fi mention that the breakout box is not that fantastic, but it is decent IMO, and you may find that you won't notice any difference between the break-out box and the line out.
 
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Thank you both for the replies gentlemen, very helpfull and informative.

I'm off to do some research online for both reviews and price; but so far this looks like the card to get.

Cheers!
 
I'm using those drivers. They're a bit old and updates don't seem to come very frequently, but I have no issues with the card whatsoever so I suppose it doesn't really matter. And the sound quality really is incredible - with my Aego M's everything sounds stunning. I'm sure your Klipsh speakers should sound very nice as well.
 
Installed it yesterday (made sure I installed the latest QuickTime version , disabled onboard sound card, removed old drivers etc) and all went without a hitch. I was rather relieved because I still have bad memories of using Win 98 and Creative cards in the past; things have certainly moved since then(I am now using XP...).

First off let me make one thing clear, I am not audiophile; I am just a normal human being :), my first quick impressions are that there is a big difference in sound quality both in mp3s and games through my speakers and headphones! One thing I did was to have all the in-game sound settings maxed on my favourite tried and tested flight sim and it ran better than ever (no fps loss and greater quality sound). The first time I pressed the "fire canons" button it with it, it scared the life out of me! :D Also the spacial sounds where much improved.
The breakout box is rather big for it to sit under my LCD panel without looking a bit awkward (front end sticks out to far), but thanks to the supplied stand it fits and looks great on it's side.

I have literally just scratched the surface regarding its capabilities and use of software etc, but so far I am very happy with it. The boss (wife) is over the moon with the punch and clarity when she listened to some of her tracks last night and is also a happy bunny. In-fact if anything, with this card I think my speakers and bass box have now become the new bottleneck... :)

Like I said, early days yet but initial impressions are very good.

Thanks for the advice all

S!ap
 
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