Razer's Gaming Soundcard

[Fibbles]

Looks like Creative Labs is going to see some competition soon in the "gaming" arena.

The Razer Barracuda AC-1: http://www.razerzone.com/Products/Gaming-Audio/Razer-Barracuda-AC%111-Sound-Card/

The Razer Barracuda HP-1: http://www.razerzone.com/Products/Gaming-Audio/Razer-Barracuda-HP%111-Gaming-Headphones/

I certainly hope they deliver. If anything, it will make CL a little more focused on doing more to keep its fanbase intact, unlike now (they certainly don't give a poopy).

[Marquee]

"The Passive EMI shield™ minimizes electromagnetic interference (EMI)" Thats a first on a sound card. Man all though this card look nice and may work well. I really doubt it so great that I have to go get myself one. I am sure that its hardly on par with the Creative X-Fi card with X-RAM.

[Fibbles]

I am sure that its hardly on par with the Creative X-Fi card with X-RAM.

Razer clearly stated they were going after the gaming market, and the only card that really owns that market (due to lack of actual competition) is Creative Lab's Soundblaster series.

Even though I really like my Soundblaster Audigy 2 and will no doubt love my X-Fi, I'd love to see competition... REAL competition! That's the only thing that will give CL's customer service a kick to the nuts. Then maybe they will actually release new drivers that actually work and fix issues now instead of later (they delayed a high profile driver update because uh, well, no idea).

One thing that I was looking for info on was X-Ram. Where is a list of game devs that are using it? How many games currently have support for it, besides BF2? I'm going to agree with Star, X-Ram is an expensive gimmick (and I don't want a F0rkta1ty logo on my stuff :lol: ).

[fivecheebs]

(and I don't want a F0rkta1ty logo on my stuff :lol: ).

dubya tee eff! oooohh emmm geee! f0rkal1ty pwns j00! :lol:

[Marquee]

Well I am very sursprised. Now when ever I buy or download a game most have a extra setting for X-RAM card. Like setting called extreme. I know that the new Ghost Recon has it and Quake 4. Most games like Quake 4 didn't support the X-RAM and with a simple update now support a setting for X-RAM. I dont have a list but I can go through the long list of games I have demod and own to tell you which ones.

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

I'd love to see competition... REAL competition!

Amen to that. :thumb: Creatives use of propriatory tech annoys me too. Whats EAX all about? Why not just use Dolby or THX?

[bobvillain]

looks like it has an optical in/out. sweet. (at least, I think those white parts are toslink)

[Marquee]

Yeah the front bay drive on the X-Fi has opticel in and out.

I would like to see some compition but sure that compition doesn't come in the form of Razor. Maybe if we are lucky maybe Nvidia might get into the audio world or anther big chip maker like ATi or Samunga.

[Starbuck3733T]

Good on Razer for doing this, i sincerely hope they can compete or better creative for less cost - but their achilies heel will be EAX. Maybe some good russian reverse engineering :D

GG on the shielding I say - a couple-cent addition that looks neat, is definitly modable, although it probably doesn't do that much, especially on the outputs... maybe for the inputs. Have you looked inside a high end amplifier? (McIntosh, HK, Denon, etc.) Do you see any shielding on the circuit board? NO! That's because they're properly designed the PCB to deal with interference and don't need "shielding". A PC Chassis provides a decent amount of shielding, even with a window and all sorts of other glitz.. Zittware may chime in... I wish he would. Again, this is a gimmick, but clever none the less.

Begin Rant:

As much as it pains me to say this, as long as the EAX standards are closed (well, EAX 4.0 and 5.0) creative is going to continue to own the market on gaming soundcards. I also think that their products are full of gimmicks and useless bullshit - but they have successfully (and good for them, bad for us) sold the game developers on programming against the EAX API. If you want high end sound with lots of environmental effects, there is no alternative.

As far as X-RAM, it is a gimmick - and you'd be blind not to see that. You'd also be deaf and dumb in addition to blind if you thought that the game developers started supporting X-RAM because it did them good... they were PAID BY CREATIVE to do so. While this is true for the most part now, we'll see plenty of follow-the-leaderism in future games where supporting the X-RAM that gamers have been suckered into buying... You can't tell me that a 32-bit/66MHz PCI Bus is actually bottlenecked by transfering sound samples back and forth, let alone that 64MB of ram on the card is enough to hold all the game sounds. Think about how much time that is for a stereo 44.1KHz RAW PCM stream and your eyes should open... it's hardly any time at all. As for any benefit by having X-RAM on your card, think about most gaming setups today... 512MB to 1GB of ram vs...64MB Puny.

"Boom-splutch 3030 doesn't support X-RAM, what a lame game"... trust me, it'll happen.

Sadly for us gamers, Creative has a stranglehold on the environmental FX soundcard market. If you don't need their EAX or can live with the basic effects of EAX 3.0 (nothing really to scoff at, assuming your game supports EAX back to this version, circa 1999 - which games like Q4 DON'T) then you don't have to buy your "soundcrack" from Creative. There are better alternatives in those cases.

/Rant

Additionally+mild edit:
Any modder worth his salt should be able to lookup the pinout of the connectors on the X-FI and build his/herself front panel outputs. I did... easy as pie. I may have to write a tutorial just to save people who aren't as electronically inclined serveral hundred dollars wasted on the PorkTAL1ty version of the card when a few dollars (<20) in parts, some time, and soldering can do the same thing for you.

[Starbuck3733T]

Amen to that. :thumb: Creatives use of propriatory tech annoys me too. Whats EAX all about? Why not just use Dolby or THX?

EAX is for environmental effects. Dolby Digital is an encoding scheme and THX is an equipment ceritifcation. EAX matters because games unlike movies have their sounds pre-recorded but their environmental effects from those sounds created on the fly.

[bobvillain]

Yeah the front bay drive on the X-Fi has opticel in and out.


i know (i have an audigy 2 platinum, so if i have to i'll use my i/o drive from it -- if it is compatible), but i don't want to use a front panel device. it's much easier and less space consuming to have it on the card itself. that is my #1 gripe with creative cards -- you always have to have some other device to get full use of the card. they could get rid of the joystick/gamepad port or the firewire port or whatever extraneous port that i don't want from a sound card. if i want another firewire or joystick port, i'll get something for that. i want sound stuff from my sound card.

[Fibbles]

EAX is just varying levels of reverb. I don't see how another company couldn't do their own with another name.


"You can't tell me that a 32-bit/66MHz PCI Bus is actually bottlenecked by transfering sound samples back and forth, let alone that 64MB of ram on the card is enough to hold all the game sounds"

From Creatives website: "X-RAM allows developers to deliver even higher quality audio samples that can be loaded into dedicated audio RAM rather than system RAM, which would affect overall performance. In certain implementations it can further boost performance beyond the standard Sound Blaster X-Fi technology."

X-RAM caches uncompressed audio. That has very little impact on helping to free up system resources. It might help at 0.1% though (I'll find the webby that did the testing as soon as I figure out what search terms I used - I'm 25 hours into my wake cycle). All cards feature X-RAM, but the difference is 2mb vs 64mb.

On the Creative forums, it seems that the X-RAM's inability to transfer these uncompressed sound samples at a high enough bandwidth to and fro is what's causing a lot of the static and popping issues. Do you believe that one of the answers Creative gave for a fix was to "make sure your dual channel memory enabled rig is running dual channel the right way". What the P0rktal1ty is that? Creative also let it slip that they only have 2 AMD64 systems working on re-creating the issue. Excuse me? Intel users are experiencing them too :angry: At first they said it was only an issue for NF4 users with 2mb cards (the non X-RAM cards do have 2mb of onboard memory), but now it seems to be with every card in the X-Fi lineup.

All the Razer or any 'gaming oriented' soundcard needs to do is offer performance with driver updates in a timely manner if something needs adding and/or fixing. If the Razer can reate a 720 degree (if I hit 'alt 2-4-8' I'll end up at the main forum page) sound field around a headphone user and without the Razer phones, all the better. If the experience is amplified with the Razer phones and they don't suck otherwise, yay too :lol:

The only reason I decided to try out an X-Fi are the supposed new developements with 'surround' sound for headphone gaming: "by utilizing advanced technology for amazing positional gaming audio. With headphones X-Fi CMSS-3D externalizes the audio by creating ten virtual speakers around you, above you and below you for an experience that's so real you'll forget you're wearing headphones." They better be serious or I will pee on the card and sent it to their corporate HQ's (maybe not).

I'm sending you a PM Star, and it's gonna have mushy things inside!

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

EAX is for environmental effects. Dolby Digital is an encoding scheme and THX is an equipment ceritifcation. EAX matters because games unlike movies have their sounds pre-recorded but their environmental effects from those sounds created on the fly.

Yes but you can still have the same effects wiht out the use of EAX. Look at the consoles.

[fivecheebs]

The only reason I decided to try out an X-Fi are the supposed new developements with 'surround' sound for headphone gaming: "by utilizing advanced technology for amazing positional gaming audio. With headphones X-Fi CMSS-3D externalizes the audio by creating ten virtual speakers around you, above you and below you for an experience that's so real you'll forget you're wearing headphones." They better be serious or I will pee on the card and sent it to their corporate HQ's (maybe not).
I can believe it, but the technology isnt exactly new...

15-20 years ago i remember watching "Tomorrows World" (its used to be a popular tv programe showcasing new technology and its uses). They were showwing off the new 3d sound effects they could get from "modern" techniques. They played a game (Xennon by Bitmap Brothers). It had a soundtrack by Bomb the Base with the sound effects over the top. This was way before the days of stereo TV broadcasts so they did a simoltaneous broadcast with BBC Radio1 for the stereo sound (yoiu needed stereo to get the 3d effects to work) and it was absolutely amazing. The demo consisted of sound effects flying around your head. I was only 13 or so at the time but i remember being in awe at the effectiveness of the demo. I have often wondered why we dont use the technique more often.

I'll be interested to hear how you find it mate.

[Pug]

/me huggles my nVidia SoundStorm. :wiz:

As far as front panel extenders go, surely they abound anyway?
First Google hit (http://www.frontx.com/). :shrug:


Not a bad rant for a Wednesday, Matt. ;-) :D

[TamiyaCowboy]

They played a game (Xennon by Bitmap Brothers). It had a soundtrack by Bomb the Base with the sound effects over the top.


Bitmap brothers

i still have some of there amiga games and they were brill in there day :D

my biggest gripe with creative is the pony "n" trap the put on the drivers disc. i hope creative start pulling there finger out

[fivecheebs]

:nods: speedball2 is one of my all time favorite games

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

:nods: speedball2 is one of my all time favorite games

Ice Cream!

[Starbuck3733T]

Yes but you can still have the same effects wiht out the use of EAX. Look at the consoles.

True, true. Most of those console games have some sort of API that they're programming against. I'm just sayign creative pwnz the market for PC games when it comes to the API. And yes, you're right about EAX being reverb... reverb and occlusion mostly.

@Pug: :thumb:

[Fibbles]

I'll let everyone know my findings.

I'm just afraid that my card will be borked. Their forums are filled with people complaining that the card is causing static, popping and buzzing noises that completely ruins the experience.

Incidentally I found out about the Razer card by a person on the CL forum. Thier post was directed at CL to watch out cause if Razer's card is good and they offer their current level or customer service to people that buy the card (like any company should), CL is going to be screwed. They have crap customer service and the cards are questionable too.

You know that I can't use any of the latest Audigy 2 drivers? They run an auto detecter and tell me that I don't have an Audigy 2. Apparently that's an issue with every card, but CL deneis anything is wrong and claims they can't re-create the problem... I know 6 people with it!

I'm gonna install Obscure. I got the DVD from ebay UK for 8 GBP. It has starforce :|

[fivecheebs]

^^Its things like that that will make me never spend money on a creative ever again.

[Starbuck3733T]

Any modder worth his salt should be able to lookup the pinout of the connectors on the X-FI and build his/herself front panel outputs. I did... easy as pie. I may have to write a tutorial just to save people who aren't as electronically inclined serveral hundred dollars wasted on the PorkTAL1ty version of the card when a few dollars (<20) in parts, some time, and soldering can do the same thing for you.

I want to un-pwn anyone I've offended with this comment. it was a very, very bad day and things like this always poke the hornet's nest for me. Not everybody has steady hands or rudimentary electronics knowledge, something I sometimes take for granted in this hobby... so there ya are. :magic:

[Pug]

[ot]720 degree (if I hit 'alt 2-4-8' I'll end up at the main forum page)
:secret: Try Alt 0176 next time (Verdana) ;-)

Saying that... hitting the apostrophe will often bring up the Ctrl-F Find box for me. :wacko:

Aaargh! Tis doing it with the forward slash now!
(really going off FireFox)[ot]