Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music or HDA Digital X-Plosion

LadFromWales

LadFromWales

LadFromWales

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Looking to get a soundcard, as my nforce2 Soundstorm is giving me no end of problems with GTA San Andreas.

SA with the MTA mod is pretty much all I play at the moment, but when I play it, I get lots of sound issues. When the display is busy, such as at the beginnigs of races, or turning corners, the ingame radio stutters and jumps, using winamp for game music does it too when using the waveout plugin, but the directsound plugin is fine. Ingame sounds disappear randomly and come back later. When using winamp and it stops, exiting the game and checking winamp, will find that it still is in play mode, but the spectrum is stuck where it was when it froze, and the track title is still scrolling. A reboot is needed to resume proper playback.

Chucked in an sblive 5.1, the sound doesnt disappear anymore, instead, I'm plagued by sounds sometimes being replaced by a weird pop sound.

Anyway, looking at either the X-Fi Xtreme Music or HDA X-Plosion. I am worried that the X-Plosions lack of full EAX support will give me the same results with San Andreas that I am seeing now with Soundstorm. Will the X-Plosion function any better than Soundstorm does, at games that are primarily EAX HD etc.

Which of those two cards functions best when it comes to music playback. I'd imagine both cards would sound the same if I were using a digital connection, but what about analog, which card has the best DAC's and OPAMP's? I'd like to be able to connect headphones directly to the soundcard, as the headphone socket on my receiver can't drive my headphones very loud (using an old aiwa mini system just for its headphone out currently, as its headphone out sounds much better than my Sony amp!)

Are there any other cards I should be considering apart from those two?

Thanks :)
 
Currently using Optical spdif to my amp from soundstorm on my NF7-S. Using analog from the SBLive, doesn't sound too bad, but its missing lots of highs, makes music sound very dull, although the bass is there. Newer cards sound much better using analog than the live does I guess?

I know with the x-fi I'll need to buy a flexi-jack converter as it doesn't have any digital outputs as standard.

From what I understand, DDLive can be used as an alternative to EAX?
 
james.miller: do you experience the popping sounds with GTA, or the sounds going missing and coming back, and dropping out music etc?

max power: yeah I'm sure I would love the HDA card, but if I'm going to get the same sound issues that I'm trying to get away from with their cards, it's no good :(
 
hmmm well that issue is different to mine. I've read about your issue countless times on various GTA forums, so you are definately not alone.

I don't lose sounds when it rains, I lose sounds all the time.

I get the feeling the HDA is the better choice, but I don't want to spend £90 and find I'm stuck with the same (or similar) audio problems I have now.

Like you said, it probably is just the poor programming of this particular game, I don't get sound issues in any other games I've played.
 
For music listening, I would say the HDA with its digital outputs would sound best for music listening.

But if your limited to analog, I've heard that the HDA has better DAC's than the X-Fi's (except the Elite Pro) so should sound better than the X-Fi.
 
I didn't say anything at all about using DD/DTS encoding for listening to music.

I said a HDA with its digital outputs would sound best for music, as the DAC's in an audio receiver would usually be of higher quality than the DAC's on a sound card.
 
lol, anyone have the pin-outs for the x-fi ad_ext connector lying around?...

Since I'd have to use analog cables to get multi-channel in games (and my receiver doesn't have a spare set of 6 channel analogs) I guess I'll have to go for the HDA.

Still reluctant to purchase though, due to you saying you get similar issues with your card :(
 
Nothing is using the analog inputs at the moment. The problem is, my receiver doesn't output anything through the line-out when using the 6 channel analog inputs. I currently use line-out to pipe sound to an old aiwa mini system for headphone use, as the headphone socket on my receiver is dire. I should have worded my last message better really :)

I suppose I could split the front speaker cable coming from the X-Fi into two, and have them going straight to the aiwa instead of through the receiver, but wouldn't that decrease the power getting to each device?
 
Tommy B: I've never had songs with lots of bass distort...do you use your soundcard EQ, or do you just let the soundcard output flat, and use your amps EQ?

Anyway, got my X-Plosion, sounds wicked, analog sounds ok, although I don't want to drive my headphones directly from it as sound card EQ's don't sound all that good really. Music doesn't drop out in GTA San Andreas anymore! :D Although there are still missing sounds, which I guess I'm stuck with unless I buy a creative card with support for EAX HD.

I've noticed a bug in the Xear 3D control panel though. If you untick the analog output (which I did, as I don't have any analog attached), then enable DD/DTS 5.1, the rear speakers produce no sound. This is confirmed by playing the speaker test sound, when the helicopter sound passes the rears, its totally silent. Switching back to standard PCM, re-enabling analog, then switching back to DD/DTS 5.1 fixes the problem :)
 
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