Testing the Audigy 263
An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Audigy is Creative's latest Soundcard range, a long overdue upgrade to the aging Live! range and coming in a year where Creative have faced some of their stiffest competition since the Aureal Vortex 2 was released.
3D Spotlight's complete review of the Audigy Player covers pretty much everything you will want to know, from Drivers to API Support, Connectivity & Performance Conclusions." The review doesn't mention how the Audigy works under any open source operating systems, though.
Audigy on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
http://opensource.creative.com
Creative Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
If you're interested in helping Creative develop open source drivers for the Audigy, go to their Open Source Page [creative.com]. Get the emu10k1 source [creative.com] and thumb through the mailing list archive [creative.com] to find out how to get the Audigy branch of the tree.
Don't do heavy wizardry? They also need lab rats for the drivers they're building, so sign up.
Does it fix the problems with VIA chipsets? (Score:3, Informative)
Past Creative cards (including my SB Live! Value) have caused data corruption when copying large files across the IDE bus as well as hissing and popping during mp3 playback. This problem affects at least the VIA 686B on my FIC AZ11E board. You can find out more information about the problem here [viahardware.com].
::yawn:: (Score:4, Informative)
Warning: Audiophiles can just skip over this post. If you have a dolby 5.1 speaker system connected to your fanless, netbooting PC located in a soundproof room - you probably won't agree with this post. If you're like the average computer user with a reasonably-priced PAIR of amplifed speakers, keep reading...
Has human hearing improved to the point we require sound cards to keep advancing? It seems Creative Labs ran out of ideas after the Sound Blaster 16. 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo is CD quality - sure, a card with a better sampling rate can record, but honestly, when was the last time you recorded anything and needed better than CD quality? The noise generated by your PC's fans and hard drive would offset any improved quality in the sampling hardware. Of course, if you have a recording studio - you probably aren't using a PC for your sampling, and if you were - it's not using a Creative Labs product.
After the Sound Blaster 16, Creative Labs figured MIDI was the future and produced the AWE 32, several variations of it, and then the AWE 64. A few computer publications were even confused by the 32 and 64 note polyphony with bit depth and called them 32 and 64 bit soundcards, respectively; whereas in reality - they featured the same 16-bit DAC and ADC capabilities as the Sound Blaster 16.
The fact of the matter is, so-called "high-end" Creative Labs cards are the "Monster Cables" of the sound card industry. Sure, they look nice and cost a lot, but they're not noticably better than a standard PCI Sound Blaster 16. I've been using an old ISA Sound Blaster 16 since I bought it, and it still sounds just as good as the day I first installed it. I hear they're less than $10 on eBay now.
Re:Another Sound Blaster? (Score:1, Informative)
"Outdated"? (Score:3, Informative)
In all honesty, speaking from both a developer and gamer perspective, sound card technology peaked in the mid 1990s, even prior to the Live!. It's a solved problem.
Firewire (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What's wrong with Live!? (Score:5, Informative)
The Live is very, very noisy. The connector for digital output conforms to no standard known on earth (yes, you can often connect it to other gear and it will work, but the voltage on the thing is totally out of whack). There's also absolutely no dejittering or noise protection on the digital output.
The DACs are low quality, which makes a big difference if you're not using the digital output (see above).
Most people putting together home theater PC's used the Live only because nothing else was available. That changed last year when M-Audio made the Audiophile 24/96 available. It has high quality 24 bit/96 KHz 2-channel output and a good digital output for 5.1. Apparantly the latest version [digitalconnection.com] has 4 input/output 24/96 channels now.
Best resource for information is the HTPC forum on AVS [avsforum.com]. I haven't been reading there recently, so I don't know what the real story is on the Audigy.
Personally, I found the review linked to be pretty useless. They didn't actually talk about sound quality at all, at least not beyond the absolute basics.
And the fix is here : (Score:4, Informative)
simple. Just U ask
Don't forget to remove space before (3)
Also the Latency Patch for PCI
" More VIA chipsets are supported
* "Standby" and "Hibernate" power management is supported on Windows 2000 and XP
* Installation is simpler
* More patches included: Aureal Vortex, Radeon LE
* CPU Idle bit is no longer patched, so CPUs run cooler
* VIA's MWQ patch is included (VIA's current patches have bugs)"
Here :
http://download.viahardware.com/vlatency_v019.z
Hoping this patch won't allow you to escape my rockets 8)
Re:Stay away from Creative Products: full of bugs (Score:2, Informative)
For my new computer I bought a SB Live! and I am very disappointed with it.
As you say, drivers are useless, installs a pile of junk software. I want an audio driver that works for your own hardware thanks.
Creative Labs WAS audio which is why people still buy them but they've been making shit and selling it to people for the last 4 years.
Re:What's wrong with Live!? (Score:2, Informative)
When I swapped my ISA SB16 out for a PCI SB Live! (Platinum), a few years ago, my Quake (1) frame rate doubled! I wish I had know that before, as I would of upgraded to PCI long ago.
You might want to spend the $35 and get a SB Live! Value to see if your system performance is being held back by old ISA technology.
Re:::yawn:: (Score:2, Informative)
The SW may be HiBit, but a CD must still be downsampled to 16/44.1 for disk burning.
Without regard to your sound card (or even no soundcard installed), you can work on HiBit files in the digital domain all you want,and even share those files as data with others. To print to Redbook Standard (CD Audio) playback, it must be downsampled.
People who want to encode live music/DAT/etc at HiBit will have pro audio cards or outboard processors that make any SoundBlaster seem a bargain.
Different users, different world. The SW issue is moot.
Re:What's wrong with Live!? (Score:5, Informative)
CL has never made a decent quality sound card. Even back when the original 8-bit Soundblaster came out it had horrid noise.
But there are consumer level audio cards that have decent to excellent quality. Turtle Beach has long made cards that were comparably priced but far better in quality. And while M-Audio isn't a big name by any means, $149 for a 4 channel 24/96 soundcard isn't absurdly priced either (unlike so many things in high end audio).
Even so, yes, most consumer sound cards have crap for audio quality. But look at video cards. Nvidia has quality issues, but ATI has long been known for very good results (and I'm not talking about very good on that rocking 15" monitor you bought for $100. I'm talking about use in an HTPC where you're outputing to a front projection monitor with screen sizes ranging from 60-120" diagonal).
And the silly thing here is that Creative could really increase sound quality without increasing cost much. It only takes a few more resistors and transformers in the right places. We're talking about $1-5 per card.
Live! _IS_ out of date (Score:5, Informative)
But for those of you who are gamers, the Live! is out of date. The 3d sound support of the Live! is pretty poor, and although I haven't seen hard developer specs yet, it looks like they fixed a lot of it with the Audigy. I wish I could get some good hard specs on what EAX 3.0 is bringing us though.
First, the Live! doesn't support any sort of sound reflection. It doesn't accept geometry to let it calculate the echos and reflections, etc. The Aureal cards did this years ago, and finally Creative is catching up. Additionally, with the Live you get global EAX support, meaning you say "the world has a reverb of X and an echo of Y". The Audigy lets you do it per source, so you can have a reverb on one object, an echo on another, etc.
Essentially, the Live just does some cheap mixing of sounds using 3d distance to calculate volume. Then it passes the mixed sound through their DSP to add in effects. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I've found doing all the sound code for our game engine. From what I can tell, the Audigy does real 3d sound calculations using geometry that you give the card and has a more flexible dsp.
This definitely will make 3d games more immersive. Small hallways will get a closed in sound with reflections, ideally you could have echos if you were in a valley in an outdoor engine, etc. Of course how well this works remains to be seen, but the capability is there.
Re:Live is *aging*? (Score:3, Informative)
For the record, changing the sample rate from 44.1 to 48 and back again is A Bad Idea. You will alter the file unless you use a multiple/fraction (ie 44.1 should be upsampled to 88.2 or downsampled to 22.05 to maintain data integrity).
We can all "hear" 24KHz and far beyond. When you localize sounds (ie a bag is popped behind your head, but you know which direction it came from) your brain is processing frequencies which are many multiples of 24K.
The trend to record at higher sampling rates is based (in part) on the filtering necessary at 16 bit. All information at and above 22.05 KHz is abruptly cut off. Because filtering introduces audible "artifacts" at multiple/fraction and interference frequencies, there will be distortion created at many frequencies, these distortion components are well below the cutoff frequency (and therefore in the audible portion).
Redbook CD is a primitive digital standard based primarily on the hardware envisioned in the late 1970's and the need to get "an album's worth" of music on a single CD.
You should also know that 16 bit quantization is only used on loudest sounds (100% signal). When a sound is reduced in volume, fewer bits are used to describe it. Moving to 24 bit means (in layman's terms) that a quieter sound may be described by 6 or 8 bit data rather than 1 or 2. This is clearly audible.
To encode a 10Khz note (sine wave, which means like a smooth ocean wave) that moves from volume 0% to volume 100% immediatly, 16/44.1 can only describe the change in 2 discreet steps. Imagine a 2 step stair when what we want is a pond ripple. You need many times the sampling frequency to describe this wave accuratly with digital storage. At 100Kz you could describe it with 10 stair steps, for example. This is still not a smooth continuous wave, but it's closer. Analog, which has other problems, can describe it perfectly.
Finally, remember that Analog is not a "dirty word"; it is how we all hear everything. We are trying to use digital storage and processing to describe analog data.
This is akin to translating a novel from French to English; we will always be wrong about some subtle things but we still try as hard as we can to come closest. Each translation step (like resampling 44.1 to 48K) is a subtle change in dialect which may drastically change the final interpretation. We want to minimize the translation steps for the most accurate reproduction and storage.
Re:Wishlist (Score:3, Informative)
DVD-Audio offers support for up to six independent PCM channels, with a maximum data rate of 9.6 Mbs, far exceeding SPDIF's limited bandwitdth.
The media lawyers probably want to encrypt stuff, as well. SPDIF may not allow that...
Re:No, that's being realistic. (Score:1, Informative)
Audigy is useless for musicians. (Score:2, Informative)
Firstly, it still works for recording internally at 48k only, so if you are working at 44.1, every recording you make will be upsampled to 48k, then back to 44k. This causes pass band ripple and can be seen clearly on a spectrogram when the Audigy is fed with white noise. If you work at 48k, you will still need to sample rate convert before cutting a CD.
Secondly, the Audigy will not sync to an external digital clock, meaning that it cannot do sample accurate digital transfers. You will have to sync external gear to the dubious quality of the Audigy's clock, causing jitter.
The digital outs are only at 48k as well, so forget about clocking a DAT to the Audigy for digital transfers, even if it *could* pass a digital signal unchanged.
Thirdly, ASIO is only at 48k. This is because it has to avoid the internal SRC, working at 44k would cause an ASIO host to slowly lose samples, putting tracks out of time and causing MIDI to play late. Again, you would have to SRC before cutting a CD from your ASIO recordings.
Fourthly, the claimed 24/96 is playback only. You cannot record at 24bit or 96k with this card, and the DAs are fairly low quality, negating the point of 24/96 playback anyway.
It Does Not Do 24/96 A-D,D-A (Score:3, Informative)
The Fact is, it would only do 96KHz on the SP/DIF ports, and only do 24 bit at 48KHz (i.e. not 44.1 or any other rate). There was no way to record or play true 24/96 on the analog ports. What a piece of crap. Back to the store it went, then I bought a Digital Audio Labs CardD Deluxe, which does do true 24/96 and works great. It cost about twice as much, but at least it works.
Re:What's wrong with Live!? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wishlist (Score:3, Informative)
I've heard different figures for the latency introduced by realtime DD encoding - between 10ms and 70ms. 10ms wouldn't be perceivable in the context of a game, and even 70ms isn't much - a lot for a musical performance, but still difficult to perceive - especially when the frames themselves will also be delayed by up to 33-50ms (when double- or triple-buffering).
I've spent many hours playing games with DD-encoded sound on my Xbox, and I've tried listening specifically for delayed sound, but I haven't noticed any examples yet. The sound, BTW is superb, and is one of the main reasons I bought the Xbox.
As for the SB Live! & Audigy products, how does AC-3 passthrough (for DVD-playback, presumably) help in any way with games? If you're willing to run four separate wires to your amp, you hardly even need an AC-3 S/PDIF connection - software decoding of AC-3 to the soundcard's 4-channel output would probably be sufficient.
Audigy isn't any different (Score:1, Informative)
SB Live/audigy rocks for games, but for audio work it is crap. the only Creative card I've used that was decent for audio was an AudioPCI, and thats because it uses an Ensoniq core.