Yesterday i have read that the ASUS cards are recommended as a replacement for the mid range segment. As well as the Auzentech ones. Beside that, they seem to use the C-Media processors as well.
I have been using my X-FI for almost 2 years now without any problems. I hope i can still say that after i have switched to Win7 next month. A friend of mine had troubles in Vista. The driver wouldn't keep his 5.1 setup and he randomly lost his center box or woofer.

Yes, C-Media processors. Just as WhistlinggDeath said in his post.

I've had the same problems in Win7 with my Xtreme Music. Just as certain problems I had in XP disappeared, new ones appeared in Win7.

TBH, all these sound cards are at best high mid range. For a high end you will need to cash out a lot more and get some kind of DAC that is outside your computer case (e.g. connected via USB). That or use a S/PDIF with a good receiver.

T}{OR, after reading some of your other posts in this thread, I get the indication that you like quality audio......however you then state in the post above you had an 'Xtreme Music' card and you have also mentioned about how you don't rate the X-Fi cards. I was wondering if you were aware that the Xtreme Music soundcard isn't actually an X-Fi card at all - it's a rebadged Audigy 2.

My own personal experience (with the X-Fi Elite Pro used on Vista and Win7) is that the sound quality is brilliant for music and games (especially those that supported EAX5 such as Battlefield 2 with the 'Ultra' settings) but the drivers were nothing but trouble and often caused BSOD's and problems with conflicting hardware such as TV cards. As I mentioned previously, I'm now using onboard 'HD' sound (7.1) with the speakers I used when I had the X-FI Elite Pro and can't really tell the difference....certainly not enough to warrant putting the card back in my base unit and having the worry and endless troubleshooting that goes with the driver and software package.

I was under the impression that Xtreme Music was the only "Xtreme" model with a proper X-Fi chip and others like Audio and Gamer were rebranded Audigy cards? That is what I have read or been told, but you might be right that they are all the same card. As mentioned above, Titanium HD wasn't available when I was upgrading from Xtreme Music. And when I was upgrading, I also upgraded my sound equipment - headphones, speakers, amp and the whole lot to go along with mighty Essence.

I say that they're very much worth it. Why?

-The Realtek ALC889A's analog outputs on my GA-P35-DS3P are prone to buzz whenever I move the mouse or have disk activity going, among other things. It's irritatingly obvious with competent headphones.
-I still play lots of older games that use EAX. Might as well hear them as the developers intended, and ALchemy works well enough.
-Most importantly, CMSS-3D Headphone borders on being an aural wallhack, especially in games that use DirectSound3D or OpenAL (which describe sound with proper 3D coordinates) as opposed to XAudio2 or FMOD (which pre-mix sound into 7.1 at most and stereo at worst before it hits the sound driver, meaning you get height-less 2D sound at best and one-dimensional left-to-right sound at worst), and all it needs is a competent pair of stereo headphones.

Keep in mind that I'm not using the cheaper Creative X-Fi cards, but the Auzentech-built ones (Forte and Prelude, specifically), which also have much less finicky drivers right now. The Titanium HD's said to be just as competent, if not moreso, but I haven't had the chance to test one myself. In addition to that, I exclusively use headphones on my desktop with no loudspeakers whatsoever, and the headphones in question happen to be a Stax Lambda. (In other words, electrostatic audiophile headphones that don't come cheap very often, and by "cheap", I mean "$250-300 for the headphones and a transformer box that still needs to be fed with a speaker amp".)

And to correct an above misconception, the XtremeMusic is a genuine X-Fi; it has the EMU20k1 DSP. The XtremeAudio, on the other hand...basically a rebadged Audigy SE and must be avoided. Still, those Creative cards aren't exactly known for astounding sound quality, especially not with the Auzentech and Asus offerings around (and, for that matter, Creative's own Titanium HD). This is before I get into the ridiculously expensive audiophile DACs with no gaming features whatsoever...

Anyway, one approach I am potentially considering is strictly using an X-Fi card as a DSP for the gaming features while it streams stereo PCM over S/PDIF to a dedicated audio DAC. This way, I don't have to lose out on said gaming features and could even go with a cheaper card that still has S/PDIF output, for the DAC is what will decide the actual audio quality in the end.

Thanks for confirming this. Yeah, it sounds very poor compared to Asus offerings in music playback (still a lot better than onboard audio) but it was reasonably good in games though.

I will try to address all the questions that Thor and others have below quickly, since the Walking Dead Season 2 is about to hit tonight and it is my job to make the popcorn and get the drinks:

1 - A dedicated molex power connector for a sound card is not needed since most APUs only draw 10 to 40 watts at max. The PCI express slot is set by standard at 75 watts max power, and any card that surpasses this is doing so with extra blingy lights or powered amps. Anything about cleaner sound or cleaner power is pure marketing BS (since your power supply powers the motherboard as well). The nominal real reason behind this is induced current changes in the sound card caused by the magnetic field resulting from power flow across the PCI or PCI express slot (from the motherboard), but in any modern motherboard (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, etc...) this is effect is essentially zero.

2 - In the ole days (say pre 2005) onboard sound and some discrete sound cards got a bad wrap for distortion. There were two primary reasons for this; 1 - for onboard sound being output by analogue (thru ADCs), Faraday's and Ampere's Laws, which basically say that a magnetic field (from the motherboard) can induce current (in the analogue out circuitry of onboard sound) causing distortion (or hiss) to the analogue sine waves being sent to the speakers, (Amperes Law says the reverse, a changing electric field induces a corresponding magnetic field change) 2 - Creative cards machine code (drivers) written for Windows XP but being ported over to Windows Vista which changed the audio stack, without Creative failing to take note of how the PCI lanes are effected (notice I did not say PCI express). That is why so many Audigy 2 ZS, Audigy blah blah and X-fi Xtreme Music owners have reported so many problems.

3 - Creative always had a bungled driver writing team that parsed things for marketing needs. Some cards offered Dolby Digital and DTS processing for example and this had to be added an extension to existing drivers, etc... ASUS never went that path when they got into the audio business in 2005, they wrote code for one and only one architecture in C++, making things vastly simpler.

4 - A simpler chip requires simpler drivers. I dont work for Creative or care what their chip can or cannot do, but it is more powerful than any C-Media offering and writing a correct driver for it is likely harder than the simple C-Media audio path.

5 - With the release of the Titanium series of cards, which forced Creative to correctly adopt the PCI-express architecture, and rewrite their drivers, most of the problems disappeared. Those reporting problems are almost always using the older PCI cards (like the Xtreme Music) with Vista or Windows 7. Those using the pci-express built Titanium cards with Vista or Windows 7 rarely report problems.

6 - Which is the most powerful card ? That is likely a tie between the Creative Titanium HD and the Auzentech Home Theater HD, which both leverage the E-Mu processors with nice DACS, op-amps, etc... Which card sounds the best for music listening ? It is a toss up between any of the latest offerings, with maybe a very, very slight edge going to the 124 dB ASUS cards. Which card is the best for 3D sound positioning... easy... its the Creative Titanium or Auzentech X-fi based cards.

7 - How many people can tell the difference between a 118 db rated digital product and a 124 db rated one ? About one in 1 in 764 people. As you can see, that is not likely you, which means the rest is all marketing BS to get you to part with your 200 dollars.

Truth!

Once again, thanks for sharing your expertize with us WhistlinggDeath.



Yes, Essence does use powered amps, in particular - dedicated headphone amp stands out. I've paired my Essence with HD 595 from Sennheiser for audio output and Zalman's ZM-MIC1 clip on microphone for input.