AUZENTECH to develop Sound Card based on Creative X-Fi™ chipset

[RubberDuck]

AUZENTECH to develop Sound Card based on Creative X-Fi™ chipset

Auzen X-FI™ Prelude 7.1 Coming SoonSanta Clara, CA -April 16, 2007: Auzentech, Inc.www.auzentech.com, developer of the world's first Dolby® Digital Live and DTS® Connect PCI sound card, announces today a new sound card series based on the Creative X-FI™ chipset.

The Auzen X-FI™ Prelude 7.1 is scheduled for release near the end of May 2007.It will fully support EAX 5.0 and have the same expandability as the Auzen X-Meridian™ 7.1. Support for Dolby® Digital Live real time encoding for Vista is scheduled for Q4 of this year.

The Auzen X-Fi™ Prelude marks the first time Creative has permitted a third-party soundcard vendor to use the Creative X-FI™ chipset in its own soundcard design.

 

Finally a card that supports EAX 5.0 & it's not a Creative card. :cool:

[Anospa]

Wow, that'll be nice!

[momoceio]

Besides the fact that Vista pretty much killed EAX since everyone seems to be moving towards OpenAL

[red930]

Interesting.

 

Wonder if they'll make EAX sound good enough that I hear what everyone else already (apparently) hears.

[Thraxz]

I dunno about other cards, but my Audigy 2 SOUNDS LIKE UTTER CRAP on Vista.

[momoceio]

I dunno about other cards, but my Audigy 2 SOUNDS LIKE UTTER CRAP on Vista.

 

Yep, because Creative dropped support for EAX from their Vista SB drivers. My buddy is having the same problem...so if you have any EAX video games they're going to sound like . unless Creative decides to reintegrate EAX into it's drivers. Supposedly something about Vista that makes it really difficult for them to get EAX to work correctly.

[Anospa]

Wow. Thats pretty ridiculous considering Creative puts so much into making EAX the standard for games, then Vista goes and makes it harder to implement. This is like another strike against Vista and Creative for me. Vista being stupid with its limitations, and Creative being lazy about driver fixes/support.

[signmeuptoo]

It was done in order to add a layer of much improved stability to the new OS, because Direct Sound, (a HAL I believe, hardware abstraction layer I believe), which is what was eliminated in Vista, had to do with many crashes, poor driver and software sound authoring, and other issues. Besides, ONLY Creative was really into EAX, it was their "baby" and they never really did all that great a job with it.

 

I, too, was furious with M$, at first, upon learning of this, since I am an Audigy 2 ZS Platty owner. But I now know that ALL the blame lays SQUARELY ON CREATIVE, and when they try and bull crap you and blame MS, they are full of dog dirt, they are lieing through their vicious teeth. Creative has turned into one dung heap of a company. They only provide ONE MONTH of tech support on products you purchase from them, so if, after 32 days, you call them after registering a sound card, they tell you "just go buy this X and X other model, that's all we can do for you". They had the audacity, in my case, TO REFUSE TO HONOR their warranty on a sound card. They refused to give me an RMA on a new USB sound card. The guy insulted my intelligence and told me I should just go buy an X-Fi, the idiot. He said they don't have to fix or repair it and that they won't. So I reported them doing this to me on their forums over there and they have site banned me!!!

 

Creative is a company of filthy creeps, IMHO. Grossly overpriced pieces of crap, pathetic and monstrously bloated drivers that act like undersized drivers (example: the sound sliders for all of your devices on platinum models: Only, what, 5 or whatever devices can be accessed and adjusted at any time on screen, freaking idiotic! They should have ALL devices have on screen sliders ALL ON SCREEN AT THE SAME TIME. And their damned crappy automated speakers "off" at headphone plug in has NEVER worked right for me on ANY of 4 different series/models of Soundblaster cards. They can't even make a stupid simple thing like that work, they are pathetically incompetent twits over there, and the forum mods are jerks who won't give you the time of day. They refuse to respond to ANY questions about what is happening with the pathetically crappy Vista drivers that are so called final drivers that act worse than Pre Alpha drivers.

 

Those punks are pure A holes IMHO. I will NEVER buy one single other Creative product new, ever again, in my life, and I beg everyone else boycott them. They are treating their consumers like cattle to the slaughter. Just spend a few weeks in their forums over there and you will see what I am saying. Scum suckers!

[boywander]

You're not impressed, I take it?

[signmeuptoo]

A rant, I know, but a pretty valid one. New buyers need to know what trouble they are walking into!

[Anospa]

Sucks that they've had a pretty good stranglehold over the gaming industry for so long. If you wanna have all the sounds in game as they can be, some games claim to NEED a SB X-Fi.

[suedenim]

Just marketing at play. Go to a Dev team - here's some money, our top end hardware and the SDK and build it into your game. The game comes out and all the key reviewers get their gifts from the vendor and say "Wow this game is brill but you need x to get the most out of it". The rest is history. What I would like to know is why these "reviewers" don't have the decency to say "Oh and by the way this company sucks for driver support, in fact any kind of support."

Its less of an issue for us types here as we (should) do our own research. Its the people that buy pre-built that I feel sorry for.

 

As for the X-fi - mine has been fine but I'm staying with XP. Now if all the games developers went to OpenGL instead of DX we wouldn't need Vista.