26 replies to this topic

[Thorqemada]

TheFlayedman, on 06 January 2013 - 03:28 PM, said:

cmon the soundcard market is dead, the onboard audio on modern motherboards is more than capable for sound effects and music.

I have often experienced that the drivers for onbardsound are rather bad and in the process of generating the sound quite some "content" gets missing!

Even a cheap soundcards get often more sound out of your game and a really good soundcard with acceptable dirvers makes your experience a whole new world of gamesound.
That is why i bought me a X-Fi again - Soundblaster is the "Gold Standard" of Computergamesound and you buy a Soundcard once in 10 years so its cheap too.

PS: The game needs to have quality ingamesound and effects too so not every cheap game will give a difference.
To give an example where you hear the difference very well is "Age of Conan", that was the last game i tried to go with onboard sound.

Edited by Thorqemada, 18 January 2013 - 06:29 AM.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Weird. I put the Tiamats back on this morning to remind myself what the sound of the shorted out drivers was like so i could describe it for the people at Best Buy, and turns out it sounds a lot like it's functional again.

So, like I said, weird. Alls well that ends well, I guess.

EDIT - Ended up getting another shock from the volume control, shorted out the drivers, this time just reset the computer and they worked again. Stupid, annoying, but whatever, they sound fantastic enough for me to put up with this, whereas with a more basic headset, I wouldn't tolerate it.

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 18 January 2013 - 04:36 PM.

[Gremlich Johns]

I still use my CB Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum Xtremegamer card bought, oh, 8 years ago

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Gremlich Johns, on 19 January 2013 - 01:26 PM, said:

I still use my CB Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum Xtremegamer card bought, oh, 8 years ago

Lucky you. I still have my Audigy 2 but it's a paperwieght unless I revert back to Windows XP. Creative isn't hip with the idea of allowing people the luxury of not upgrading to their latest and "greatest" cards, and not writing drivers for legacy material is one way to force that.

EDIT I should mention that, coupled with the fact that SB products have been going down in quality for overall sound, the forced upgrade path forced me to upgrade all right - OUT of Creative products, and IN to an Asus Xonar. Creative wants to pull a page out of Microshafts playbook, that's fine - unlike Microsoft they have viable competiton, so a forced upgrade path doesn't force their customers to buy from them more than once.

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 19 January 2013 - 01:55 PM.

[Thorqemada]

Have you looked for modded Audigy driver like from "Daniel K." or others?
Some people use modded "Auzentech" drivers for their soundblaster cards.

[Randall Flagg]

I went with AKG 701 headphones, SHIIT LYR amp and a Sound Blaster Z card. SPDIF/TOSLINK cable to a analog splitter. The sound quality in music is AMAZING. I was watching Katy Perry in 1080p in awe, lol.



Here is a bad picture of inside the case with the SoundBlaster Z in between the videocards.


The setup as of right now.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Thorqemada, on 20 January 2013 - 04:57 AM, said:

Have you looked for modded Audigy driver like from "Daniel K." or others?
Some people use modded "Auzentech" drivers for their soundblaster cards.

Those 3rd party drivers not only don't fix the non-detection problem for everyone who isn't using Win XP, they also aren't that good. Sure, a few people have "allows me to detect my Audigy" intersect with "works just as good as Creative drivers" but those are a minority.

As for the Auzentech I hadn't heard of that, but frankly I'm done with Creative. As I've pointed out before they now make their cards solely for gaming, the quality for non-gaming use is getting to the point it's almost indistinguishable from onboard audio. They're burning the superiority they had and don't even care, so now and in the future I'll happily give my money to someone like Asus or HT Omega, rather than a company like Creative who's happy to deteriorate their own products and then strong-arm people into "up"-grading.

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 20 January 2013 - 04:03 PM.