X-bit labs

Started by: Wouter | Date 12/19/07

Comments: 12 | Last Comment:  04/05/08

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1. Very interesting, especially the in-depth technical/electronical introduction. I regret not seeing more reviews of non-gaming soundcards in general, it would be nice to see more technical reviews of some audiophile and (semi-)professional audio products for home studios.

2. I am an audiophile and do not recommend Creative Lab sound cards because they are for kids. Electrolyte capacitors are not great for audio which I am seeing all over the board. They do well filtering DC, but mylar and polypropylene capacitor types are the best for audio.

I have an Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 that far exceeds the quality of Creative Labs sound cards and it can handle 192 KHz with 24-bit audio resolution for all 8 channels with out dithering. Audiotrak has came out with a Hi--Fi version that has better specifications and an radio interference shield to minimize coloration of the audio. Audiotrak sound cards work in Linux while Creative Labs X-Fi does not.

MIDI can be done through Ethernet.

Prodigy 7.1 with WM8870 codec can not match X-Fi Prelude even being tweaked. It is a fact, because I made a head-to-head comparison ;-)

The Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1LT, Prodigy HD2, and Prodigy HiFi does not have that chip. These cards are hard to find and rarely in stock.

Numbers do not always provide sound quality. You have to listen to it too. The audio from sound cards from Creative Labs does not output pure and seems they are missing something. Audio coming from Prodigy cards has everything that is missed in Creative Lab sound cards.

All Prodigy models are supported in Linux unlike X-Fi models.

Both Prodigy 7.1 and Prodigy 7.1LT do have WM8870. Output filter use NJM4580. The sound is good but not ideal. It is a bit dirty and not so detailed.

3. very informative...i wish they could compare the Prelude with Xonar in a review of the latter

Yes, we'll do it soon.

4. Dear Sergey Romanov,

Have you ever heard of a PCI soundcard produced by Onkyo under the range WAVIO.

The card is Onkyo WAVIO SE-200PCI which I find that is audiophile oriented PCI soundcard.

Here's a link to the card (Japanese):
http://onkyo.jp/wavio/se_200pci/index.htm

If you can do a test on this card and do a head-to-head battle between the Auzentech and this Onkyo card, I believe it'll very very interesting !!!

^_^

Were we can obtain a sample?

5. Just found this article after having owned this card for a month or so. I was excited to read about the front panel headphone output being somehow superior, I tried it and it sounds like utter garbage. The headphone bypass on my Logitech computer speakers sounds far better as does the output straight from the card. I'm sure I have it hooked up right so I'm don't know what's wrong. Does the quality of the front panel port play a role or are they simple pass-through?

Headphones are Grado S80. I probably just need a heaphone amp of some sort but my experience with the front panel port so far is a big thumbs down.

I need to listen a little more but I may have figured it out. the sound was very muted, unbalanced tonally and distant. The front panel hook up I have has individual wires for each pin. I was using Pin 4 (second column top when looking at the card from the front) as the ground thinking both that and Pin 2 grounds were the same, the Auzen site doesn't seem to indicate they are really different. I guess they are, the Pin 2 ground sounds much better for headphones. Strange...

6. renug.gas@hotmail.com

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