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Topic: The Consumer Best Sound Card (Read 13125 times) previous topic - next topic
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The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #1 –
Interesting read, but I'm sure Creative will figure out a way to screw it up
"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight."  Neil Peart  'Resist'

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #2 –
iirc the super chip doesnt help with DAC or ADC, its just a big resampler with built in effects, that will mainly be of use to gaming APIs - thats all 
no conscience > no custom

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #3 –
Let's hope Envy 24 based chipsets are here to stay ...
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #4 –
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Let's hope Envy 24 based chipsets are here to stay ...
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296468"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yeh they might be considered downmarket next to creatives great big chunk of silicone that is fwack-all use to music lovers and home studio people 
no conscience > no custom

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #5 –
That piece is full of incorrect information starting off right from the beginning. Creative wasn't the first, they're not the last, nor are they the most successful company in the business.

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #6 –
Quote
iirc the super chip doesnt help with DAC or ADC, its just a big resampler with built in effects, that will mainly be of use to gaming APIs - thats all 
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296448"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I'd say it could be very useful to those of us that record...


Quote
Creative wasn't the first, they're not the last, nor are they the most successful company in the business.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296479"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I'd argue that they have been the most succesful.  I can't stand Creative as a company, but they have pretty much cornered the sound card market.  Walk into a CompUSA and try to find a card beside a Creative, Emu (Creative) or a cheap CompUSA branded cheapie...
"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight."  Neil Peart  'Resist'

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #7 –
A properly programmed and beefy signal processor can indeed help a good DAC give out more linear output. It's all in how you program it.

However, looking at the article, it looks like the the chip retains it's 44.1->48kHz resampling heritage (?). If this is so, I it somewhat unfortunate, even if mandated by some obsolete PC audio specification from the last century.

I at least hope that the digital output will be bit-accurate at 44.1kHz this time around.

But let's not judge it before the actual cards using the chip are out. Maybe Creative let the E-MU guys have a hand in the design (hope spring eternal).

regards,
halcyon

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #8 –
There's no native 44.1khz mode, and the effects processor isn't upgraded to 24/96, still 16/48? What exactly is this, another EMU10k2.xxx being passed on as new? 

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #9 –
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... looking at the article, it looks like the the chip retains it's 44.1->48kHz resampling heritage (?).[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

As far as I can see from [a href="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1813722,00.asp]this page[/url], it still resamples.

"The X-Fi's core can run at two internal sampling rates, 44.1 KHz and 48 KHz, although it will only run at 44.1KHz in Creation mode, and if you specifically tell it to do so."

I'm not sure what Creation mode is and since I don't know what it is, I'm not sure if I'd be in it during things I do (like CD playback) that would take advantage of the chip running at 44.1KHz to avoid resampling. But, atleast you can make the chip run at either 44.1KHz or 48KHz whenever you see fit. Other than that, I didn't comprehend much about the bit/Khz talk.

Would anyone be so kind to give a quick run down of the differences of the old and new chips?

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #10 –
Its an amazing size - has about the same transistor count as AthlonXP or Pentium4, counting cache logic in or not, should be a very powerful and high quality DSP for its sound driver to use.
There could be chipsets that come with this chip, but still have crackly lineouts because of the usual interference problems. Its only helping sound quality in that its not harming it, more about distribution of processing in the pc architecture, so unless a system is pressed for processing power or I/O resources it looks like overkill. -its dsp might provide useful functions for speech recognition or encoding.
no conscience > no custom

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #11 –
Quote
Let's hope Envy 24 based chipsets are here to stay ...
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296468"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


is there somewhere a list with all soundcards which are based on the envy 24 chipset?

-andy-

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #12 –
The DSP afaik is mainly for effects, which means mostly games. And aplying effects and 3d calculations on 32  (or however many it supports) sounds is not something a CPU can easily do whilst still maintaining a decent framerate.

Looks like Creative have some decent hardware on the drawing board. I'm holding my breath for the drivers.
Veni Vidi Vorbis.

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #13 –
Quote
Looks like Creative have some decent hardware on the drawing board. I'm holding my breath for the drivers.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296705"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I'll send the paramedics...
"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight."  Neil Peart  'Resist'

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #14 –
It looks like a big marketing-oriented patch to their line of emu processor cards. Guess who is going to pay a 11x increase in the transistor size of the dsp? The users, to some extent. With which benefits? Very little in practice, but I guess huge, there at marketing-world.

Why make a new dsp that has 11 times more transistors, mainly just for good resampling? Why not do what everybody else does, which is run natively at the frequency desired, which is a much simpler and cheaper solution, but equally effective? I guess that just to be able to say that they also can now do effects processing at 96 KHz. But, that is just a marketing argument. For games (and for most things too), 48 KHz is overkill for effects processing, and, in fact, gaming people don't pay such attention to audio quality.

Anyway, I don't think people should be willing to pay the extra cost of the huge DSP this line of cards will have, but I could be wrong. After all, some pay for ultra expensive latest-model graphic cards. I guess Creative wants to enter that game. Or maybe they finally make the cards not much more expensive, and simply want to sell a lot of them with the excuse of their enhanced performance.

BTW, some errors in the article: it's false that "Ideally, you want 3-4 samples per frequency sampled". A little more than 2 is enough. Also, measurement of high frequency IMD (caused by poor resampling in current Creative cards) can't be done with a 997 tone, as Creative statements int he article imply.

Edit: some typos.

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #15 –
Quote
I'd argue that they have been the most succesful.  I can't stand Creative as a company, but they have pretty much cornered the sound card market.  Walk into a CompUSA and try to find a card beside a Creative, Emu (Creative) or a cheap CompUSA branded cheapie...


Dreamliner,

There's a BIG difference between most successful CONSUMER CHANNEL product and most successful, period. ESS Technologies has outsold Creative Labs every years since 1995 in total number of chipsets.

Believe me, I'm a Creative fan. I'm the author of the official Sound Blaster book series and know Creative and the others well. From a consumer perspective, there's Creative and that's it, but for a columnist to not know the real facts is what concerns me here. Clearly the guy doesn't care enough to get his most basic facts straight and that calls his entire piece into question in my view.

I read this and it came across like an ill-informed person (or worse, a Creative fanatic) simply re-posting a Creative Labs marketing effort or phone conversation with them. The errors that Kike point out are dead-on and add to the concern. My guess is that sound is not this guy's area of expertise and, if it is his area, then he'd better find a new vocation.

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #16 –
WOW!!! Now my mp3 can sound even better than the original CD!

"The Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor drives new applications that can enhance MP3s by bringing them back to 24-bit quality, and allows the user to upgrade the music to multi-channel surround sound. This enhancement enables virtually all MP3 music to sound even better than it did on the original CDs."

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #17 –
Okay, Creative's press release team can go die now.

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #18 –
Oh man. That is so awesome.

Since they don't mention bitrates, I expect even 32kbps streams will sound just dandy!

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #19 –
Quote
WOW!!! Now my mp3 can sound even better than the original CD!

"The Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor drives new applications that can enhance MP3s by bringing them back to 24-bit quality, and allows the user to upgrade the music to multi-channel surround sound. This enhancement enables virtually all MP3 music to sound even better than it did on the original CDs."
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=297294"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Quote
Oh man. That is so awesome.

Since they don't mention bitrates, I expect even 32kbps streams will sound just dandy!
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=297299"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Quoting for Truth... Creative Press Team are just too 

Regards
-=MusePack... Living Audio Compression=-

Honda - The Power of Dreams

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #20 –
It's even better than MS with their MP3 -> WMA @ 64 kbps transcoding ideas. 

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #21 –
Quote
Quote
I'd argue that they have been the most succesful.  I can't stand Creative as a company, but they have pretty much cornered the sound card market.  Walk into a CompUSA and try to find a card beside a Creative, Emu (Creative) or a cheap CompUSA branded cheapie...


Dreamliner,

There's a BIG difference between most successful CONSUMER CHANNEL product and most successful, period. ESS Technologies has outsold Creative Labs every years since 1995 in total number of chipsets.

Believe me, I'm a Creative fan. I'm the author of the official Sound Blaster book series and know Creative and the others well. From a consumer perspective, there's Creative and that's it, but for a columnist to not know the real facts is what concerns me here. Clearly the guy doesn't care enough to get his most basic facts straight and that calls his entire piece into question in my view.

I read this and it came across like an ill-informed person (or worse, a Creative fanatic) simply re-posting a Creative Labs marketing effort or phone conversation with them. The errors that Kike point out are dead-on and add to the concern. My guess is that sound is not this guy's area of expertise and, if it is his area, then he'd better find a new vocation.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296879"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I totally agree with you, but it's like the video situation.  If you were to ask most people who the most sucessful graphics companies are, most people would say either Nvidia or ATI, or both when in reality Intel ships more graphics chipsets by far.
"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight."  Neil Peart  'Resist'

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #22 –
Quote
Quote
... looking at the article, it looks like the the chip retains it's 44.1->48kHz resampling heritage (?).[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

As far as I can see from [a href="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1813722,00.asp]this page[/url], it still resamples.

"The X-Fi's core can run at two internal sampling rates, 44.1 KHz and 48 KHz, although it will only run at 44.1KHz in Creation mode, and if you specifically tell it to do so."

I'm not sure what Creation mode is and since I don't know what it is, I'm not sure if I'd be in it during things I do (like CD playback) that would take advantage of the chip running at 44.1KHz to avoid resampling. But, atleast you can make the chip run at either 44.1KHz or 48KHz whenever you see fit. Other than that, I didn't comprehend much about the bit/Khz talk.

Would anyone be so kind to give a quick run down of the differences of the old and new chips?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296535"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


The "Creation Mode" also isn't anything new.  The A4 Pro has this mode; it's called "BitAccurate Recording", and is accessible via the control app.  It disables the Effects engine, and all associated apps so that you get bitperfect I/O, and also supports a 44.1 SPDIF-Out mode, but only stereo.  Mind you, Creation Mode doesn't effect PLAYBACK.  A4 Pro still fails udial test.

Maybe the new resampler circuitry would do at least as good a job as SSRC DSP. 
In Case Of Bose, Break Glass
Flac yuo in teh ASIO!

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #23 –
Quote
WOW!!! Now my mp3 can sound even better than the original CD!

"The Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor drives new applications that can enhance MP3s by bringing them back to 24-bit quality, and allows the user to upgrade the music to multi-channel surround sound. This enhancement enables virtually all MP3 music to sound even better than it did on the original CDs."
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=297294"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



Only if they do Impact Restoration and Dynamic Range Enhancement, which I SERIOUSLY doubt.
In Case Of Bose, Break Glass
Flac yuo in teh ASIO!

The Consumer Best Sound Card

Reply #24 –
Picture a futuristic jpeg Renderer - which is photorealisticaly and psychovisually informed, it will discern not only the simplest mathematical patterns within an image as current renderers do, but additionaly, a range of poseable forms which the image could be reckoned by human or apparatus to represent, it could observe the distribution of details and cues, and scrutinise apparent discontinuities throughout the basic mathematicaly described rendering, with programmed knowledge it may estimate the style, condition and object of the preencoded information and re-render a view to fresh specifications.

Future artificial minds may do all of this and more with audio and visual information - perhaps 'Creative' is looking forward to this future. imbo the potential of processing power provided by modern PC architecture (driven by the worlds rich game players now) is far beyond the use we manage to put it to. There is more processing power available than we have the developed sense to employ.

Its fair to be sceptical that such informational processing fluency is just round the corner, but sooner or later it could/should develope within the virtual world as the result of our own minds persistent attentions. %^}
no conscience > no custom