X-Fi Titanium vs Audigy 2

[bnlitin]

I currently have an PC with an old Audigy 2 soundcard connected to Logitech Z-5500 speakers. I am quite happy with the sound (connecting through S/PDIF and 5.1 analog).

I am running Vista x64 with the latest Creative drivers.
I noticed that some games, like GRID have the hardware acceleration for sound disabled (only enabled for X-Fi). I am not running Alchemy.

I play the following games: Call of Duty 4, Lego Indiana Jones, Grid, World in Conflict, Madden 08., Guitar Hero 3.
Will I noticed any substantial improvement in sound quality / positioning if I upgraded my sound card from Audigy 2 to X-Fi Titanium?

On which games would I see the most improvement?

Is the EAX 5.0 significantly better then EAX in Audigy 2?

 

[43st]

The X-fi is a substantial upgrade from the Audigy line, and the Titanium line is better still. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

 

[corkyg]

I wager that a blind test of all those sound systems on the same type of computer would find no audible difference in sound quality.

 

[Puffnstuff]

With a descent speaker system like yours yes you will definately see the difference. I would however suggest that you also consider the asus xonar d2/d2x when you compare cards. I just replaced my 4 month old x-fi xtremegamer fatal1ty pro which croaked with an asus xonar d2x and it is so much cleaner with a richer sound than the x-fi even with the latest drivers. Creative software is bloatware and hogs system resources.

 

[CKent]

I'm done with Creative after the nforce4 chipset popping / crackling problem affected my new nforce4 mb build. I never would have bought another of their sound cards anyway because of the bloated software, low sound quality, horrible drivers, bad support and high price, but the popping problem forced me to upgrade immediately. I went with a Xonar DX and I'm pretty happy with it. Of course if you're looking at an X-Fi, you can spend the bucks on the higher end Xonar cards - but they might not include front audio pinouts as the DX does - something to look into. Upgrade your speakers or buy some decent headphones and you'll really start to appreciate the sound quality with CDs, flac files or high bitrate aac/ogg. Yes, even over an X-fi. Especially, you might say. One review I read had the DX and D2X neck & neck in sound quality for music, with the X-fi barely beating out onboard sound. Creative sucks, don't support them and their monopoly.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: bnlitin
I currently have an PC with an old Audigy 2 soundcard connected to Logitech Z-5500 speakers. I am quite happy with the sound (connecting through S/PDIF and 5.1 analog).

I am running Vista x64 with the latest Creative drivers.
I noticed that some games, like GRID have the hardware acceleration for sound disabled (only enabled for X-Fi). I am not running Alchemy.

I play the following games: Call of Duty 4, Lego Indiana Jones, Grid, World in Conflict, Madden 08., Guitar Hero 3.
Will I noticed any substantial improvement in sound quality / positioning if I upgraded my sound card from Audigy 2 to X-Fi Titanium?

On which games would I see the most improvement?

Is the EAX 5.0 significantly better then EAX in Audigy 2?

If you're smart enough to have chosen your Audigy 2 over your onboard, then you'll definitely appreciate an X-Fi over an Audigy 2. I haven't read up on the Titanium but the listed specs are a slight improvement over the PCI versions and may eliminate any chance of the residual problems with cracking/popping with the move to PCIE.

You should see a noticeable improvement in sound quality for all of your games, but positional effects should be similar. CoD4 and WiC both use proprietary positional sound engines that use up to 64 voices I believe. The others I'm not sure about as I don't have them. There are numerous titles though in my current library that make great use of EAX5 though and add significantly to gameplay (Mass Effect, LOTRO, GoW, BioShock, The Witcher, just to name a few).

The Titanium adds a few nice features like PCIE and DDLive/DTS Connect, but there's an HDMI version coming out in September from Auzentech. May be worth waiting for, otherwise the Titanium is certainly going to be a nice upgrade for you.