Customer Reviews

Creative Sound Blaster X-fi Elite Pro ( 70SB055000002)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have this card for a week, and what I can tell you is that this card has a quality that I've never heard from any sound card - the sound is so clean, balanced and accurrate.
of coure, you will need a good set of spekaers.
the CMSS surround is much better than Dolby Prologic 2 and DTS neo 6 for both music and movies.
if you plan to connect the DIN cable for Integrated speakers control with the Megaworks or Gigaworks, you should know that it's not working, but Creative is going to add support for those speakers in the following drivers.
I didn't like the new 24-bit Crystalizer sound, but belive me you will not need that feature, just use good mp3 player like Winamp 5+ MAD mp3 decoder plug and ASIO plug for the output.
I had many sound card like the Audigy 2 , Audigy 2 ZS, Audigy 4 Pro, ESI Juli@, M-audio Revolution...
and none of theme even close to this card!!!
worth every $$$!!!!
I recommend you buying from amazon beacuse of thier great service and warrnty, I could't do that because I am outside USA.

Well as others have said, the sound from the X-Fi system does make you go wow! The crystalizer generates body, the CMSS-3D generates depth, to music which is just missing in MP3 files (especially). The cmss-3d give an amazing simulation of surround sound, btw.

The X-Fi Elite Pro comes with a large breakout box with controls for adjustment of the crystalizer, cmss-3d, EAX and 3DMDI which are not present on the internal box -- although these really only routed to a software control and so the internal box would be a good alternative. The external breakout box needs only a supplied 26pin cable (looks like a vga cable to me!) to work. All the plugs and cables supplied are gold plated. This external box, btw, does not have firewire -- not too sure if the internal boxes do (the older systems used to).

FYI: If you buy the standard card you can update to either the internal or external breakout box; even if you buy the internal breakout box version I believe you can upgrade to the external box in the future, as the connections are present for either box. However, the X-Fi Elite box is shipped with only an external connection! Although, curiously, it does come with 64 MB of XRAM for internal sound processing, of ("some") games.

On a minor problem point, first un-install ALL the other sound drivers you can from your system before installing the sound card because conflicts are hard to sort out after (I unfortunately found this out the hard way). Also the shipped drivers will need updating when you get the card; simple to do from the website. I found that my breakout box controls didn't work until I loaded up the new drivers!

On the software side, the unit is shipped with cubase LE, an upgraded Wavelab Lite (which has some great filters and wave effects), a demo games disk (to illustrate X-Fi ability in gaming I suppose) and patches for Doom3 and Unreal Tournament. Other software includes an array of sound management controls which should be enough for anyone but the most demanding of sound engineers!

All in all if you want the best sound from your music files, games or you want to process music then one of these cards will be for you! I suppose I could have given it 5 stars but I had trouble loading all the software (some times it hung for no reason -- it could have been checked better) and so 1 star off for this.

The only need for the breakout box is, of course, if you want attach sound a variety of inputs (particularly optical). The external breakout box then has the advantage of being cute and easier to adjust. This would probably be good in both a home entertainment environment or if you are doing a lot of sound engineering.

Vista didn't wow me, but this sound card sure did. If you are an audiophile and want the best sound card, this is it. Sound reproduction on a computer that rivals a concert hall. Listening to Vivaldi in 3dmidi on 5.1 surroundsound speakers was a real treat.
The caveats to this card are few now that the drivers are up to date. I had no problem with installation and operation. I did however need to upgrade my power supply to 600 watts. I am also adding a dedicated SATA hard drive for audio midi and wave storage.
This card obsoletes many speaker systems so be prepared to upgrade there if you want the best in sound that this card offers.
The bundled software allows for music creation to hobbyist and semi-pro in 24 bit soundfont midi and 24bit/96khz wave. The learning curve for some of this software is higher than most though. The package comes with all documentation on disk.
The three separate operation modes allow gamers, composers, and listeners equal opportunity to enjoy the features of this sound card. For me, listening to some of my old midi compositions come to life, and being able to do a mixdown in 24bit96khz make this sound card indispensable.

Can a new sound card make your music sound better than a live performance?
Did Deep Blue beat Grandmaster Gary Kasparov? Think about it.

Oh man, it is hard to describe the feeling I got when I listened to music and played my first game on this card. Mind-blowing is about as close as I can get. The break-out box is rather large, but with this kind of sound, I'll make room!
The drivers still need a bit of honing, but I wouldn't give up this sound card system for anything. WELL worth the high price. Put off buying that video card and GET THIS! It will be likely the last sound card system you will ever own.

I installed this card about two weeks ago and it is working great. I really like the console which allows me to plug up a mic, my keyboard with the 1/4" jack, my keyboard with midi in/out, and my cd player all at once. It installed and worked on the first try. I did have to download the updated driver to fix a few minor problems but that was easy and painless.

Sound is first class. Installation easy. Features amazing. Am using to create music using Ableton, Absynth etc. Rock solid support. DO update drivers after install.

I had bfore X-Fi XtremeMusic then I sold it, and I bought X-Fi Elite Pro for even better DAC and op-amp which is helpful to get even cleaner sound using my headphones(Sennheiser HD595) and the 64MB X-RAM.

While testing the 64MB X-RAM in providing performance boost with my PC setup (Pentuim D 2.8 GHz, 3GB Ram & Geforce 7600GT) my test reveals only 0.8% of CPU load difference between X-RAM models and non X-RAM models. There are currently 5 game titles support X-RAM, I'm waiting for more games.

The elite pro breakbox is useless to me right now since I found out that the 1/4 headphones jack has lower quality DAC than the one in the card itself I plug my Sennheiser HD595 in the front output of the card, anyway I'll keep the breakbox with me I might use it in the future.

X-Fi Elite Pro is definitly the best card in gaming and music listening especially when using headphones in games and music, whatever you like in digital entertainment you won't forget the sound of X-Fi.

I purchased this card to work with my Stanton turntable (which has a S/PDIF outout) to transfer my more rare vinyl records to CD. It works brilliantly. It also works seemlessly with with my FrootLoops music creation software as well as my Power DVD 7.0. I am using it in conjunction with a Logitech 5.1 THX surround-sound speaker system. Although it tends to be a little boomy on the low end, the EQ in the X-fi software seems to be able to trim it out. The Beatles Love 5.1 DVD Audio is incredible through this system, not to mention Neil Young/Jonathan Demme Heart of Gold movie in DTS. It is the most expensive card I looked at, but the addition of the external interface controller alone is worth the money.

I purchased the XFi Pro Elite as part of a multimedia system for use in our church. PG Music's Band-In-A-Box is used to provide chorus accompaniment by way of a large home-grown soundfont that produces phenomenal results through the Audigy-series cards. I expected even better with XFi.

XFi is certainly loaded with bells and whistles. The quality of the playback is exceptional (I haven't had time to record or rip yet). The remote control is very useful and the external unit is well built.

Like all Creative products, however, the XFi has its issues. First is the power requirement--yes, this card requires power separate from the PCI bus.

Now try adding the short power extension that Creative supplies to a new Dell tower (this is a Dimension)--far too short! Dell only has one "legacy" power plug that fits the XFi extension cable, and that is way up near the top of the tower, hanging off of the CDRW/DVD power cable. All other connectors are the new SATA standard or small connectors. This meant that I had to move the DVD drive to the bottom bay just to get enough cable length to reach the XFi with the extension. There is no possibility of adding another DVD unit without a cable change.

MIDI support is lagging behind also, as typical with all Creative products that I have ever owned. While playing back Band-In-A-Box songs, or MIDI files, the system began hanging and sputtering. "With two GB of RAM this should not be happening," I thought. Checking the performance monitor, I found hardly any processor loading nor any memory trouble--extremely huge amounts of headroom available here. After all, this is a music-only system...no anti-virus stuff, no Internet connection, no background junk...stripped down to just music.

Then thinigs got worse. Squeaks, squawks, dropped notes, added notes, hang-ups...I was ready to ship the whole rotten system back.

Then I found the upgrade to the drivers on the Creative Support site. Yes, you better download all 42 MB of update and install it. MIDI3D was the culprit. I installed the patch, if it can be called such at 42 MB, and it seemed to work. Things have been working great since.

Realize that this software update is critical for any MIDI3D use at all.

I just wish Creative would get the software right the first time for once...

Other than this, the support software is flashy and easy to use. Once I calm down and experience stable software performance, I will readily admit that this is the best I have seen (and heard) Creative produce. Until such time...three stars!

This sound card is amazing, i have actually compared the quality and processing of this unit to the other units in the x-fi series and this one is the best. it is the best sound card i have ever seen.
I do all sorts of stuff, extreme gaming, video and audio editing profesionaly, and movie watching. I never new my sound system could sound so amazing.
If you have the cash to spend. This is a strongly recommended soundcard
only downside to the audigy 2 series is no usb or firewire ports on the controler, but oh well. it is an amazing sound card.