AlphaDog11790

I currently have a asus xonar d2 in my rig (only music and gaming) and I am thinking about building me a HTPC. I've been reading on here that the auzentech prelude is more for gaming whereas the xonar is more for movies/music. So since I am building an HTPC, should I put the D2 into my HTPC and then get a auzentech for my gaming rig?

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mechtech

Nope, the D2 is a great card for both.

If you notice, EAX is dead now (and with more powerful processors audio is less and less load on the cpu), and the advantage that an X-fi has is fading away.

Sound quality wise, they're about the same. I think the Prelude might have slightly better bass, while the D2 has slightly better separation/detail.

I used to obsess about it because my old x-fi had big bass while my D2x didn't. Then I plugged my headphones into my friends offboard studio DAC/amp, and guess what, it sounded exactly like ym D2x, not my old x-fi.

chanster

Huh? EAX Dead? I reserve my comments on that.

About the offloading,It's not just CPU off-load that people buy X-Fi for, but several gamer-friendly features. CPU accelerated audio cannot hardware mix upto 128 voices, which is why several games 'crackle' on onboard / HSP audio when way too many voices are asked to be mixed by the game to the CPU. After decompression, every 16-bit PCM sample weighs 640 kbit. imagine 8 of these....and now with modern games doing 24 bit at 96 kHz...1280 kbit / channel / sample. Imagine how much of FSB bandwidth and memory bandwidth that would chew into.

About the Prelude Vs Xonar, The vast majority of uses can't notice the difference between them. Reasoning, both cards use high end components.The ADC of the prelude is inferior to that of the Xonar so loop back testing will prove that the Xonar is better. Having said that, don't fall for numbers in tests.

My vote goes for Prelude though

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phospholipid

you always show up so randomly, but with so much info.

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wildfire99

eh i dont have any info that hasnt been said but i would like to throw another bone to the auzentech vote

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H3||scr3am

both cards are great all around players, although I believe that the Xonar has the edge when it comes to strictly audio and video... a) the the shielding prevents EMI, this is wonderful if you have a spinning HD or a fan near the card, as there is no interference... (this includes video cards, NB/SB fans). b) the Xonar has the same high grade components as the X-Fi prelude, with a few differences. Both are well supported in Vista although all of the surround and such for the Xonar is offloaded to the CPU, and emulated through software at the moment, but I'm sure they'll fix that before creative ever gets around to the old X-fis (Auzentech upkeeps its own drivers, and they have full feature support in Vista) but either card will serve you VERY well and they are both up for the task

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Zaza999

Sorry to intude into this thread, but just to clarify the Prelude is best for gaming while the D2X is better for music/movies? Of course they are both better than most in their inferior features right?

t4ct1c47

To be honest I'd usually recommend a Xonar, but as you already have one why not get a Prelude to have the best of both worlds?

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Zaza999

Why would you do that? (recommend the Xonar)

AlphaDog11790

Yeah. So prelude in gaming rig, xonar in HTPC?

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