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I bought a Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music just for fun.

Posted by Presto (A) on February 9, 2007 at 14:38:18

Hey gang:

I know Creative gets a lot of bad press. Their name was almost synonymous with kmixer issues and cards that were more geared towards gamers or PC music enthusiasts.

But I gotta be honest here. I got the X-Fi Xtreme Music (for $100 Canadian). It has this "Audio Creation Mode" that has a really powerful mixer, which operates in either WDM *OR* ASIO mode. The drivers might seem "buggy" to some, but the only time I got into trouble so far is trying to change sample rates on the fly. In audio creation mode (the only way to get bitperfect playback) you do need to select the sample rate when nothing is playing. Going from 44.1 to 96 on the fly caused some issues. But they DO warn of this in their literature AND right on the menu where you change the sample rate. That was a nice touch!

You can turn off ALL of the "Creative Effects" in this mixer, and enable a "bit-perfect" mode. I am using it with the Allocator to run three-way active speakers. It's no Lynx, but it DOES use ST 4558CN OP Amps after CS4382 DACs.

High end detail is very very nice - much detail and a black background but no harshness and. Bass is authoritative but not bloated. It may be a tad on the bloomy side, but it's still good and tight - I need to use different low end boxes to confirm this. Sometimes my Access 8DB woofer cabs ARE a bit more bloomy than the tighter Focal 12V726S polyglass woofers.

The more I listen to this card the more I like it.

I know Creative gets a lot of bad press in these circles, but to be fair, they HAVE listened to the requests of musicians and audiophiles. Their "three mode" selector switch (Gaming mode/Audio creation mode/Entertainment (HT) mode) was a great idea - they're trying to make a three in one solution, and they really didn't do a bad job.

I bought and returned an Audigy 2ZS because of kmixer issues. But I'm keepin my X-Fi.

For $100 (on sale), I don't think you going to find a soundcard with better sounding analog outputs that has such a comprehensive ASIO capable mixer. The mixer actually uses a bus matrix so you can mix any input channel into any output channel.

Creative finally woke up and put an audio mode on their cards where their "gamer" features and sound effects can be completely bypassed.

I say "Good work Creative." It's really hard to please everyone, but I think they did a quite impressive job at trying to do just that.

Would I say "forget buying a Lynz - get an Xfi?" Of course not. Lynx cards are purpose built and are top in their class. I'm just saying that for $100 the X-Fi seems to represent a strangely good value! I mean, for $1000 you expect Lynx to be darned good. But for a card at 1/10th the price to be just plain good? That's a decent accomplishment too if you ask me. They seemed to pick the right things to include and the right things to leave out. I don't know if those OP amps are "audiophile approved", but those CS4382 DACs have a pretty mean looking white paper.

Only one thing I noticed about the X-Fi's. They have somewhat of a crawl in the crosstalk as you get past the midband. Some attribute it to cheap cables used in loopback connection for testing.

Not sure about that...

One thing to note: To use 6 or 8 channels out of this card (analog) you will need "special" four pole (3-speaker) 1/8" minijacks. These are commonly referred to as CAMCORDER cables. There are different kinds - you want the generic ones and not ones made specifically for certain camcorders. Your stereo-to-rca miniplug converter cables will NOT work with the surround channels of this card - only on the FRONTS. You can get a "cheapy" cable set from creative for about $20, or for $140 you can get TWO monster cable "pro" camcorder cables. When using ASIO with the Allocator you can't use the front channels anyhow - they're used as a "Send" to get the full-range "mix" onto the ASIO bus. The remaining 6-channels will all be on Camcorder cables. So you can end up spending money on cables that really don't have much good use for anything else. Unless you have a Camcorder collection...

This not-too-serious mini-review brought to you by...

Presto

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Analog Engineering Associates

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