TechRadar: All Sound cards Feeds

Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series

James Rivington — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:26:00 +0000

Who is you favourite soundcard manufacturer? In fact, can you name any other than Creative? No, neither can we.

Creative has been so dominant in this sector that it's now hard to think of any sound card product in a PC that it doesn't make. And actually, the only threat to Creative's command in the PC sound field comes in the form of onboard motherboard sound.

But really, for anyone who's the least bit discerning, onboard sound just doesn't cut it.

If you use your PC to listen to music or play games, and if you've got a nice set of speakers or headphones, you're going to need a good soundcard. And this one here is the best of the best.

New X-Fi generation

First announced in May 2008, the new X-Fi Titanium series (taking over from the X-Fi Platinum series) comes in two different flavours. The first, cheaper option, is the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series, which you can currently pick up for around £95.

And the second is the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series, which is the version we're reviewing.

The only difference between the two products is that the £160 Fatal1ty Champion Series card comes with an additional I/O drive for quick front panel connection to headphones and headsets. The actual sound card that comes with both packages is identical.

Unlike previous versions of this break-out box, this one offers the choice of placement in either a 3.5-inch (floppy drive bay) or 5.25-inch (DVD drive) bay. The 3.5-inch drive features mic-in and headphone-out connections. This drive slides inside the 5.25-inch drive, which adds RCA line-in connections. It's up to you which drive bay you choose to use.

Excellent sound quality

As you'd expect, the sound quality of this card is absolutely fantastic. It's marginally better than the X-Fi Platinum cards in fact. X-Fi crystallisation works better than ever, while CMSS soundstage expansion also works superbly.

One thing to watch out for here is that the Titanium series is only available as a PCI-Express card. So if you're running an older motherboard, you'll need firstly to check that you've got a PCI-E slot on your board, and secondly that you're not already using it.

Older boards like the nForce 650i have only one PCI-E slot, so if you're running two graphics cards in SLI mode, for instance, you'll already have used up that one slot. But those people with newer motherboards shouldn't have any problems finding a spare one.

Installation of the cards is a fairly simple process, although if you're already running a Creative soundcard inside your system, we highly recommend you uninstall all drivers and software associated with that product before you put this one in.

Easy installation

Once you've done that you need only slot the card into a spare PCI-E slot, put the I/O drive in a spare bay and then join the two things together inside your case using the bundled cables.

Once you've got the software and drivers installed, set-up is also very easy. As with all X-Fi cards there are three basic modes to choose from: gaming, entertainment and audio creation. You can flip between them using the buttons on the front of the I/O drive (in the Champion Series version) or by opening the Audio Console in the Windows Control Panel (both versions).

Here you can change settings, and decide whether to switch on X-Fi Crystallisation and how far to crank it up.

Crystallising is great

X-Fi does a cracking job of making MP3's sound almost as good as CD's. If you're got a terrible MP3 ripped in 128kbps, X-Fi can't fix that. But if you're listening at 320kbps or there abouts, you'll notice that X-Fi is able to restore many of the highs and lows lost during compression.

The X-Fi Titanium series cards also do a brilliant job of pumping out 5.1/7.1 audio for movies and gaming. The audio is smooth, crisp and defined.

Both of the cards also feature Dolby Digital encoding, and a digital-out port for single-cable connection to home theatre systems.

The cards are also now THX-certified, and you can optionally install a THX control panel which gives you new options such as bass boost etc.

These really are two fantastic soundcards. And for £95, the X-Fi Professional Series card is certainly good value. But you have to question whether it's really worth forking out the extra cash for the I/O drive.

If you need front panel access then go for it, but if you're not bothered, we reckon you might as well just go for the cheaper option.

Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series

James Rivington — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:24:00 +0000

And the second is the more expensive PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series.

The only difference between the two products is that the £160 Fatal1ty Champion series comes with an I/O drive for quick front panel connection to headphones and headsets. The actual sound card that comes with both packages is identical.

Installation of the card is a fairly simple process, although if you're already running a Creative soundcard inside your system, we highly recommend you uninstall all drivers and software associated with that product before you put this one in.

Here you can change settings, and decide whether to switch on X-Fi Crystallisation and how far to crank it up.

The X-Fi Titanium series cards also do a brilliant job of pumping out 5.1/7.1 audio for movies and gaming. The audio is smooth, crisp and defined.

Both of the cards also feature Dolby Digital encoding, and a digital-out port for single-cable connection to home theatre systems.

The cards are also now THX-certified, and you can optionally install a THX control panel which gives you new options such as bass boost etc.

These really are two fantastic soundcards. And for £95, the X-Fi Professional Series card is certainly good value. And you have to say it's probably not really worth forking out the extra cash for the I/O drive.

If you need front panel access then go for the Champion Series, but if you're not bothered, we reckon you might as well just go for this cheaper option.

Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:35:22 +0000

There isn't a massive choice when it comes to dedicated sound cards these days.

Sure, there are lots of cards for the would-be musician, but for the gamer or media enthusiast the choice essentially comes down to working out whether to buy a Creative card or stick with the motherboard's chip.

X-Fi Audio

Auzen hopes to change that, by licensing technology from Creative - namely the quite superb X-Fi chip. This is the first time that Creative has licensed any of its chips to a third party.

What makes it an interesting choice, however, is that there are already a lot of Creative cards based on the silicon X-Fi heart. So how is Auzen's effort any different?

Its previous PCI audio foray, the X-Meridian, flirted with being a flawed genius. It was a wonderful card for enjoying music or videos, thanks mainly to the fantastic build quality and engineering.

Yet gaming performance was a significant let-down. Auzen appears to hope that switching to the X-Fi processor will give it the all-round sound card capability that you can reasonably demand for £120.

Worthy adversaries

Unsurprisingly, the main competitors to the X-Fi Prelude are Creative X-Fi-based PCI boards. Or, to be more precise, X-Fi cards bearing the increasingly tiresome Fatal1ty branding.

These are the standard version, the Champion Series and the Professional Series, with the Prelude priced closest to the Champion Series at the time of writing. All of these cards feature a front panel connector, which is an extra purchase for the Prelude (also known as the X-Tension Board).

Because they're based on the same audio processor, there isn't a lot to differentiate between quality of sound - it's all excellent. However, the Prelude has the edge when it comes to build quality and engineering.

The software suite is also intuitive, useful and doesn't smack of bloat. Add to this the optical connectors and the included optical cable, and the Prelude begins to sound like an extremely attractive proposition.

There's even downloadable driver support for Dolby Digital Live, DTS Interactive and ALchemy for Vista-based gamers, although these are still beta versions. Overall, it's an impressive all-round package, despite the lack of a front panel.

Auzen X-FI Prelude 7.1

tech.co.uk staff — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Auzen is building up a very solid reputation in the sound card market. Its previous offering, the X-Meridian was a very capable performer when it came to music and home cinema, but wasn't so adept when faced with the challenge of the modern game.

After all, who wants a game with lush visuals from that four hundred quid pixel-pusher if it sounds like you're stuck in a cave? Unless you're actually stuck in a cave, of course. No, the modern gamer requires that all of his or her senses should be treated with equal luxury. That's why we have such things as top-end mice, monitors, graphics cards and sound cards to name but a few.

The Prelude's price tag certainly marks it out as top-end kit. And the hardware and features list offer no contradictions: as well as the support for 7.1 channels, there's EAX 2.0 and 64MB of X-RAM to go with Creative's X-Fi audio processor. This is the first time Creative has let anyone else loose on the X-Fi, and Auzen has certainly taken advantage.

On top of the impressive features list, the build quality and engineering are excellent, as we'd expect from Auzen. Installation was just as simple in both XP and Vista. And, oh, the noises it makes.

Using one of three default mode settings (for entertainment, gaming or music production) yields quite lovely results. It's the audio equivalent of turning up all the eye-candy and still being able to lock the frames per second to 125 in any game that you choose to play.

Our biggest gripe is that while support for Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive is included, the software for it won't appear until late 2007. We can wait - and we will.

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook

tech.co.uk staff — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Creative has been in the PC sound business for so long we've come to expect great things from it. Yet with rivals offering similar products that are often cheaper, it's had to fight back hard. That's where the X-Fi brand comes in, which has become established as a leader in desktop audio.

Now it's the laptop's turn to undergo an audio makeover, and the X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook is essentially the entry-level Xtreme Audio PCI card in Express format.

Two-parter

The Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook is a two-part affair, with the express card and a speaker-docking module to give you more speaker options, such as connecting your laptop to a home cinema system.

We tested it on a Vista laptop and installed the full suite of Creative's X-Fi software. This can come across as overkill because you're unlikely to use the majority of its functions. However, if you're a serious audiophile or into editing home movies, you'll soon find a use for the host of applications bundled with this card.

Whatever you end up using the card for - and let's face it, gaming and watching movies is where you'll see the benefit - you'll be amazed at just how good your laptop can sound. Portable PCs from leading manufacturers such as Harman Kardon that claim to have serious audio built in never seem to match desktop quality due to their small size.

All that's changed, and now laptops are beginning to outsell desktops it's time we all started investing in some better audio to complement the increase in graphics power.

For certain types of compressed music, the Crystalizer in the Creative software can be very effective, especially with headphones, so there's no need to rely on the basic audio modes in Windows Media Player or iTunes.

Bundled extras include a carry pouch for the express card so that it won't suffer damage on your travels, but the included headphones are only of average quality.

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook

tech.co.uk staff — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Creative's high-end audio hardware gets resized to notebook level in this iteration of the company's X-Fi family, which is welcome news for those disappointed with their lappy's onboard audio (which, to be fair, is rarely up to snuff).

The sound quality is an improvement over standard onboard audio hardware, although it's wasted if you're using a pair of standard travel speakers; you're better off investing in a decent set of cans to go with it.

At around £45 it's not the most expensive upgrade you could invest in, but only those deeply concerned with sound quality or those who have a laptop hooked up for long periods to better audio equipment, need apply.

For most of us, onboard audio suits well enough.

Asus Xonar D2

tech.co.uk staff — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Something feels very, very wrong about acclaiming a sound card for its looks. Isn't that like praising a mouse for its sonic properties, or a power supply for its framerates?

No doubt about it though, the Xonar is one fine-looking piece of audio kit. Place it on a table next to its great rival, the Creative Soundblaster X-Fi, and almost any passing punter would reach for it first.

Its giant, glowing fan-like cover (billed as an EMI shield, but blatantly really there to look spiffy) and multi-hued LEDs in the sockets make it perhaps the only soundcard that seasoned case modders would desire.

But enough jaffing off about the Xonar's appearance - what does it sound like? Really good, actually. Our initial suspicions that it was just a glorified embiggening of the boggo integrated soundchips on Asus motherboards quickly proved ill-founded. Music - even MP3s - sounds absolutely lovely and rich on this, with a great sense of stereo separation.

Surprisingly, our sample tunes sounded slightly better on the Xonar than they did on the Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty used for comparison. It's a difference you need to look for to notice, and won't honestly trouble you unless you have golden ears - this certainly isn't a card you'd be upgrading to from an X-Fi.

Still, that the supposed master of PC audio is gently beaten at its own game by a relative upstart is a shocker. Creative pulls it back somewhat with the Crystalizer function of the X-Fi, able to restore some of music's polish lost in its painful transition to compressed formats like MP3.

There's no such function here, but still, compressed music sounds lustrous enough that you'd be fooled into thinking you're listening to CD rather than MP3.

As a gaming board it's less covetable than an X-Fi. With EAX (the audio technology that applies environmental effects, such as tinny muffling when in an air vent, to in-game sound) limited to version 2 rather than the X-Fi's version 5, those few games that support it sound rather more lacklustre.

Version 2 can only process 32 simultaneous voices as opposed to version 5's 128, and the latter can also apply more different effects at once, as well as having more types to choose from in the first place. Again, it's the sort of difference you're unlikely to notice in practice unless you're actively listening for it, but the X-Fi's definitely the one to go for if you want the best-available gaming sound.

The Xonar's ability to upmix stereo content to 5.1 or 7.1 speakers is undiminished though - our sample oldie Baldur's Gate II filled the room just as impressively as it did on the X-Fi.

Hasta la Vista?

It's also worth noting that the Xonar was able to do this in Vista, despite BG2 being a Directsound game supposedly immune to such upmixing in the new OS.

Creative have the Alchemy app to fix this for X-Fi cards, but no such is available for the Xonar and, clearly, neither is one needed. That's not to say the card doesn't suffer in Vista, though. In fact, the latest Windows positively castrates it.

In Vista, the vast amount of its upmix party tricks (such as Dolby Pro-Logic II and DTS Neo) simply don't work. You're supposed to manually select the number of audio channels the content you're about to play contains and the card can then apply its effects.

Awkward enough in theory, but in practice even worse. Select stereo and nothing you click upmixes at all. Select 6 or 8 channel even for stereo content and then turn on the '7.1 virtual speaker shifter' and bafflingly, suddenly the upmix works, but all the advanced options offered in XP are inaccessible this way.

It's either mislabelling on Asus' part or, more likely, it's still struggling with drivers and is in an essentially unfinished state in Vista for now. Either way, though XP is gogogo, we'd recommend very strongly against buying this card just yet if you have made the Vista leap.

The Xonar's also billed as a strong audio creation card. Its high signal-to-noise ratio and 24-bit, 192 kHz sample rate means it's certainly got the right CV for the job, while a raft of software from Ableton and Cakewalk makes the card's high price less insulting if music creation is your bag.

There's a limited number of inputs though - for the price - and to be treated seriously for music production, this really needs a break-out box brimming with jacks of all shapes and sizes. There's a lone MIDI connector on an optional extra bracket, which seems a terrible waste of space.

Its SPDIF inny and outies double up as either coaxial or optical, thanks to a bundled adaptor. The sub-£150 X-Fis, by contrast, require you buy an extra adaptor to make their digital output do anything even remotely digital.

A final note on a very handy bonus. The Asus PMP app is there specifically to 'back up' DRM-infected music. You can choose a track or tracks, which will then be recorded almost losslessly into a format of your choice, complete with metadata.

Horses, courses, etc

So, a truly impressive soundcard, particularly given that this board doesn't bear the name Soundblaster. It's expensive, it's not quite as good in gaming as the X-Fi and it's severely hamstrung in Vista, but if XP and music creation are your pursuits of choice, we strongly recommend this fine fellow.

Audio Armour

This ain't no fan, despite appearances - it's a 'stylish EMI shield'. Its shielding abilities we cock a wry eyebrow [A wry-brow? -Ed] at, but we'll call it 'stylish.'

Doubleagent

Neatly, the SPDIF input and output sockets function as either coaxial or optical digital connectors. There are four adaptors in the box, so you won't need to buy any new cabling.

Light and Sound

Each socket has a different-coloured light inside. In theory, it makes it easier to plug cables in correctly, though they don't actually match common cable colours. In practice, it just makes the card look all purdy-like.

Hercules DJ Console 2 for Mac

tech.co.uk staff — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

One of the busier stalls at last year's London Macworld Expo was run by a distributor for Numark, who was pumping out DJ tunes from a Numark iDJ iPod mixer all day long.

Remember that one? A lot of you had a go. It was a mixer with twin docks for two iPods that enables you to warp and crossfade songs from both iPods into one new mix. We reviewed it during the run-up to the show. Granted, it wasn't the most technologically brilliant piece of Mac kit, but the appeal was clear to see.

Well, not to be outdone, the soundcard manufacturer Hercules is on the case with an update to its own extremely addictive Hercules DJ Console, which is perhaps a bit more viable for the professional.

DJ Console 2 is basically the same as its predecessor, but with the added benefit of being able to plug in external record decks, or you can plug the whole console into a larger external mixer for club deployment. It doesn't have dedicated docks for a pair of iPods but, instead, works closely with your Mac and music library.

The hardware part of the package is USB-powered with plenty of audio-in and audio-out jacks lining the back, enabling the Console 2 to double as a home audio device. On the front is an array of knobs, buttons, pitch controls and faders to fine-tune your sounds. Two big jog wheels are there to line up songs perfectly onscreen.

The software part is Traktor 3LE. Traktor loads up your music library, from which you select tracks using the console's mini stick and buttons. It has two channels, which you blend and alter using the hardware, while you can also record MP3, WAV or AIF files of your mixes as you make them.

This set-up worked really well. If we had one complaint, it would be that the build quality could be worked on, but still we recommend it and think you'll have a lot of fun.

Creative X-Mod

tech.co.uk staff — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

We love Creative's X-Fi soundcards, so we were best pleased to hear about this external device.

The X-Mod is an external audio resampling device designed to tart your MP3s up to a higher quality. It connects via USB to your PC, needs no drivers, and works by digitally remastering MP3s on the fly to reach higher highs and lower lows.

The device has two enhancement options: CMSS 3D (surround sound), and the Crystalizer - a series of audio-enhancement algorithms which X-Fi users will be familiar with.

It has switches for both, and the result is a rich, full sound which MP3s aren't normally capable of achieving. This little doohickey really does enliven digital music, and at £60, it's not a lot more pricey than an internal X-Fi PCI card.

What's more, because it's a USB device, it can work to enhance sounds from laptops too, which traditionally feature minimal onboard audio hardware.

The only downside we've found is that with virtual surround sound cranked right up, certain music types (especially metal) create a curious, just audible ringing sound.

It's irksome, but as full surround sounds a bit too bright anyway, you generally won't want the feature turned right up. In all, it's a great little device, version two of which will be the bee's knees.

Creative X-Fi Xmod USB sound card

tech.co.uk staff — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Laptops - now outselling desktops in the UK - are undeniably great. This review, for example, is being typed on a three-quarter-sized keyboard in the waiting room of a doctor's surgery. When the laptop storing these words gets back to the office, a proper keyboard, monitor and mouse will be plugged in and full desktop service will be resumed.

For all practical purposes, there's only one difference between this laptop and a PC: laptops make music sound terrible. Kicking back to the classical strains of a Mozart MP3 just pains the ears, thanks to an ungodly integrated sound chip and its sole headphone out port.

It's a common dilemma, but here comes Creative to the rescue with the X-Fi Xmod USB soundcard. We've seen other attempts at this, but the Xmod really stands out for one reason - it requires no drivers, no power supply and it even has its own carry pack.

The design is Apple-rivalling in its straightforward elegance. It has one big set-up button, a volume knob and two switches to turn on either Creative's upscaling tools - the X-Fi Crystalizer, as seen on the PCI versions of this chip, and the pseudo 3D effect of CMSS chip.

Because there are no drivers, you miss out on many of the functions of the fully fledged X-Fi cards, but the Crystalizer really can help to rescue badly encoded MP3s by upscaling them to 24-bit audio and filling in missing data. The result is a more natural sound than can be achieved by playing around with an equaliser. And at £50, it's not an outrageous investment for people who use their laptop for music or movies regularly.

So what's the catch? Well, we can't help but feel that all that X-Fi goodness is somehow wasted on a device that only has a headphone jack and a stereo line out.

Consider that you can invest in a £20 stereo headset and receive an all-too-similar USB sound device thrown; all you really get for your money here is a bit of upscaling and a nice volume knob. What we really want is all-singing, all-dancing multichannel surround sound, preferably with a digital out as well. Only then can we can turn our backs on the desktop for good.