GamersHell.com Community Forums - View Single Post - Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Op-Amp upgrade

GMtm · 05-24-2007, 08:31 PM

OCworkbench have modded a normal Creative Xi-Fi soundcard to increase analogue audio quality. Interesting read and quite doable if your a ninja on a soldering iron like me!

Quote:

One group, however, remained quite unsatisfied with Creative's new offering: audiophiles. Despite using a quite respectable CS4382 digital-analogue converter (and the even better CS4398 on the high end Elite Pro cards) and offering vastly superior quality to most of their previous consumer sound cards, the X-Fi was let down by a poor choice in opamps and too many cheap capacitors in the signal path. In late 2006, a little known company called Auzentech claimed this small market all for itself upon the release of the incredible X-Meridian 7.1. They used socketed opamps, high quality polymer capacitors throughout the card, superior DACs and a better designed analogue stage. Subjective audio tests suggested that Auzentech's offering had vastly more detail, tighter bass, more natural highs and provided a much less tiring 'live' sound when compared with Creative's card. However, Gamers were left unimpressed, as like so many cards before it, the X-Meridian only supported EAX 2.0.

Full story is here:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/articles/C...X-Fi-mod/g1.htm