X-FI Elite Pro - Is it an HTPC Pre-Pro Replacement?

Well, I plunked down the coin, removed my Firewire410 and installed my first Creative (ugh!) card since my Live!Platinum. I'm smiling big time... I've only had 2 evenings with it, but here's the story so far (I'm not going to get into tests of specifications such as frequency response and noise levels and distortion; this has been documented in various reviews already, complete with RightMark graphs which all show stellar performance, with the possible exception of channel seperation above 5khz)...

First, this is how I was set up before.... I had the Firewire410 installed in a mickeymouse arrangement with a VST host and Viurtual Audio Cable and some VST plugs to do bass management... it worked okay though NOT user-friendly, sounded VERY good, and was noticably better than my Delta1010lt with it's driver based bass management, though it also sounded very good. Driving 3 Carver M500t power amps, home built D'Appiloto MTM speakers and Yamaha sub.

Playing back lossless rips of my favorite and well known (to me) cuts, in 2.1, with all postprocessing options (CMS3D, 24 Bit Crystalizer, etc.) turned off sound very good indeed... clear, crisp, effortless.... I tried JRiver MC10 with ASIO, Creatives own player and even the dreaded MediaPlayer 10... all sounded IDENTICAL !!! A tribute to Creatives sample rate converter which yields resampling errors more than 130db down.....

HTPC nirvana is delivered with AC3/DTS input decoding on SPDIF !!!! Yes, I plugged the SPDIF output from my Cable Box into the back of the External Rack and was pleasently rewarded with full surround sound when I tuned into HDNET At first I saw no lip sync delay..... then I did see a slight delay.... then I didn't... hmmm..... it appears that some stations/programs had a slight delay, and some had less or none.... then I went back to the sound out from my Rcvr/Pre/Pro and saw the same thing.... I think the lip sync on ATSC TV and Cable is not as consistent as you would expect.... This weekend I will hook up my STB DVD Player and check lip sync using the X-FI to process the players spdif output.... BTW, when the cable box is switced to an analog channel and the spdif reverts to PCM, the X-FI saw the change and switched to standard PCM mode automatically.... on ONE occasion, when switching between PCM and Dolby-encoded channels, I got a few miliseconds of un-decoded buzz... but the Scientific Atlanta boxes are not noted for their fast tuning....

The bass management is quite full-featured.... speaker settings include large/small, distance in fractions of feet, db level, physical angle (caveat here.... on my 5.1 set-up, my rears are only about 18" behind me and spread 6' either side.... the software would not go down to such a shallow angle for rear spkr placement) Sub crossover frequency is variable from 20 to 200 hz in 1hz increments, sub level can be adjusted from 0-100% and a fixed 15db boost can be applied.

This is interesting... if you disable spdif pass through, which would be the natural case if using it as a pre-pro, you can use a variety of DVD software and always get decoded output.... example1: I have TTek2 with advanced audio pack.... it can pass the 6 channels of decoded audio to the default direct sound device and the X-FI passes the 6 channels through (applying bass management if so configured)... example2: I have WinDVD6 on my system set for spdif pass through to the default direct sound device. Since the X-FI has spdif pass through disabled, it takes the passed spdif from WinDVD and decodes it using its hardware

I played briefly with the CMS3D which is a spatial surround processor for stereo sources and I like it, at times The unit also has DTS Neo, which I haven't played with yet. The 24bit Crystalizer is less interesting.... it upconverts your input to 24 bit and then processes the sound in some seemingly complex ways, but then adds a rough approximation of a Fleture-Munson loudness curve, boosting bass and treble, but it seems to not vary the curve with volume level, which is required for correct loudness compensation.... What I would like to see is the ability to simply do the 24 bit upconvert, with no other processing..... well, hopefully some day there will be an "SDK" to programatically interface with the DSP....

What a pleasure to once more have easy access to the "master" volume on my system.... the Vol buttons on my Gyration keyboard and the Griffin PowerMate on the front of my HTPC case both can raise/lower the volume of anything that's playing.... one day soon I'll dig out my O-Scope and play with some very low level 16/44.1 sine waves and see what happens to them as the volume is digitally reduced....

There are numerous inputs here, including a shared line/turntable-preamp with RIAA and 2 front panel (1/4") stereo line-ins (which I can see being "re-wired" to rear mounted RCA jacks ) which all use BurrBrown PCM1804 AD's and a very-high quality line-in (AKM AK5394a) on the versa-jack at the back of the PCI card, and since I have an AudioAuthority spdif switch, I may be able to pull the Delta 1010lt which I love for it's multiple audio inputs.... a free slot at last!!!!

Hey Elvis!, you might want to come back!!!

... more to come....

"How many different music/movie formats have you tested? I'm interested in how the X-Fi handles DTS music CD playback, too."

All of my ripped tracks are in WMA lossless, so that's all I've tried so far, but as for ape, flac and shn, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't play okay, given the correct directshow filters to decode them.... I haven't tried an actual DTS CD yet, but I did try a ripped DTS track in WMA Lossless format and it only gave static, but that was with creatives player only .... but as I said, more to come....

Okay, some more....

I only had 20 minutes last night and about 10 minutes at 5:30 AM this morning with coffee, but:

The BEST NEWS!: I popped in my "reference" DTS CD this morning at 5:30, Steely Dan's Gaucho, fired up the creative audio player and ba-da-bing, beautiful 5.1 sound coming from my speakers Note: this is with decoding enabled in the X-FI and analog-connected speakers.... I will not be reporting any time soon on spdif output to an outboard pre/pro as this seems ludicrous to do with an X-FI when a Chaintech 710 will work fine in that scenario at a $330 saving. I haven't played a lot with DTS rips, but I'm optimistic that they can be played.... I just need to find the right set-up...

A note about some peoples worries about ASIO and bypassing K-Mixer. Forget it. The problems with K-Mixer are (or rather, were) twofold.... First, it would not allow bit perfect transfer of non-audio (AC3, DTS) for external decoding.... at this point, who cares? The X-FI senses the non-audio stream and automatically decodes it for you! Second, it did a TERRIBLE job of sample-rate-conversion to achieve a common 48khz sample rate for the mixer module itself.... but now the X-FI does the sample rate conversion and the artifacts from this conversion are at -136db or some such rediculously low level.... so, the arguments for "bit-perfect", in this context, seem kinda silly to me, and belong in the league of bricks on amplifiers and green markers for CD edges.... put it in perspective and try to remember why you needed bit perfect output !

Now for the not as good news..... lip-sync delay.... there is a very slight delay, I don't know how much quantitatively, but certainly less than a second.... it's the type of delay that you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it or particularly sensitive to it.... but I know it's there, now.... put it this way.... I've watched broadcast TV that has equally bad sync problems right from the feed.... it's an issue that probably could be addressed in the drivers, since the DSP code is dowloaded to the DSP chip during driver init.... possibly changing DSP task priority in Entertainment mode.... will it be addressed? I don't know but I will be posting about this in the creative forums and I've applied to join the developer community, so I will push for it.... but right now, it's not bad enough for me to get worked up over...

more to come....

"Once again: are you connected to external amps or are you running computer speakers? "



"Driving 3 Carver M500t power amps, home built D'Appiloto MTM speakers and Yamaha sub."

"The card sounds wonderful so if Creative could grant the wishes of HTPC crowd regarding to bass management and bit-perfect playback then it would be a real bargain"

Once again, and as noted above, in a home theater environment, where analog outs are being used, bit-perfect is meaningless.... after all, you're using bass management, HOW can it be bit-perfect!!! Remember, the whole bit-perfect issue came about because of the poor sample rate conversions that we were stuck with before... the X-FI's sample rate conversion is near perfect! And if your buying an X-FI and using spdif out to pre-pro.... well, it seems like a VERY wasteful, non-economic-sense approach!

Well, I haven't fleshed it out totally yet, but I'm having issues with the software, specificaly restart problems related to the OnScreenDisplay and remote control.... I thought it was related to the updated driver's but it's not..... it may be some sort of conflict on my system.... working on it feverishly before the wife gets back from the gym....

Computer speakers? What about the vast majority of purpose-built home theater systems which have 5, 6 or 7 satellite speaker systems with, say 2 6.5" mid-bass drivers and a good tweeter, all crossed to a nice big fat 12" long-throw sub.... computer speakers indeed!!! the satellite/sub idea started as 2.1 systems back in the 70's.... I've had my share of huge full range systems, but I'll never go back....



BTW..... still having the shutdown problems..... grggghhh.....