any reason not to buy soundblaster?

Llamaman

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If you're mainly playing games, Soundblaster are the best. This is because the latest versions of EAX (EAX 3 upwards) are only available on Creative products. Other manufacturers only support up to EAX 2. You can also get THX certified soundcards - I don't know if any other manufacturers produce those.

However, Creative charge a premium for their cards, so if you can live without all the 'whistles-and-bells' effects in your FPS games, you can pick up a good soundcard for less from someone else.

I use my PC mainly for gaming (I have a separate hifi for my music), so I tend to use Creative products.
 

Codesmith

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For most people a soundblaster is the right choice, however

If you are a musician who is serious about having a quality home audio studio and doesn't care much for gaming then Soundblaster is not the way to go.

Non gamers who use digital output are better off getting a cheap $20 CMedia card than a soundblaster. The soundblaster will work, but its going to be a headache.

If you are a gamer and want 5.1 digital output then you need to get an NForce 2 motherboard with a SoundStorm Certified APU. It the only card capible of real time 5.1 Dolby Digital encoding. The rest only do two channel, unless they are passing through an existing audio track.
 

arnold873

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i don`t think creative is expensive you can get oem`s for like 60$ and retail versions with like 5 good games for like 100

now come on nvidia and ati and really milking people
600+ for some cards that will be obsolete in 1 year
at least creatives are good for 3-4 years

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back
 

Codesmith

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Most who need the breakout box, acutally need a "professional audio interface" rather than a sound card.

And I agree a decent sound card is a good investment. I am still using the same Soundblaster 5.1 OEM I bought for about $60 maybe 5 years ago.
 

arnold873

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Most who need the breakout box, acutally need a "professional audio interface" rather than a sound card.

And I agree a decent sound card is a good investment. I am still using the same Soundblaster 5.1 OEM I bought for about $60 maybe 5 years ago.



creative makes the emu line
i think thats what its called

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back
 

Crashman

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A3D 2.0 is 5 years old and still beats EAX 3.0. Creative is an abusive company who's spent millions of dollars in an effort to prevent sound technology from improving.

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Black_Cat

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I'll never understand Creative. People get all hyped up about EAX 3.0. When Creative got their grubby hands on Aureal, they should have taken A3D and run with it. It would be A3D 5.0 by now. Just imagine.

I guess Creative thought they could dangle a carrot in front of our noses and make teeny tiny improvements over several years and charge top dollar for those minute changes. Eventually, in 10 years or so, they'll be as good as Aureal was 5 years ago. Until then, we'll have to pony up big bucks for cards every couple of years or so that are only marginally better than their predecessor.



You've tried and failed. The lesson here is, never try again. -- Homer Simpson.
 

Crashman

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Former Staff
You have to remember that A3D 2.0 was a hardware solution, and a huge embarassment to Creative (and their software solutions). A3D 2.0 calculated sound reflections in real time based on distance, angle, and reflectivity of the surface, technology Creative's engineers can't grasp even to this day. And to make matters worse for Creative, Aureal had even done enough research on the human ear that they were able to simulate sounds from different HEIGHTS using speakers on a single plane, even if Creative tried the only solution they could come up with for height differences is to have speakers above and below the listener.

They bought the technology simply to prevent Guillemot from using it.

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Codesmith

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I don't like creative, but I feel like I am stuck with them. They are the Microsoft of sound cards.

At least gamers actually have two choices when it comes to video cards.
 

Black_Cat

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You have to remember that A3D 2.0 was a hardware solution
Maybe if they used Aureal's hardware solution the Live! series of cards would have actually worked with Via's southbridge! Maybe their horrific driver support wouldn't be so bad! Oh well.

I don't like creative, but I feel like I am stuck with them. They are the Microsoft of sound cards.
And that's why Creative is hated by so many.



You've tried and failed. The lesson here is, never try again. -- Homer Simpson.
 

arnold873

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i never realized creative was so hated
i`ve never had any problems with them

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back
 

cookingfrags

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yeah...Creative's monopoly leaves you with one choice as a gamer, which is never good. but i can say that EAX 3 is pretty damn good and you probably won't be disappointed with it, and EAX 4 can only be better. complaining isnt gonna bring back Aureal or have new games use it. new games will keep using EAX, and it's so widespread you might as well use it.
 

Codesmith

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Well in an ideal world game developes would voluntarily waste development time greating games that work equally well on alternate OSes and alternalte sound cards using alternate effects standards.

I just don't see it coming up at a budget meeting, "lets increase costs by 25% and add linux support, and we need to make sure it has great A3D support and is 100% compatible with the turtle beach sound cards. Hell lets do a Mac port as well."

Its about as likely as Microsoft Open Sourcing DirectX.
 

cookingfrags

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that's what im saying...unless someone has more money than Creative and has the balls and the brains to come out with a better product, there's not much you can do at this point. accept the fact that Creative is at this point the mainstream in gaming and is your best option. besides, its not horrible...unless you have to resort to their tech support.
 

Llamaman

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Well said... their tech support has gone from bad to... basically non-existent.

They finally got around to sending a standard response to my support request (only took the monkey 4 days to select "Fob-off Response, Type 4" from the drop-down menu), so naturally sent a scathing feedback... Reckon I'll get a response? Hahahahahaha.

As far as I can tell, Creative are OK as long as you:
a) buy the retail product, not OEM
b) are lucky and don't need tech support

My suspicion (addressed in my email to them) is that their decision to offer abysmal support to the Value / OEM products is a ham-fisted attempt to discourage home users from purchasing OEM products.
 

confoundicator

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how about blasters with a break out box?
The breakout box that comes with the "platinum" edition cards is a big ripoff in my opinion. The problem with breakout boxes that use a 5.25" drive bay is that there's a sh<b></b>itload of EM noise inside your case, and unless the breakout box is well shielded, which the Creative breakout boxes aren't, then you get a recording with background noise. For professional quality recording on a PC the analog to digital conversion should take place outside of the case, in an EM shielded unit like Creative's top-o-the-line solutions. But if you really want to buy something like this there are much better products than Creative has from companies like Pro-Tools, m-Audio, and others that specialize in home studio applications.

The Creative breakout box that goes in the 5.25" drive bay is a toy and nothing more. :cool:

<font color=blue>Good judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgement.</font color=blue><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by confoundicator on 03/04/05 10:08 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

mattburklund

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get the one with the external box, not the one that takes up a bay in your computer. Tom did a review a year or so ago, the external was the best.
 

upec

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Creative is good at maintaining their monopoly on Gamers' Sound card. There are competition in more complex component like CPU and Graphic chip. There should be a open standard for sound card too just like the JEDEC for RAM. The industry establish a open standard that every body can implement.
Even Intel cannot just claim that they created 32 bit intruction set and does not allow AMD use implement it.