Is it worth to upgrade my soundcard to x-fi extreme music?

Question

I'm now using vibra 64 soundcard together with creative cambridge soundworks sw310 speaker and it sounds not bad. But recently i planned to upgrade my soundcard to x-fi extreme music for much better sound quality but still remain using the same speaker. I'm much more serious on listening to music than any other applications. so, is it worth to upgrade? And will my speaker compatible and perform well with the x-fi soundcard?

Answer 1

There are real-time sound enhancements built-into X-FI cards, so your music will sound better. Whether the X-FI is worth it or not depends on your own sound tastes, but if your sound card is as old as I think it is, then even my old Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card would sound better.

The largest difference between the X-FI and other lower-end sound cards is that the X-FI has a built-in CPU. This means that the X-FI card can save your CPU from doing extra sound-related tasks.
Truthfully, CPUs were used in several sound cards in the early 90's, so there's nothing special about the X-FI technology. I think it would be best if ALL sound cards were more like the ones from the early 90's, where sound cards had wave table synthesis chips (like the ones used on Creative's cards), a CPU, and on-board RAM for the sound card. I'm generally not a fan of hardware which makes your computer do work that the hardware ought to be doing. (Those crappy C-Media and Realtek sound chips take too much CPU time away from your computer.) I think Creative is the only sound card manufacturer left who uses wave table synthesis chips on their low-end sound cards.

Buy the X-FI from a store with a good return policy. Some of Creative's sound cards (most notably the Audigy series) have problems with static or buzzing sounds during sound output. Check out Creative's forum on their web site for more info. The problem might be related to motherboard incompatibilites.

I'm not familiar with your speakers, if your speakers are digital and require SPDIF digital output from your sound card, then you should have no problems there.

Answer 2

yes your speaker compatible with x-fi , but if you want to good sound you have to buy better speakers , like creative 5+1 , 6+1 , 7+1 .