I current have an audigy 2 (original) hooked to klipsch 5.1 ultras. People have claimed that X-Fi sounded way better. Im wondering if thats really the case or just a placebo effect. All I can see thats better about XFi is a slightly better signal to noise ratio and this crystalizer thing.

Referring specifically to the Xfi technology, if you want to listen to music with no EQ or DSP, there's no difference between the newer and older Creative cards except (maybe) signal-to-noise ratio.

On the other hand, If you want add interesting effects to your audio, it may be better, but then again most users here are focused on hearing the audio as the producers intended, not otherwise.

I don't know wether xfi is better than audigy2, but my impression is that when listening to a track on my xfi armed pc (without changing the musical content by using things like crystalizer), quality is a tiny bit better than when listening to the the same track on my dap (iRiver H140).
Which tells me that the xfi quality is very high.

DSP, Crystalizer and other bells 'n' whistles are marketing crap, however from what I have heard the device and it's components are quite good.

Speaking from personal experience, I enjoy listening music using 'Bit-Matched Playback'.

*X-Fi Elite Pro has the same DACs as E-MU 1820m /CS4398/
*X-Fi the rest /CS4832/
/Audio is not 'true' X-fi

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view....d=1699&pg=2

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=56933

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multim...ative-x-fi.html

http://techreport.com/articles.x/8884/2

There is a bit of a gotcha with the bit matched output in X-Fi. It was broken until the latest drivers, the output was not bitmatched even when you selected it. There is however one real annoyance left in X-Fi and bit matched output. The digital out is not autoclocking so you have to set the clock rate manually for your source. If all you play is stuff that originated from CD this is OK, set it at 44.2 KHz and away you go, but if you have 88.2 and 96 Khz material as I do it becomes cumbersome to know and switch the clock accordingly. I have been bugging Creative to fix this, it's easily done.

I bought the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude card which is a great card BUt the Creative software is complete crap, full of bugs and useless features.

You must be very careful, most likely they are telling how the internal effects sound, but not about best possible sound reproduction. I think if your goal is to get sound as close as possible to the original, then the sound card is not the most rewarding playground. Just my bet. Any known ABX tests?
Their drivers suck and my x-fi isn't even able (under Vista) to have 2 stereo outputs at the same time. The best I can get is one stereo channel and one with some kind of lowpassed eax effect warbling.

Are you using Creative Speakers? It might be the speakers which are causing it instead of the soundcard. I'm using their speakers and it's always a pain adjusting the volume knob to get sounds coming from both speakers.

Its the first gaming card from creative with pretty good sound quality. Previously people who wanted Creative's effects in games needed to put up with mediocre quality. Otherwise, its nothing particularly special.

Well, I'm not using digital out.

You're refering to a bit of crossfade with headphones, even if you have selected bitmatched output?

No. Two standalone speakers and 2 Speakers attached to a regular amplifier. Nothing special here.