ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook, How is it?

I curious, those of you that bought this How does it work? Was it worth the cost? I have had a couple of older models and they worked good. But the last one I had isn't compatible with the 9261 (wrong interface should have looked closer when I bought it) but it had some problems with my wifi card. To make a long story short I miss surround sound with my movies and was wondering what my options were? Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Which card did you have before? The NP9261 has an ExpressCard slot, and the X-Fi Notebook is an ExpressCard.
http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=16642

The X-Fi actually has the X-Fi chip in there. I have an X-Fi in my desktop and it is great for games.

 

I had the Audigy2 ZS PCMCIA card and it was good except for disabling my wifi. I just didn't pay attention to it when I ordered my 9261 or I would have bought the X-Fi and been done with it. I have seen a few that ordered it and thought I would ask if they were happy with it. I saw the Audigy2 in a usb format and thought I might go that way if people were having problems with the X-FI. I really like the 5.1 surround or better when I can get it! It makes a huge difference in the experience of a movie or a game.

 

Hi, kl5167 I don't think that you should buy the Sound Blaster Xi-FI Notebook sound card. There driver sucks for windows if only they can improve on there drive to really support EAX than this is a good sound card. I am also trying to look for other sound card that is much better then creative but I can't find any yet. Anyone has any more ideas on a good sound card but creative.

 

Thanks for the input. I wish someone would make a laptop with built in 5.1 or better sound. Maybe I am just not the normal user though.

 

I cant comment personally since I don't own one, but everything that I have read online has more negatives associated with the X-Fi for notebooks. I.e. Vista there is no actual hardware sound acceleration. Etc.

 

Understood, just one more of the drawbacks to vista. Maybe they will eventually get it fixed.

 

You have Windows Vista? That I didn't know - I should have asked.

Microsoft thoughtfully took out DirectSound support in Vista so as noted, there is no hardware sound acceleration. Dedicated sound cards are essentially useless under Vista because the CPU is going to do all of the sound processing one way or the other. That is one of the reasons why I am not going to Vista anytime soon on my desktop - I want to actually use my sound card.

 

I knew about the DirectSound support and vista it one of few things I really don't like. I just want the 5.1 surround sound for now and will be happy.

 

I'm happy with mine - though I mainly purchased mine because I had a bad whine/static sound coming from my default headphone jack, and nothing I tried would fix it, be it drivers or otherwise.

 

I know that the Audigy Zs I had was actually very good. I might look into this some more.

 

Vagabond, I had the same issue. A ground loop eliminator or de-amplifying device worked wonders for me. It increased the impedance of the line and cut the hiss.

 

Hi guys

i bought this card and was severely disappointed

It turns out that when you really look around you find that there is no X-Fi chip in the card. It had a better DA converter than a usual laptop chip and sound is crisp and bright, no complaints there.

But many people are saying there is no hardware EAX or Acceleration (which is confirmed on the creative site) and sure there is definitely no driver support for those functions.

The card seems to support EAX2 through software processing and it seems much of the processing is done by the CPU. Even setting the card to 96KHz 24Bit mode even uses CPU to resample to audio to that frequency.

Everest DirectSound report says the card has 64 Hardware channels, DirectSound3D support and EAX support up to EAX4. I'm not convinced though.

Bad bad bad calling it X-Fi. It has a hi fidelity sound, but that's about it. I also had trouble with grounding which I hoped would be solved by having a ExCard sound card, silly me!!

In short, my internal realtek is almost as good, bar for a noticably flatter sound, so I'm not taking the card back, but the lack of real hardware processing made me disappointed that I'd paid for it..

 

Thats a big blow to sound card manufactures, and i think it might slow down the CPU.
Strange thing is that there is no mention of this on the creative website, infact one of the requirements is:
Microsoft® Windows Vista™ or Windows XP (Service Pack 2, x64 or Media Center Edition

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=16642&nav=2


maybe i am wrong or misunderstood what u mean here, but if vista doesn't allow this card to run properly there is something wrong with both companies

 

The card runs properly on both, in fact it's quite okay in terms of making sound.

I think the EAX and other "acceleration" is done in CPU and that's from testing and also reading what's out there.

The worst part is, most of the reviews out there seem to say that it DOES have an X-FI chip and achieves proper audio acceleration (occlusion and environmental effects) in the card.

Mine definitely doesn't and when i searched there are many people saying the same. Then when I rechecked the creative site

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=16642&nav=0

No mention of acceleration, eax or anything. They just say it makes MP3 sound better, and that is via SOFTWARE crystalizer.

Sucky product from Creative who i think deliberately allowed us to believe this card has acceleration.

It's not a huge thing, but coming from Creative, it's definitely a insult to their track-record of great audio hardware to the masses.

 

oh, also for anyone with this card - you can see the CPU usage by going into the X-Fi CMSS 3D in the Creative Control Panel and when you turn it on, in the task manager you can see that the SYSTEM PROCESS starts eating CPU. Not a huge amount but enough to see what's going on.

 

The Xfi sounds amazing in Vista. I've got it paired with my SENNHEISER HD 280PROs and it is beautiful. FL Studio pumps out multi track 24/96 audio without a skip.

The only downfall of the card is you have to purchase a separate unit to attach to the card to enable the 7.1 surround. Kinda dumb if you ask me.

As far as Vista not using the sound card, you have to understand how Vista's audio stack works. Microsoft has been using the same audio stack since Win95, that was kernel based. There were a lot of complications that were being run into using this kernel audio stack. If the sound card or drivers crashed, the entire system would go down. Microsoft fixed this by rewriting the entire stack and placing it outside the kernel mode. Doing this pulled some hardware functionality from the card for the sake of reliability. In the early days of Vista, this was a downfall as there were no workarounds. Microsoft has released hotfixes and manufacturers have released new drivers that allow acceleration now. Just took a while because the drivers had to be completely rewritten from the ground up.

 

Thanks, good to know i wont be wasting 120 bucks

 

I'm not really sure a laptop manufacturer forum is the right place to talk about peripheral hardware when it's not specifically related to any particular laptop.

Had you considered leaving this forum once in a while you might have stumbled across this remarkably similar thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=278228

 

m860TU, m570tu, m15x, m17x.....actually anything with a HDMI will give you 5.1 direct from the laptop.

 

Hi, where did you buy such equipment? I need it badly...

 

The xi-fi is simply AMAZING, I cannot say enough praises..
Really, IT's WORTH EVEN 100$ !