Boost your desktop's audio performance with a sound card from one of the premier names in computer audio—Creative Labs. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum sound card is designed to enhance your system's music, movie, and gaming experience. The card’s 24-bit Crystalizer makes game audio more dynamic and realistic and improves both low and high frequencies, giving you smoother, cleaner sound.
The card's audio processor with Creative's CMSS-3D technology is able to remix your stereo audio into surround sound—even through stereo headphones. And if you enjoy making music as much as listening to it, the Platinum offers precise, low-latency audio recording capabilities without taxing your CPU.
The Crystalizer and CMSS-3D technology also team together to let you "SuperRip" your CDs, boosting the fidelity of your ripped audio above that of low-quality MP3 files. For enjoying your favorite DVDs, the card is THX certified and can handle decoding DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX duties. Plus, the 5.25-inch I/O Drive gives you access to inputs and outputs from the front of your computer and the bundled remote turns your computer into a full entertainment center.
X-Fi 24-bit CrystalizerThe X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer enhances MP3 and movie sound for cleaner, smoother and more audio that is even better than what you would expect from original CDs or DVDs! It even automatically upgrades existing games to Xtreme Fidelity quality.
X-Fi CMSS-3D Intelligent Surround Sound RemixingWith X-Fi CMSS-3D, intelligently upgrades your MP3 music, movies and games to surround sound using your multi-channel speakers.
X-Fi SuperRipWith X-Fi SuperRip technology, rip your CDs into Xtreme Fidelity quality and enjoy permanently enhanced music!
EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 delivers incredibly realistic gaming audio. Drench yourself in an exceptionally dynamic and sensational gaming world.
Hardware DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX DecodingWith DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX decoding, enjoy the latest cinematic technologies for the ultimate Home Theater PC experience!
Pros: Lots of inputs. Coax and optical I/O are great for recording and using a digi to connect a stereo or home theatre. Front mount interface makes life easy so you don't have to pull out your machine every time you want to change something around. Only thing I had to connect in the rear was the analog connections for the surround. Good MIDI instruments, soundfont bank is nice. Good card for basic MIDI recording, gets the job done. Software interface is very nice, also. Simple to use (for the most part) and doesn't hog too many resources. Very easy to set everything up and a lot of options to choose form using the supplied software. NO POPPING at all during playback. The speakers will pop when changing some settings, however, and that is probably what they are talking about. So far I have had great quality form this card. Also make sure to set your levels correctly to avoid distortion!
Cons: The "Crystalizer" is extremely over rated. All it does it boost the highs and tighten up the transients to make low quality music sound good. It sounded fine for me at a low setting (around 25%), but anything more and it sounds fake and annoying. It's basically like the "loudness" button you get on some stereos. Having to switch modes is somewhat annoying but worth it overall. I also find that a lot of the options that are included with the software are almost useless. The EAX effects are stupid, it's basically a bunch of reverb effects that effect everything on the sound card. I have yet to find a use for it.
Overall Review: All in all a great deal. EAX is great for gaming. I can run BF2 on ultra high settings for sound (also enabling EAX) and it sounds great! Playing in surround is freakin' awesome. PLEASE NOTE: You can't get surround form this card with digital outs. You will get 2.1 only if you use it. To get surround through games you must use the analog outputs. I found this to be fine as you don't amazing quality from games. Upgrading from low audio settings to high was enough for me. I believe you can use the digital for surround if the signal is already in surround (like a DVD movie). The card cannot encode surround unless you buy an encoder to go with it. Just a warning, not really something bad. I use the coax digi for music and the analog outs for gaming. Sounds great both ways. NOTE: I paired this with the Logitech Z5500d's and they sound great! I suggest those as wel