Higgins

Ok guys thanks alot, i think im going to get the Xonar near the end of the month.

Rep+ for all

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Truambitionz

The one review that places the Xonar over the Prelude states that a con of the Prelude being it's ridiculous price, yet, both cards cost the same. ACTUALLY, checking right now the Prelude is $169 compared to $199 for the Xonar. Another con was weird windows glitches? That could've been based on a bad motherboard or faulty drivers. The review sites are old stating that the Prelude does not support Dolby DTS because that was resolved 2 driver releases ago. I love my Prelude and have never had any problems with it.

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OSAMT: "Member of OCN Songwriter and Musician Thread"

Clinic

Yeah, but how many of these people saying Xonar actually have them? All in all you are basing your decision on people that have "heard that the xonar is good" or have "read X review saying it rocks". While I have a Prelude and I'm willing to say that its the best sound card I could get right now without going professional.

Changable OP Amp is a nice touch as well.

Basically I'd go with suggestions from people that actually have or have used the cards you are asking about.

With that said, I have never had the Xonar. So what the hell do I know~

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chanster

both are great cards but the Prelude is a lot better for Games.........The Xonar is good in music and movies and uses features like Dolby headphone,Dolby virtual surround etc where the Prelude uses CMSS3D .So i believe the Xonar which uses Dolby technology will do a better job when it comes to music and movies!...

All and all..My vote is for Prelude! Overall it is better than Xonar!

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:::Creative Sound Blaster Timeline:::X-Ram:::The Difference Between CA20K1(X-Fi APU) And Everything Else!

92% of ppl have moved on to rap. If you are part of the 8% who still listen to real music, copy and paste this

fps_dean

IMO, that's a good call! I just bought one too. From what I've been reading, if you have the earlier drivers, the Xonar will have slightly better sound, but with the latest drivers, the Xonar is significantly superior in sound quality which is all that really matters with modern sound cards. The X-Meridian is a little better in sound quality than the X-Fi Prelude but inferior in processing power.... I have read both that the X-Fi Prelude is slightly slower than the X-Fi Elite Pro, and also that it's significantly more powerful, so I am not sure which is true but either way it has good performance.

The latest driver for the Xonar, which is still in beta, offers support to play EAX 5.0 effects as well, so we will be able to hear EAX 5.0 sound effects, but won't receive a performance boost from the card which is really a very minor detail as I explain in the next paragraph.

The Auzentech has a slight edge in performance, but I totally agree with Asus when they said sound card performance benefits are marginal at best, as with most sound cards on the market today, the final result of the CPU utilization ends up being less than 1% apart. Even Creative's X-Fi, which seems to offer 4% less CPU utilization than other cards that do not render EAX 5.0 onboard is negated by the overly bloated drivers.

The Auzentech X-Fi offers onboard EAX 5.0 as well and is supposed to be much better than the Creative X-Fi which I have absolutely no doubts could not be a false statement based on how bad the Creative X-Fis are, and seem like a good option as well, but the name X-Fi scares me right now after all the problems I've had and seen from the Creative X-Fi, maybe I'm biased but if it has 1% of the problems of the Creative card with the same name, that is too much.

So I'm sure the Xonar will be at least 5000 times better... I'll know in a few days when I get it.

fps_dean

The Xonar can uses CMSS3D to though, and the actual performance benefits between both sound cards is very marginal.

chanster

To=fps_dean
Good sir please don't fall for corporative reviews....You cant tell anything about audio by "i have been reading". This is not like vga cards or cpus..and most of the review sites do they actually use the same setup or same audio file for testing? You say the X-Meridian is better than the Prelude is it? have you heard them in real life? Well i have..The prelude sounds way better than the X-Meridan in every aspect......+ Most of the review sites that test sound cards are PCg33ks.....Audio is very different mate.....

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:::Creative Sound Blaster Timeline:::X-Ram:::The Difference Between CA20K1(X-Fi APU) And Everything Else!

92% of ppl have moved on to rap. If you are part of the 8% who still listen to real music, copy and paste this

Namrac

why are you using a Platinum if you have access to all these high end sound cards?


I've listened to every headphone ever made... I just choose to use a mid-fi set. >.> (See? not very believable.)

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Audio Setup:
PC > TCA Gizmo > Ultralink Matrix 2s > AV123 ELT525Ms
OCN Headphone Club. Because computers don't suck up enough of my money.

chanster

Cannot afford really....I know you can get a Prelude for the price of the platinum.......But front bay may degrade audio quality but i like the extra connectivity.....I have access to these high end cards cause i have lots of friends who compose music.....They have all these expensive cards....Various cards...including Prodigy which i doubt you have ever heard of it.......

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:::Creative Sound Blaster Timeline:::X-Ram:::The Difference Between CA20K1(X-Fi APU) And Everything Else!

92% of ppl have moved on to rap. If you are part of the 8% who still listen to real music, copy and paste this

Chipp

Personally I would prefer the Auzen over the Xonar simply for the easy custom-tailoring of the sound with the swappable OP amps on the Prelude. Putting aside all subjective comparisons for a minute, thats one feature the Xonar does not offer out of the box. (Though I'm sure if it uses standard SOIC opamps it would not be difficult to socket if you disregarded the warranty).

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