Auzentech X-Fi Forte Available Now

[lochabar]

Putting in a word for the YouP-Pax drivers. I have been using them for years. They have noticeably better sound quality than the creative stock drivers, and have incorporated workarounds for most of the problems associated with the creative drivers. If you have a creative OEM audio card that is limited in functionality due to driver support issues, using YouP-Pax drivers will give you back full functionality.

[Donnie27]

Hey, what's up Prelude buddy?

I'm liking it and I'm getting antsy about trying another Opamp or two. I've been experimenting with a mix of Creative and Auzentech drivers and software. Speaking of powerful CPUs, even my Wolfdale breezes through Creative's Bloat. I use Foobar more than anything else lately!

[RPGWiZaRD]

KX Drivers do NOT work with Games correctly and turns the X-Fi into something sounding like motherboard sound for games. As I posted before YouP_Pax and other have modded drivers that mean you don't have to depend on Creative. I use a Mix of You-Pax and Creative on my Xtreme Platinum and Gigabyte P35 with Vista Home 32bit and Newest Auzen ones on my Prelude. In Vista 64bit I'm having more problems with Radeon 8.12s than Prelude According to a bud, it has more to do with the OS that video card.

The rig in your sig should have ZERO problems with any X-Fi of any kind=P Way too many nVidia and VIA bugs were blamed on Creative as well. Sorry saw a lot of BS in the Creative forums posted a few times myself.

DX drivers render the SBLive and the Audigy 1 useless for Gamers. The Audigy 1 was also the worst card Creative ever shipped hardware wise. Its problem wasn't drivers, it was the Card itself. The Audigy 2 and 2ZS corrected those problems and didn't have to be *Crippled or Hobbled with KX Drivers. My wife computer is still using an Audigy 2ZS, WinXP and nVidia A8N SLI mobo with ZERO sound problems. When I had tried to upgrade to the 32X SLI, it never worked (later fixed by a BIOS flash) I went back to the 16X and the problems went away.

I still have two A3D SQ2500 sound cards

There is nothing wrong with my SoundBlaster Audigy + kX audio drivers. Like I said I prefer my current SB Audigy even better than an X-Fi card + Creative drivers but maybe with those You_PaX drivers it would sound a lot better. I need to give them a try right away on my Audigy.

EDIT: Where do you change Treble & Bass in YouP_PaX drivers? Don't seem to be able to. :/ I really prefer the sound of kX Audio anyway.

[kadozer]

Looks like a winner. Hoping for decent Vistax64 drivers.

[Donnie27]

There is nothing wrong with my SoundBlaster Audigy + kX audio drivers. Like I said I prefer my current SB Audigy even better than an X-Fi card + Creative drivers but maybe with those You_PaX drivers it would sound a lot better. I need to give them a try right away on my Audigy.

EDIT: Where do you change Treble & Bass in YouP_PaX drivers? Don't seem to be able to. :/ I really prefer the sound of kX Audio anyway.

There isn't anything wrong with the KX Drivers except they don't support EAX 3, 4 and 5. If I'm going to dump EAX (now Yukon Trooper and Rob might faint) I'd have NO use for any Creative card. Even my old MUSE Game Theater 5.1 or my SQ500 sounds better. Turtle Beech all the way back to the Santa Cruz sounds better.

No, I have an Audigy 2ZS in my wife's computer and no it doesn't sound as good as the X-Fi. IMHO, not even close. I've used KX, Daniel K and even hand made ones that disabled the KMixer on the SBLive and Audigys. I think what you might experiencing psychological since I've have both on the same rig and can easily pick the X-Fi and then the Prelude in Analog mode.

I have better control of all aspects of my X-Fi on my HTPC using the YouP_Pax drivers (my favorite). They sound the same to me they just need less fine turning. They also GREATLY speed up the whole install of Creative Bloatware. They actually make them worth using. I've converted 4 previous bashers of that same software.

[safan80]

Looks like a winner. Hoping for decent Vistax64 drivers.

I'll let you know friday night... late friday.

[Donnie27]

I'll let you know friday night... late friday.

Sweetttt!

[largon]

I can hardly be excited about "gaming" sound cards due to how utterly ridiculous sound effects in games themselves are. No spec improvement will change the fact that there's no realism whatsoever in any and all in-game audio. Take for example your high-end FPS; as you shoot, the first thing you (might) notice that guns give a simple "Bang!", no matter if you're the behind weapon or in front when someone shoots at you. Or in the next room / 20m away. If someone's launching a rocket/missile in front of you, you hear a "SWOosh!", instead of the extremely loud low explosive "B O O O M !" rocket engines give in reality. That is, when you're behind the exhaust. If you are (in front of) the shooter, you will not hear the same loud sound, only a "SWOoosh!". Though, with a weapon such as M72 LAW you will be distracted by the sound of the "hammer" hitting the igniter right by your ear.

What we need is a sound card that is actually an audio-physics card which would actually simulate how sounds behave in a given environment. We need hardware (and an API) that actually simulates the behaviour of sound waves, in air and solids, through obstacles, echoes, distorsions, etc.
Not useless SNR improvements.

[Helmore]

What we need is a sound card that is actually an audio-physics card which would actually simulate how sounds behave in a given environment. We need hardware (and an API) that actually simulates the behaviour of sound waves, in air and solids, through obstacles, echoes, distorsions, etc.
Not useless SNR improvements.

That's they it should be done, but doesn't that require a massive a mount of computations to calculate all that? I'm not sure how it would work, but I think that would be on the same level, computationally wise, as a proper fluid dynamics, IMHO. Which we all know, is very hard to do.
Still, it would be the holy grail of gaming sounds.

[RealTelstar]

3rd party driver support has grown since the Daniel_k incident. Daniel_K even returned and is doing driver releases again.

True. I use them on w7, but i still hear pops and clicks. Moreover, in vista x64 now the secret rabbit code in foobar stopped working properly. Creative has huge issues with sample rate output.

As somebody said above, my last creative card. Auzen, maybe. Also check my thread in general hardware/sound about comparison between the forte and the Essence stx.

[RPGWiZaRD]

There isn't anything wrong with the KX Drivers except they don't support EAX 3, 4 and 5. If I'm going to dump EAX (now Yukon Trooper and Rob might faint) I'd have NO use for any Creative card. Even my old MUSE Game Theater 5.1 or my SQ500 sounds better. Tuttle Beech all the way back to the Santa Cruz sounds better.

Well I see no need for EAX with kX Audio drivers when the surround sound is better than it was with EAX (EAX was a bit too exaggerated and didn't sound natural when turning around the character especially) and then with kX Audio it works excellent in all games even those who have no EAX or whatsoever fancy sound system support. Take a look at those X-Fi + UT3 threads for example (I play mostly UT3 so it matters a lot to me), people complain about plain non-surround sound as OpenAL doesn't work for this game (crashes), I have perfect 3D sound without OpenAL and can easily listen to footsteps or weapon fire etc to quickly know players positions. Yesterday I played L4D and was accused for wallhack and aimbot only cuz I kept shooting the camping zombies through walls and ceiling or kill the boomers camping among trees, I don't need to see them, I just listen to the noises of the zombies and know exactly where they stand.

But it's not only 3D positional sound that is great, when listening to music it makes it sound a lot more dynamic, I use closed headphones but they sound more like open ones with kX Audio drivers adding a wider sound stage with very varieted sound depending on instruments or tones or whatever played, like they'd come from a different place like when you have an huge orchestra. I tried comparing the YouP_PaX drivers to kX in some Celine Dion songs and with YouP_PaX quality was poorer and the voice sounded like it would be very far away somewhere with YouP_PaX and with kX it's like Celine would be whispering into my ears. kX drivers surely changes the sound a lot more than YouP_PaX does but I could hear an improvement over the official Creative drivers. I've tweaked the settings in kX drivers so these settings in particular may make it sound so good while in YouP_PaX I cannot change almost anything.

So I'm not particularly convinced that X-Fi would sound better than the Audigy (SB0090) card as there's no support for X-Fi with kX audio drivers. Maybe this Auzentech X-Fi Forte would sound better though, but I'd need to hear it in action before knowing for certain.

[Levish]

Only place i found it in stock as of now
http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=...ture=AuzenTech

[IcY18]

Only place i found it in stock as of now
http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=...ture=AuzenTech

It's at Auzentech's website too.

[IcY18]

mm.. keep in mind tho - the way Vista did video drivers was craptastic: no multiple v.card drivers, however in W7 that changes

I'm sorry but this is off topic and i've never heard of this before but i currently house 2 different graphic cards(nV 8800GT and ATi X700 Pro) for two monitors in XP Pro and am about to put together a new system and use Vista. Does Vista not allow this?

[Donnie27]

Well I see no need for EAX with kX Audio drivers when the surround sound is better than it was with EAX (EAX was a bit too exaggerated and didn't sound natural when turning around the character especially) and then with kX Audio it works excellent in all games even those who have no EAX or whatsoever fancy sound system support. Take a look at those X-Fi + UT3 threads for example (I play mostly UT3 so it matters a lot to me), people complain about plain non-surround sound as OpenAL doesn't work for this game (crashes), I have perfect 3D sound without OpenAL and can easily listen to footsteps or weapon fire etc to quickly know players positions. Yesterday I played L4D and was accused for wallhack and aimbot only cuz I kept shooting the camping zombies through walls and ceiling or kill the boomers camping among trees, I don't need to see them, I just listen to the noises of the zombies and know exactly where they stand.

But it's not only 3D positional sound that is great, when listen to music it makes it sound a lot more dynamic, I use closed headphones but they sound more like open ones with kX Audio drivers adding a wider sound stage with very varieted sound depending on instruments or tones or whatever played, like they'd come from a different place like when you have an huge orchestra. I tried comparing the YouP_PaX drivers to kX in some Celine Dion songs and with YouP_PaX quality was poorer and the voice sounded like it would be very far away somewhere with YouP_PaX and with kX it's like Celine would be whispering into my ears. kX drivers surely changes the sound a lot more than YouP_PaX does but I could hear an improvement over the official Creative drivers. I've tweaked the settings in kX drivers so these settings in particular may make it sound so good while in YouP_PaX I cannot change almost anything.

Then to you, largon and anyone else, reading some of the views are opinions and to each his or her own. But the only time I've heard such comments are when folks haven't heard a PROPERLY setup X-Fi on a Half-@$$ed set of speakers or never heard one at all. They have RightMark software to measure sound card performance. X-Fi does better with the benchmark. Again, I wished they had one for Game Sounds.

EAX doesn't do or isn't surround sound. The surround sound is provided by either a 3rd Party sound engine like the one used by Half Life 2, Direct Sound 3D or OpenAL. EAX is sound effects that livens or adds to these surround sounds. X-Fi provides local processing to avoid Latency or Delay that CPU processing causes due to the PCI BUS latency(traffic-Polling).

The Audigys (ALL OF THEM even the A4-Pro) can't touch the X-Fi and aren't even in the same class as the Prelude even with stock Opamps. I don't know what else to tell you but Drivers can't overcome at best mid-range hardware like the Opamps the Audigys uses. You have to do more than just bypassing the Kmixer or whatever. The cheapest Asus card sounds better. My old SQ 2500 sounds better than all but the Top Audigy. Dewd, I'll say it right here and now that you're cheating yourself. X-Fi doesn't have any driver problems with your rig.

All I play (besides a few flight sims) are First person shooters and even play some them with a Force Feed Joystick. One person trying out my system thought the FF joystick made sounds since the sounds seemed to be coming from the Joystick as he shot the Gun. I had to turn off the sound before he believed me.

Sound Stage? 13 out of 15 people have thought my Center Channel was on while I had it set to 2Ch Stereo. One guy just said sure it sounds like the Center is on but no way that Center speaker sounds that good. Try the sound tracks from City of Angels and Titan A.E. . Between these two just about every Music style/type is represented.

I haven't played UT3 but have played all the Army games, Quakes-Dooms, CoD, Stalkers, Prey, FEAR and many others. I get full EAX that is adjustable BTW with my Sound System and Cans->BD 770 Pro 80's.

[tiro_uspsss]

I'm sorry but this is off topic and i've never heard of this before but i currently house 2 different graphic cards(nV 8800GT and ATi X700 Pro) for two monitors in XP Pro and am about to put together a new system and use Vista. Does Vista not allow this?

nope, not possible, Vista doesnt allow

psst - why u using 2 cards for 2 monitors?

[SamHughe]

I tried comparing the YouP_PaX drivers to kX in some Celine Dion songs and with YouP_PaX quality was poorer and the voice sounded like it would be very far away somewhere with YouP_PaX and with kX it's like Celine would be whispering into my ears.

sigged.

[lochabar]

sigged.

Sorry RPG....but i snickered too, lol.

[Donnie27]

Simply put, KX drivers does nothing for Games=P KX Drivers are for un-modded SB Card to listen to music is in the words of Spock, "highly illogical".

[IcY18]

nope, not possible, Vista doesnt allow

psst - why u using 2 cards for 2 monitors?

In my short experience of trying to use a single card for two monitors is that it doesn't work very well, not nearly as well as two different cards.

I don't want my whole windows desktop (desktop bar) to extend the whole length of two screens. With one gfx card it seems it thinks the whole window is like one big monitor at a combined resolution. With 2 graphic cards my second monitor is completely independent of the first.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Simply put, KX drivers does nothing for Games=P KX Drivers are for un-modded SB Card to listen to music is in the words of Spock, "highly illogical".

Give it up already, it may not for you or you haven't tested it thoroughly but for me if using the other drivers I don't get near as good 3D positional sound in non-EAX supported games. Why would the kX drivers be worse for games then? Seems highly illogical to me, oh well let's stop this offtopic talk already, at least I will. What matters is that you're satisfied with what you're using, at least I am but since I've had the same setup for so long I'm itching to try something new but it definitely wouldn't be a Creative X-Fi.

[Donnie27]

In my short experience of trying to use a single card for two monitors is that it doesn't work very well, not nearly as well as two different cards.

I don't want my whole windows desktop (desktop bar) to extend the whole length of two screens. With one gfx card it seems it thinks the whole window is like one big monitor at a combined resolution. With 2 graphic cards my second monitor is completely independent of the first.

I've been using two monitors since at least the nVidia TNT days. I have one 22" LCD at 1600 by 1050 and one CRT at 1280 by 1024 with NO problems except 8.12 drivers stops working in Vista 64 for some unknown reason. "Your computer has recovered from a driver failure. Your video card drivers stopped functioning". I love that one big desktop. Soon that will be two 22" or one 30"

[Donnie27]

Give it up already, it may not for you or you haven't tested it thoroughly but for me if using the other drivers I don't get near as good 3D positional sound in non-EAX supported games. Why would the kX drivers be worse for games then? Seems highly illogical to me.

Let's see, you say give it up and I haven't tested when I'm not having any problems at all. Again, EAX does nothing to positions in a 3D Game's space.
EAX adds distance, elevation, Occlusion Obstruction, delay, decay, Fanger, and etc................... to 3D positional sound that's already done.

Music:

Why would anyone take a SBLive or Audigy and try to say its music playback is improved beyond better sounding cards with KX drivers is unbelievable. The Asus Cards sound head and shoulders better than a KX/Audigy. This has little to do with opinion. Right-Mark will verify that, so you please give it up and let it go? Drivers can't replace Opamps or better hardware.

Games:
Just the oposite of what the other poster said I'll quote him.

What we need is a sound card that is actually an audio-physics card which would actually simulate how sounds behave in a given environment. We need hardware (and an API) that actually simulates the behaviour of sound waves, in air and solids, through obstacles, echoes, distorsions, etc.
Not useless SNR improvements.

That's exactly WTF X-Fi does and more. It can recreate the sounds from 4 different areas. Inside and Outside sounds and transitions between them are rendered just as the Game makers intended. Now maybe YOU never heard working EAX, but anyone who has will not just overlook it.

HL2 doesn't support EAX and still sound better being processed locally than CPU based stuff with Latency or lag. Audigy's problem is the cheaper version of the same Opamps the X-Fi uses. Be it right mark or ear, X-Fi sounds better and the Prelude KILLS IT! KX Drivers CAN NOT make these Opamps and etc sound better. Better of using digital out to a half @$$ed descent receiver and real speakers instead of the Computer MM crap

[IcY18]

I've been using two monitors since at least the nVidia TNT days. I have one 22" LCD at 1600 by 1050 and one CRT at 1280 by 1024 with NO problems except 8.12 drivers stops working in Vista 64 for some unknown reason. "Your computer has recovered from a driver failure. Your video card drivers stopped functioning". I love that one big desktop. Soon that will be two 22" or one 30"

When i just tried to run 2 monitors on my 8800GT it only allows me to run the the vertical resolution on both my monitors at 1680, this looks terrible on my 24" which wants to obviously run at 1920. Unless i am missing additional software i am unsure how to fix this.

Edit: Found where my error was, now have both display's running on one card like i had it with two cards. My error was the for nvidia dualview to be an option, both monitors have to be plugged in before the computer is started. The only other options were horizontal span, clone, or vertical span which, like i said earlier resulted in 1 single resolution.

[Bradan]

Separate posts for this reply. Dolby Headphone is NOT good as CMSS3D=P Dolby Headphone can work for Movies because the sounds are Pre rendered. Games are rendered on-the-fly. Using Dolby Headphones can cause more problems than help for Game Surround Sounds and Sound Effects.

You understand that when you use dolby/cmss you're supposed to set ingame to multichannel?

It downmixes 4.1/5.1/7.1 to headphones... on the fly.

I own an audigy 4, so how could i biased?

I have EAX 4.0, which I admit is very good, though the rear soundstage is fubar, and very imbalanced vs the L/R surround. It downmixes from 64 channels vs 5/7 of 5.1/7.1, so EAX kills games that otherwise have to downmix 7.1