96000HZ audio impliementation code submission.

[Reznor007]

It's not just the high frequencies that are the problem. kmixer can introduce audible distortion resampling from 44.1KHz to 48KHz.

OK, that makes sense. It's like that on Mac OS Classic; the Sound Manager's resampler uses simple linear interpolation so if you want better, your code has to do the resampling. It's odd that a sound card wouldn't be made so that 44.1 kHz streams sounded decent in Windows. I take it that ZSNES can't just generate sound at either 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz internally, thus working with most sound cards?

Most sound cards resample to 48KHz no matter what. Most cards that support true 32 or 44.1KHz output are uncommon or high end cards. ZSNES does support 44.1 and 48, but as kick mentioned, even at 48KHz alot of cards do a pointless resample.

[Deathlike2]

It's not just the high frequencies that are the problem. kmixer can introduce audible distortion resampling from 44.1KHz to 48KHz.

OK, that makes sense. It's like that on Mac OS Classic; the Sound Manager's resampler uses simple linear interpolation so if you want better, your code has to do the resampling. It's odd that a sound card wouldn't be made so that 44.1 kHz streams sounded decent in Windows. I take it that ZSNES can't just generate sound at either 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz internally, thus working with most sound cards?

Most sound cards resample to 48KHz no matter what. Most cards that support true 32 or 44.1KHz output are uncommon or high end cards. ZSNES does support 44.1 and 48, but as kick mentioned, even at 48KHz alot of cards do a pointless resample.

After reading all of this.. I find myself hating Creative a lot more than I did before, but if someone could answer this..

Does an SB Live (all varients) resample the audio data or not?

[kick]

Read my previous post again (updated)

You shouldn't hate Creative now.They are on the right track with X-Fi
(albeit their only good cards are still very expensive,because of that Fatal1ty crap)

SBLive! resamples,and does it even worse than Audigy cards,bah!

[Bahamut_ZERO_Clue]

The X-Fi is possibly the most revolutionary audio chip I've ever seen specs on. The only other chipset I saw with such revolutionary specs was Aureal's SQ2500/3500 - Vortex 2/8830 series several years ago. It's a shame they never got to get to working on the 8840 and later chipsets they were planning.

The Audigy series is nor better than the Live/512 series IMO and was meerly an expansion of the later so revolutinary... it was not.

Realtek's design is somewhat innovative but not enough to hit my tastebuds correctly. It's still Sensaura based like the ALC660 was.

On card or cards I will say were quite good were the Fortissimo and Digifire series cards by Guillemot. Compared to other stuff out on the market at that time they were quite innovative as to what they could do. They were Sensaura based but they did have some quirks other cards using similar chipsets couldn't do or handle.

[kick]

"The Audigy series is nor better than the Live/512 series IMO"

It's the Audigy 1 that's not better than the live/512 series.
With Audigy2/ZS they've done what the Audigy 1 was supposed to do,but it didn't.Most of the shortcomings and design issues were addressed,although the bad resampling algorithm was still there,but it could be bypassed this time for higher-quality streams.
So IMO,Audigy2 is the true successor to Live,not A1.

[Bahamut_ZERO_Clue]

True... I recently seen some Audigy4s out in Gamer Editions and Value versions. What's the Audigy2 like compared with the Audigy4?

[FitzRoy]

Creative... Awful drivers. Inferior DACs. Incredible marketing skill.

[Verdauga Greeneyes]

The Audigy 4 has -nothing- over the Audigy 2 ZS except for a higher SNR; I dunno about the Audigy 2 though.

[Nightcrawler]

Creative... Awful drivers. Inferior DACs. Incredible marketing skill.

You should reevaluate that statement now that X-fi has been released.

[Deathlike2]

Creative... Awful drivers. Inferior DACs. Incredible marketing skill.

You should reevaluate that statement now that X-fi has been released.

Overpriced, no competition (bought out the real competition way back when), and the above still applies.

[kick]

Audigy4 = slightly better DACs,but a lot better ADCs,better software and driver package than Audigy2 = better quality overall.

Drivers for X-Fi are not awful.DACs are not that inferior as you think,if you get one of the higher-end cards.
But the price is very high for the upper models with X-RAM ("cash-cow" Fatal1ty and Pro) The entry-level "ExtremeMusic" model is just not worth the money for its' low specs.I'd do much better with Audigy2 ZS and kX drivers for half the price
But,even the entry-level model is much better than the Audigy2 ZS for all-round use.
(better drivers,no crappy resampling artifacts,EAX5,better software package)

The competition: I can only see Terratec as a main competitor,but it can't hold a candle to the X-Fi's possibilities for gaming and multimedia.

Semi-Pro and Pro cards have better DAC/ADC specs,but they are absolutely useless for anything else (Games,DirectSound,Movies,Surround,EAX...)
They are only good for professional recording and "reference" playback of the recorded stuff.
Just try to use a pro card for your everyday stuff and you'll get pissed quickly by it's "performance" in this area.

If you're into everything: gaming,multimedia and audio creation,X-Fi can't be beaten.

Creative just needs to slash the prices,and they're gold.

[Bahamut_ZERO_Clue]

Hopefully they'll introduce a PCMCIA or USB X-Fi soon.

[Nightcrawler]

Creative... Awful drivers. Inferior DACs. Incredible marketing skill.

You should reevaluate that statement now that X-fi has been released.

Overpriced, no competition (bought out the real competition way back when), and the above still applies.

Overpriced as opposed to WHAT exactly?

Creative buying their competition is irrelevant to whether they produce good or bad products. What do you expect? Creative NOT try and make more money and grow as a company? That's what every corporation does.

Awful drivers? What's wrong with the X-fi's drivers? Really. Give me some supporting evidence.

Inferior DAC? Again, What's wrong with the X-fi's DAC? Which spec do you feel is inferior? WHAT is it inferior to?

Opinions without supporting evidence or anything to back it up are about as useless as anything else coming out of people's asses.

[Deathlike2]

Creative... Awful drivers. Inferior DACs. Incredible marketing skill.

You should reevaluate that statement now that X-fi has been released.

Overpriced, no competition (bought out the real competition way back when), and the above still applies.

Overpriced as opposed to WHAT exactly?

There's nothing to compete, thus not driving down prices. Creative is free to set whatever price they want, regardless. If anything, their low entry X-Fi hardware should be around $100 instead of $130.

Creative buying their competition is irrelevant to whether they produce good or bad products. What do you expect? Creative NOT try and make more money and grow as a company? That's what every corporation does.

It has significant relevence. Competition generally makes both companies strive to be better than the other. Products as a result get better. The consumer wins in the end. Noone's saying they should die, just try to really improve their products. Let's put it this way.. the Audigy 1 was not a real improvement over the SB Live. Compare this to the video card wars.. you need at least 2 players to keep the other in check.

Awful drivers? What's wrong with the X-fi's drivers? Really. Give me some supporting evidence.

We're talking about the past, not present.

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs ... ge.id=8931

Boston Acoustic Digital Speakers or Prebuilt System With a Digital Live! Card

Some name brand systems shipped with a special Live! Value card that was made to work with digital speakers. If you system shipped with a Live! Value and you have digital speakers you will need to use drivers provided by your system manufacturer. If you use the drivers on the Creative website your card will no longer work with your digital speakers.

If you have a set of Boston Acoustic digital speakers that came with your system and they are not working with your sound card, make sure you have it connected to the digital out on the card. Also make sure that the digital out is enabled.

I'm one that's affected by this... although it's always a common thing to suggest getting drivers from the manufacturer, but isn't it still the responsibility of Creative to add this to their drivers? They are the ones that know the hardware internally.

Inferior DAC? Again, What's wrong with the X-fi's DAC? Which spec do you feel is inferior? WHAT is it inferior to?

I don't claim to know too much about this, but it has been documented that the older hardware (SB Live/Audigy2) have been using lower quality DACs.

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/rear.php?language=en

The AC97 Codecs used in SBLive! cards are rather noisy devices (when compared to I2S Codecs), and this leads to some quality problems. As a rule, SBLive Rear outputs have much better Signal To Noise Ratio (SNR), Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and Channel Separation (acs) since they use the I2S Codec. So, if you want to get better sound quality for music playback it is recommended that you plug your speakers into the 'Rear Out' and enable the 'Swap Front and Rear' kX Mixer option (the swap is enabled by default).

The Audigy and Audigy2 cards use both AC97 and I2S Codecs for Front output and this theoretically gives you rather good Front quality. But nevertheless, the AC97 Codec causes some distortion and thus the same procedure is recommended for use with Audigy / Audigy2 cards as well.

Opinions without supporting evidence or anything to back it up are about as useless as anything else coming out of people's asses.

Feel better now?

Do I now have the dig up as to why EAX is glorfied reverb technology? Besides EAX3 and above (EAX5) being closed-source (noone else can implement it), there has really been nothing challenging Creative (especially after they bought Aureal).

[Clements]

The gaming performance, featureset and % CPU utilisation of the Audigy 2/X-fi are still better than the competition, and for the X-Fi, it beats out professional sound cards in quality as well.

[Deathlike2]

The gaming performance, featureset and % CPU utilisation of the Audigy 2/X-fi are still better than the competition, and for the X-Fi, it beats out professional sound cards in quality as well.

Noone questions its good stuff.. it's that when compared to other audio solutions for non-gaming situations where it isn't as good.. The major reason that most other sound cards aren't good for gaming is because the future standards such as EAX3 are closed off to others. You can find that in practically every good sound card review.

[kick]

and for the X-Fi, it beats out professional sound cards in quality as well.

...not really.Just take a look at the E-MU 1212m card from E-MU systems http://www.emu.com (owned by Creative).That's what I call quality.It's based on the "old" Audigy2 chip,but equipped with a killer set of DACs/ADCs that will blow away even the X-Fi Pro.But it's junk for gaming and everything else multimedia.Only for pro work and some hardcore audiophiles.
And,of course,high quality comes with a hefty price tag.

All those great chips of SBLive!.Audigy2 and X-Fi were made by E-MU Systems.Creative now owns them fully.

% CPU utilisation of the Audigy 2/X-fi are still better than the competition

True
Audigy2-based cards even use less CPU overhead for up to 64-voice streams than X-Fi based cards
Very good performance from the Audigy2

Do I now have the dig up as to why EAX is glorfied reverb technology? Besides EAX3 and above (EAX5) being closed-source (noone else can implement it), there has really been nothing challenging Creative (especially after they bought Aureal).

Isn't the Open-Source OpenAL standard some good enough competition?
EAX is like DirectX,whereas OpenAL is like OpenGL.
OpenAL is being used more and more in games,as OpenGL is for Graphics.

[Deathlike2]

and for the X-Fi, it beats out professional sound cards in quality as well.

...not really.Just take a look at the E-MU 1212m card from E-MU systems http://www.emu.com (owned by Creative).That's what I call quality.It's based on the Audigy2 chip,but with killer DACs/ADCs.But it's junk for gaming and everything else multimedia.Only for pro work and some hardcore audiophiles.


All those great chips of SBLive!.Audigy2 and X-Fi were made by E-MU Systems.Creative now owns them fully.

% CPU utilisation of the Audigy 2/X-fi are still better than the competition

True
Audigy2-based cards use even less CPU% overhead for up to 64-voice streams than X-Fi based cards

Do I now have the dig up as to why EAX is glorfied reverb technology? Besides EAX3 and above (EAX5) being closed-source (noone else can implement it), there has really been nothing challenging Creative (especially after they bought Aureal).

Isn't the Open-Source OpenAL good competition?

Not necessarily. If you're Creative and you hate rewriting your entire driver to support newer OSes... (98SE->Win2k... XP->Vista), then you want some interface to be able to expose your hardware. Assisting in the development of OpenAL was the response. Having OpenAL (or an API in general) doesn't really do anything for competition.. what made you suggest that at all..?

All DirectX/OpenGL does is expose new hardware features with standardized methods for developers to work with. The neat (but sometimes bad) thing about OpenGL is that you are able to expose certain features that are non-standard and are specific to one vendor's hardware. None of this has any relevence to competition.

[kick]

So it all comes down to proprietary extensions for existing APIs then...and the aggressive marketing
And also as I see,OpenSource is kind of a double-edged sword

[Deathlike2]

So it all comes down to proprietary extensions for existing APIs then...and the aggressive marketing
And also as I see,OpenSource is kind of a double-edged sword

Why do you think IPods sold so well.. and it really isn't because of its specs.

I wouldn't go too far as to use that description. You have to remember why certain things were developed... the idea behind OpenAL wasn't bad... and I wouldn't really associate Open Source (or open anything) with Creative...

[Nightcrawler]

There's nothing to compete, thus not driving down prices. Creative is free to set whatever price they want, regardless. If anything, their low entry X-Fi hardware should be around $100 instead of $130.

Says who? The prices you pull out of your ass are just as valid or not valid as Creative's. I'm not even going to bother commenting on the compeition.
Just don't label creative as such a horrible company just because they bought their competition like any other corporation. That's crap.

We're talking about the past, not present.

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs ... ge.id=8931

Umm.. no.. we're talking about the present.... Please re-read your own posts! I told you to re-evaluate your statement based on the X-fi release. You STILL claimed all these things were wrong. That's what sparked this argument in the first place. I don't deny Creative has had problems in the past. However, we're talking about the present. Therefore, I will throw out every bit of supporting evidence that applies to the past and not the present. That leaves you once again with very little.

Your digital speaker support problem does not exist in X-fi. And in case you didn't read what you posted again, systems shipped with a SPECIAL version of the value card. It's obviously up to the system manufacturer to support such cards. Those special versions are sold SPECIFICALLY by your system manufacturer.

Your DAC arguement is irrelevant. We're not talking about older hardware. The current DAC's used are pretty good on the X-fi's.

Feel better now?

Do I now have the dig up as to why EAX is glorfied reverb technology? Besides EAX3 and above (EAX5) being closed-source (noone else can implement it), there has really been nothing challenging Creative (especially after they bought Aureal).

No.. I don't. You've still given me pretty much nothing. Most everything you brought up is irrelevant to this discussion. We're supposed to be talking about Creative today post X-fi release. You're stuck in the past with SBLive and Audigys. I argue nothing about those.

The rest of your argument is fixated on the fact that creative has no compeition. That's only even marginally relevant and I already addressed that. Creative must be a terrible company because they bought their compeition and nobody else can or has stepped forward to challenge them.

Yep, you convinced me. They're terrible.

[Deathlike2]

There's nothing to compete, thus not driving down prices. Creative is free to set whatever price they want, regardless. If anything, their low entry X-Fi hardware should be around $100 instead of $130.

Says who? The prices you pull out of your ass are just as valid or not valid as Creative's. I'm not even going to bother commenting on the compeition.
Just don't label creative as such a horrible company just because they bought their competition like any other corporation. That's crap.

My point here is that Creative would have better products if they actually had competition. Their products do fine what for they are generally intended for and that's gamers. Howeverm not releasing their later EAX standards stifles competitors and that does affect competitor products.

We're talking about the past, not present.

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs ... ge.id=8931

Umm.. no.. we're talking about the present.... Please re-read your own posts! I told you to re-evaluate your statement based on the X-fi release. You STILL claimed all these things were wrong. That's what sparked this argument in the first place. I don't deny Creative has had problems in the past. However, we're talking about the present. Therefore, I will throw out every bit of supporting evidence that applies to the past and not the present. That leaves you once again with very little.

Your digital speaker support problem does not exist in X-fi. And in case you didn't read what you posted again, systems shipped with a SPECIAL version of the value card. It's obviously up to the system manufacturer to support such cards. Those special versions are sold SPECIFICALLY by your system manufacturer.

Your DAC arguement is irrelevant. We're not talking about older hardware. The current DAC's used are pretty good on the X-fi's.

Fine, you want an issue? Why the hell does this sound card need XP with SP2 installed? This makes absolutely NO sense. I'm definately aware of Win2k not supporting some of the more recent speaker formats (6.1 and above) and some other features I would accept that. But no, the X-Fi somehow requires XP SP2. That boggles my mind. There generally is few differences between drivers released for Win2k than those released of WinXP (in most cases, they are literally the same). What marketing/technical genius thought up to restrict its user base is beyond me. There has been discussion in the Creative forums to circumvent such a feature, but seriously, this "artifical limitation" shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Feel better now?

Do I now have the dig up as to why EAX is glorfied reverb technology? Besides EAX3 and above (EAX5) being closed-source (noone else can implement it), there has really been nothing challenging Creative (especially after they bought Aureal).

No.. I don't. You've still given me pretty much nothing. Most everything you brought up is irrelevant to this discussion. We're supposed to be talking about Creative today post X-fi release. You're stuck in the past with SBLive and Audigys. I argue nothing about those.

The rest of your argument is fixated on the fact that creative has no compeition. That's only even marginally relevant and I already addressed that. Creative must be a terrible company because they bought their compeition and nobody else can or has stepped forward to challenge them.

Yep, you convinced me. They're terrible.

Noone has to like a company, as long as someone else is there, it will keep the company in check. The fact there is AMD for Intel and ATI for NVidia, then consumers get a better product. Imagine that the X-Fi could be even more than it currently is if there were competition. Creative can release whatever junk/goodness whenever it wants, but that also leaves them to half ass certain features. Obviously you don't value competition as much as I do and that's fine. However, there is a complacency factor that occurs here. I want products that better than the would have normally been.. and there's nothing that Creative or its "competition" to facilitate it. If it wasn't for AMD years ago.. we would most likely be using some overpriced Intel processor at 2GHz at the slow pace Intel was most likely to continue to go. But, hey.. I guess that doesn't matter. X-Fi is a good product.. I just think it could be even better if competition was there.

[Bahamut_ZERO_Clue]

Just an update....

I've posted my findings along with those of my friend and I am going to say this...

I'm not paying $20 dollars for contributed code to be added into the source tree. You people are sick if you think so. You have our code and so do we so here's a word of advice to some of you who think you know everything... screw off and up yours. I posted our finding and asked for help but we got none so we did the work and actually gave a crap about the work. I can see how open source works now and it's a load of bullcrap. GNU/GPL is a fluke and a lie, at least around here is it. You want to add it in and fix the GUI reseting issue we couldn't figure out, so be it.

I'm really sick of dealing with people who can not act mature enough to be true adults. You say if you want it, code it in and submit it. Well, WE DID CODE IT IN AND WE DID SUBMIT IT but we are not paying a stupid fee just so one of you can take credit for it. That's bullcrap and totally against the concept of GNU/GPL and a clear violation of it. I have a good mindset to contact the sourceforge administartors and report this to them just to see what happens. I doubt they would shut you down but it'd be interesting to sit back and watch what exactly would take place.

That's my 2 cents anyway so do what you will. I've submitted our code so the rest is up to you.

[sweener2001]

the problem with your rant is that your code sucked. they won't commit sucky code. had you got it to work, they probably wouldn't care. and the money was a joke thing. you still don't get it.

and ipods sold so well because they seem to be hands-down better than the competition. while a generation or two ago, creative should've been selling better, today there is no reason not to get an ipod if you want a high capacity mp3 player.

and creative lacks competition. that didn't stop them from making the x-fi, did it? what would have stopped them from making an audigy 2.5 and screwing everyone?

and comparing professional and consumer products is retarded. if you're a professional, you buy the professional equipment. if you're a consumer, you buy the x-fi. what a surprise that the x-fi is catered to its target market.

[adventure_of_link]

As long as ZSNES and your code are all GPL, you can legally charge for the software.

Look through the GPL sometime.