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Onboard audio FTW

D

datter

Guest
Since I got this latest rig set up, its occurred to me that my Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio card and all it's bloated Creative drivers etc has been causing me some issues. Nothing major, but I'd get the odd crash in some games which seemed sound related which made me wonder with the most recent being in FSX with the freeware Connie that was release awhile back (posted about here).

I'd considered pulling the card and trying onboard audio, but was concerned about any performance hit so I never bothered. Last night I was skulking around the back of my system (yes, I hang out back there sometimes) and noticed that the onboard has a digital out, which my non PCI-Express X-Fi doesn't have. Since I have a very nice set of 3d audio gaming headphones here that can use digital, I figured I'd give the onboard a shot. I hate climbing under my desk to plug in my headphones, so have rarely used them.

  • Uninstalled everything by Creative (which was satisfying in itself) then rebooted into safe mode and did a proper driver cleaning.
  • Shut down, pulled the X-Fi and installed my Riser card for the onboard audio.
  • Rebooted, installed the drivers and that was it.
Very happy to say that with my particular mobo, my sound quality has actually improved plus I can leave my spiffy 3d headphones plugged into the digital port so no more climbing under the desk and they sound terrific. I even have some ports/jacks on the front I can use now too if I need them. This set up works much nicer for me, and as I said the audio quality is actually better with onboard vs the X-Fi. Who knew. On top of that, I'm getting no performance hit at all that I can see and to be honest things might have gotten a bit better... although I can't say that for certain.

About the Connie and it freezing shortly after take off... that's no longer a problem at all so there was clearly something going on the X-Fi couldn't handle, but the onboard can cope with. I've found that when I load up the Connie and get on the runway things sound as expected. I then lower flaps and notice the engine sound drops very low but I can get it back to regular volume by switching to en exterior view then back inside. I suspect that whatever is causing this engine audio volume thing is what was causing the complete freeze of FSX with this AC when I had the X-Fi installed. Strange.

Anyway, long post... but I'm happy with the results and thought I'd make mention that onboard audio is well worth looking into if you have newer mobo at least.

datter

PS - Asus P5N32-E Sli here and the onboard is SupremeFX II with a riser card
 
Just be aware you may have problems with the Supreme FXII and A2A's Accusim. I had to rip mine out and now I'm on a X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro. It has a million times better sound quality and doesn't cause any problems on my system. The fatal1ty pro has both digital in and out as well as the other analog inputs and outputs.
 
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