My new X-Fi!

[V_R]

Well after wondering whether to get one of these for ages i finally went for it.

I got the Xtreme Music edition as i have no need for the extra I/O drive bay.

Had it a week now and after a few probs with the drivers from the disk i decided to use the ones off the creative website. You don't get all the 'eye candy' that you do with the drivers of the disk but they are so much smaller, 43MB compared to the 700MB needed for a full install off the disk. The only thing is you don't get some of the features that you do with the disk version, like the EQ, which is a bit of a shame but not the end of the world.

Sound wise, well its great! music is crisp and the crystalizer is a nice addition.

Games however sound way way better. Using my headphones, just two channels nothing special and enabling all the tweaks the software offers things come to life. You can actually hear people coming from the behind you and to the sides. Its almost as good as 5.1 or above. Been playing Call of Duty online loads recently, and you can hear people running behind you and trying to creep up on you.

My next thing is to maybe get some Medusa 5.1 headphones to compliment it. The only thing i don't like is that they are 'open' meaning you can hear whats going on outside of the headphones surprisingly clearly much to my girlfriends displeasure!!!

(I bought pair from Ebuyer a while ago, but sent them back because of some loud buzzing they were making) They have grills on the side thus the sound escapes out much easier than normal closed headphones.

Here's a couple of photos of it......

 

[AbsoluteKevster]

A friend of mine bought one of these and told me it really made a huge difference to his game playing....
(And, as you say, sound got more crisp!)

I really ought to move on from 'onboard sound'! LOL

 

[V_R]

Well the funny thing is i thought the onboard sound from my A8N32-SLI DELUXE was great.......until i installed this!

 

[Ian]

Does it make a big difference through normal speaker setups? Must be pretty cool if you can hear people sneaking up in games

 

[V_R]

Yeah, its an all round improvement. I would like a new set of speakers soon maybe some Logitech ones or something similar.

The games sound great, everything is very clear and crisp, you can hear gunshots whistling past and you can pinpoint exactly where it came from, and then fire back!

 

[Alf]

Nice, i want to get a X-fi one of these days
if you want speakers, i suggest Z-5500 from Logitech
but there might be better, but im not too sure whats out these days

 

[V_R]

Nor me Alf, But that is the sort of thing i was thinking about.

Although at the moment i am just 'thinking out loud' as we say over here.

(Meaning i am trying to put myself off spending any more cash for a while!)

 

[Alf]

Well, when you get the cash... you know what to buy!