meansizzler
Ex Member
Ok I bought the sound blaster X-fi music edition a few days ago, compared the the audidiy 2 zs it lacks a firewire port, and also a dedicated microphone, digital out and line out port, instead it combines them into a single port, which you can select the funtion from within the software, it does not come with the joystick bracket, but the interrnal ports are virtualy identical to the audigy 2 zs, so any add on components you had for that should work with this. Anyway software wise it comes with a load of useless junk like the audigy 2 zs, I tested it for a bit and audio wise not much difference from the prevoious audigy card, in fact i liked the audigy 2 zs better as it has CMS Stereo X 2 option which clones a stereo signal to the front and rear speakers, sadly this lacks that feature, good thing though is that the inbuilt dolby/dts decoders actually function correctly, I tried them in Win DVD 7, set it to digital out, and switched the onboard decoders on and and hey presto the audio and video were perfectly synced, even in media player and media center. Anyway I turned on the 24 bit crystalizer and yes you get a bit of improvement if you can call it that...but not much, anyway I had problems with the card when playing back .wmv files with 5.1 audio the center channel was so low, could barely hear anyone speaking, I went the creative/THX speaker test to test each of my speakers individully and what do you know, it's not outputting the right signal to the right speaker, and yes my speaker cables were connected properly, spent hours plugging in each cable one by one but no luck, the center channel and subwoofer channel come out of the front right speaker, as did the front right and rear right channel, four channels through one speaker, now that's insane, and the funny thing was I unplugged the subwoofer and center channel cable from the soundcard, and was still getting them through the one speaker, the front left speaker was outputting the front left and rear left channel, it was so messed up, anway enough of that, audio does play fine, but you only notice the problem when playing back 5.1 wma audio..also note that you get random crackles, especially in media center, you usually get one when you launch it, anyway enough is enough, I have now removed the card from my systme and putting in my Audigy 2 ZS....anyway that's my experience with it...I don't know if it's buggy software or hardware....but i'm staying well clear of it...
