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To upgrade or not to upgrade...

Last response: in Components
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Hey all,

To finish tweaking my recent build, I'm considering buying a X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional card. However, I am currently using a X-Fi Extreme Pro that I have had for a few years. The reason the Titanium card looks so tempting is the optical out port, which would go great with my 5.1 Sony AV system. Would the sound quality greatly improve with the Titanium, especially with the optical out or is it negligible in comparison with my current card? Has anyone done this upgrade, if so, was it worth it? I figure the time is ripe seeing that Best Buy has the Titanium card on sale for $99.99 (down from $139.99).

Thanks for the advice in advance.

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Best solution

If you're thinking about gaming with it, then no. Optical outputs don't send the right signal from games to the speakers.

IE, games use DirectSound/OpenAL instead of Dolby Digital/DTS which are normally decoded by AV receivers. As such, the games won't be 5.1 unless you use the standard 3.5mm plugs.

O no, no gaming. Well, if you consider Tecmo Super Bowl a game, I'm a guilty, lol. It's mainly for Blurays and music. I went ahead and picked it up today and it does indeed sound great. Both movies and music sound good in true 5.1.

Thanks for the input.
 
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