Sound Card Hell!

IModIntel · September 29th, 2008, 01:29 AM

Well, I have the ASUS Xonar DX installed in my desktop computer and I gotta tell you Unix, no issues whatsoever, whatever the game or situation. To make sure you have the proper EAX support in games, though, you just have to enable the function in the control panel. For a while I was wondering if it wasn't working, until I found this out. I'm using Windows Vista Business 64-bit.

AfterLife · September 29th, 2008, 06:07 AM

I have a creative X-Fi Xtrememusic, I am very happy with it, I have the logitech Z5500 digital speakers hooked up to it and man does this combination pump some monstrous bass and provides excellent quality sound , I am using the analog connection to play games and digital (optical) to play movies, music and some games that support dobly digital and DTS.

Now for the cons, I experienced crackling sound issue on vista x64 in games like bio shock, unreal tournament III, fear (including expansion), even while playing some movies through power DVD, and while listening to winamp over time the sound quality would detoriate. Now because of this issue I am using windows XP X64, havent experienced any problems , day after day I get excellent sound from my setup. I have a separate partition with vista x64 SP1 so whenever creative releases new drivers I do give them a try hoping that the crackling issue is fixed but noooo, they just dont listen to their customers, their tech support sucks always blaming some or the other component in your system , I had a tough time with their level 2 agents , they had no explanation that why the card was working in XP and not in vista, finally the tech case was concluded saying that it was vistas problem.

The hardware itself is very good , good build quality , top notch components used , they look nice, tons of inputs and outputs but of course you need to buy the live drive for that the only thing is bad customer experience and bad driver support.

IModAmd · September 29th, 2008, 06:13 AM

Here got the X-Fi XtremeMusic too im very happy with it , the only issue i got with the card it's when i play Stalker Clear Sky ... idk if it's the card itself or the game... but when some guys call for help the voices looks like alien voices... pretty strange rofl.... :P

Unixlord · September 29th, 2008, 10:54 AM

Imodintel I would direct your attention to this thread there's many more like this if you look around. The real list of big issues is actually bigger, I'll see if I can dig it somewhere. A lot of issues occur regardless of whether GX is enabled or not so there are no current workarounds until asus get off their lazy ass and fix them.

**Regeneration** · September 29th, 2008, 11:15 AM

All these issues are related to DS3D GX 2.0 EAX Emulator. Even Creative’s EAX Emulator has a lot of issues as well. My HTPC has X-Fi XtremeMusic on XP SP3 and I have crackling noises in games all the time.

If you can’t live without EAX, get X-Fi.

If you can live without EAX, you should go with Xonar or stick with ADI1988B.

If you want my advice, I think EAX is dying since the release of Windows Vista. DirectX 11 is just around the corner, so you should install Vista or Server 2008 to avoid the bloat and stick with ADI1988B until someone releases good audio card.

IModIntel · September 30th, 2008, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unixlord

Imodintel I would direct your attention to this thread there's many more like this if you look around. The real list of big issues is actually bigger, I'll see if I can dig it somewhere. A lot of issues occur regardless of whether GX is enabled or not so there are no current workarounds until asus get off their lazy ass and fix them.

Hmm. Now that I remember, there is only ONE bug in that list that I can remember of: Dialogs and music dissapearing in FEAR. But seriously, that is the ONLY problem that I have encountered with this card. I also used to have a problem with Bioshock but the patch fixed it.