Creative Xmod - Restore your MP3s to beyond studio quality

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: dBTelos
MS Dawn, how come all of your images come from that same root URL? Is that where you host images or something?

Free host that AT uses.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: corkyg
Algorithms, schmalgorithms. I daresay that there is prolly no user's sound system tied to a computer that would allow the user's ears to notice any difference (if it did work as advertised.)

Nearly all of my MP3 listening is done in the car - and that environment really doesn't allow for noticeable improvement to the ear.

My senses agree with MS Dawn.

A few of us have high-end systems hooked up to our computers. My receiver is probably worth more than my pc. I hear the difference between 128 and 192 mp3s. I heard a difference between my ZS2 and X-fi (although not worth the upgrade IMO). I even have a highend turntable hooked up to my PC. Yes, I am one of "those" people who beleive that vinyl (other than ticks an pops) sound better than CDs. So there are a few of us computer guys and gals out their who have highend hi-fi equipment connected to their computers.

Fix your rig link in your sig so we can see what you have.

What high-end equipment? Amplifiers etc? How does it all hook up to the PC and substitute for a sound card? I already have a great visual system on this PC, but I'd love to have a high-end audio solution (higher end than X-Fi and what not) as well.

For Oyeve

If you want to hook up a nicer sound system to your comptuer, you can just hook up your soundcard to an input on a receiver / preamp / etc. From then on you can do whatever you want for speakers.

You can send digital out from your comptuer and have the receiver handle conversions and processing or you can just get a good analog card like an X-Fi and output analog to a 5.1 channel input on your receiver and just have it act as an amplifier. I suppose you could go straight to an amp, but if you have a nice system you might as well have a something between your comptuer and amp in order to hook up multiple inputs.

X-Fi's quality is plenty decent for most people's purposes and would serve you well for a sound system of much higher quality than computer speaker systems. The computer speakers themselves are really the bottleneck in sound quality on the computer so you don't necessarily have to hook to something really special for a soundcard.

If you're doing just music, there are better alternatives to X-Fi, but right now for a gaming card the X-Fi is pretty much your best option.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: dBTelos
MS Dawn, how come all of your images come from that same root URL? Is that where you host images or something?

Free host that AT uses.

Someone needs to get into OT more?

 

[Rubycon]

Oh and image processing and sound processing are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The eye is much easier to fool than the ear.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
If you want to hook up a nicer sound system to your comptuer, you can just hook up your soundcard to an input on a receiver / preamp / etc. From then on you can do whatever you want for speakers.

You can send digital out from your comptuer and have the receiver handle conversions and processing or you can just get a good analog card like an X-Fi and output analog to a 5.1 channel input on your receiver and just have it act as an amplifier. I suppose you could go straight to an amp, but if you have a nice system you might as well have a something between your comptuer and amp in order to hook up multiple inputs.

X-Fi's quality is plenty decent for most people's purposes and would serve you well for a sound system of much higher quality than computer speaker systems. The computer speakers themselves are really the bottleneck in sound quality on the computer so you don't necessarily have to hook to something really special for a soundcard.

If you're doing just music, there are better alternatives to X-Fi, but right now for a gaming card the X-Fi is pretty much your best option.

Thanks for the response. I do little to no gaming so would another sound card be superior to the X-Fi for listening to 256k mp3s and FLACs on headphones?

 

[splintitan]

so is this like an external sound card for all purposes?

 

[NanoStuff]

Studios should use this to restore their studio recordings beyond studio quality. And then once that becomes studio quality they should use it again to restore it above the restored studio quality.

 

[Ayah]

Creative needs to stop making extra useless cr@p.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Creative really needs to knock it off with the studio quality crap. It's getting old for those of us that actually spend time in a real studio where nothing in the chain has "creative" written on it and never will.

Didn't Creative buy EMU?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
If you want to hook up a nicer sound system to your comptuer, you can just hook up your soundcard to an input on a receiver / preamp / etc. From then on you can do whatever you want for speakers.

You can send digital out from your comptuer and have the receiver handle conversions and processing or you can just get a good analog card like an X-Fi and output analog to a 5.1 channel input on your receiver and just have it act as an amplifier. I suppose you could go straight to an amp, but if you have a nice system you might as well have a something between your comptuer and amp in order to hook up multiple inputs.

X-Fi's quality is plenty decent for most people's purposes and would serve you well for a sound system of much higher quality than computer speaker systems. The computer speakers themselves are really the bottleneck in sound quality on the computer so you don't necessarily have to hook to something really special for a soundcard.

If you're doing just music, there are better alternatives to X-Fi, but right now for a gaming card the X-Fi is pretty much your best option.

Thanks for the response. I do little to no gaming so would another sound card be superior to the X-Fi for listening to 256k mp3s and FLACs on headphones?

You might want to go over to headfi and check out what some good alternatives are.

For something really cheap, the Chaintech AV710 would be a good card for 2 channel analog output. That coupled with an amp (depending on your headphones) could potentially get you better quality output for a similar price as X-Fi.