# Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium vs Titanium Pro



## $immond$ (Jul 19, 2011)

Alright so I just purchased a pretty basic home theatre system for my gaming rig (Samsung HTC550) and I am not impressed with my onboard sound. My motherboard uses a VIA chip but "emulates" X-Fi. 

I am needing a PCI-E sound card for my system with SPDIF out. I have narrowed it down to either the X-Fi titanium or the titanium pro.

I am not really sure about the difference between the 2 cards other than the shroud with a white LED light. 

not sure if it is worth the extra $50 on newegg. Can someone explain the differences between these 2 cards? any advise/reccomendations would be greatly appreciated.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 19, 2011)

$immond$ said:


> I am not really sure about the difference between the 2 cards other than the *shroud with a white LED light. *




Pretty much answerd your own question right there boss.

the 'shroud' is actually an EMI shield that protects the hardware from all the other frequencies inside the case that might interfear with soundcard.

secondly...

a Xonar DX is pretty bad ass card and has been the card of choice for many users over the creative card. and its also a little cheaper. well worth having a look at.


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## Dent1 (Jul 19, 2011)

$immond$ said:


> Alright so I just purchased a pretty basic home theatre system for my gaming rig (Samsung HTC550) and I am not impressed with my onboard sound. My motherboard uses a VIA chip but "emulates" X-Fi.
> 
> I am needing a PCI-E sound card for my system with SPDIF out. I have narrowed it down to either the X-Fi titanium or the titanium pro.
> 
> ...



You're going to have to be more specific about your needs. SPDIF out generally sounds the same if bit-streamed from a DVD regardless of soundcard.

As far as the differences between the the Titanium and Pro Fatal1ty I couldnt find anything other than SNR differences. Definitely not worth extra for the Pro.

The two above mention cards have Dolby encoding but not DTS encoding, so I wouldn't buy either for that reason. But it comes down to what you want in a soundcard.


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## $immond$ (Jul 19, 2011)

I need an optical out on the sound card for my sound system and it has to use PCE-e.


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## qubit (Jul 19, 2011)

I've got the X-Fi ExtremeMusic and it's an awesome card. It wasn't very expensive and I can recommend it. However, it's been discontinued some time ago, so will be hard to find. 

The ExtremeGamer version is almost the same, but uses cheaper components, so should sound about the same and this is still available I believe.

If you can get one of these cards, then you won't need to splash out on the Titanium card.


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## $immond$ (Jul 19, 2011)

The card doesnt look like it has an optical out on it. 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/9219/3

The titanium and titanium pro are basically the same card except one has a shroud. 
I am guessing there is no real difference in quality.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 19, 2011)

the Xtreme gamer has Digital out Via TOSlink. (i take it the Xonars werent too your taste )


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## KingPing (Jul 19, 2011)

I have the X-fi Titanium and i love it. And i did a little research when i bought my card, because i wanted to know the same as you, and the only differences i've found between the Titanium and the Titanium Fatality pro are: the shroud with the led, and that the fatality pro uses 64mb onboard memory to speed up EAX effects. My 2 cents about this: my card don't have the shroud and i don't hear anything wrong with the sound, and about the 64mb memory: it only works with so few games (and old, like DOOM 3) that's not worth it, I have EAX enable (if supported by the game, like killing floor and STALKER) and i don't feel like i need those 64mb. Keep in mind that EAX was designed during Pentium 4 era. 64mb won't speed much with 4gb of ram and a quad.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 19, 2011)

KingPing said:


> the fatality pro uses 64mb onboard memory to speed up EAX effects. My 2 cents about this: my card don't have the shroud and i don't hear anything wrong with the sound, and about the 64mb memory: it only works with so few games (and old, like DOOM 3) that's not worth it, I have EAX enable (if supported by the game, like killing floor and STALKER) and i don't feel like i need those 64mb. Keep in mind that EAX was designed during Pentium 4 era. 64mb won't speed much with 4gb of ram and a quad.



Wrong and wrong, 

the 64Mb doesnt 'speed up' EAX. It just acts as a dedicated buffer for sound effects - a feature that was more of a marketting gimmick then anything else and to rub more salt in the wound, it rarely saw use. only a few games supported the feature. and just because you turned on EAX in the sound options doesnt mean the 64mb will get used. the only games which made use of the 64mb was BF2 when you set the sound option to XF-i Ultra or something like that but tbh it did hardly anything at all or at least i noticed no difference at all going from an Audigy 2 ZS to a Xtreme Music to a Titanium Fatality Pro. and as further proof of the usless the 64mb is, I can enable XFi-Ultra mode on BF2 with any Xonar card ive come across and the game has played perfectly fine with no problems what so ever.

the onboard ram was never really required. 

Due to changes made to Directsound in Vista, EAX has been dead for a very long time. there probably wont be another new game that supports it for a long time to come. so everything is now based on a wrapper inbetween the soundcard and the OS that 'emulates' EAX, otherwise known as Creative Alchemy. Xear3d or DS3D GX. all of which makes getting a soundcard that natively supports EAX pointless.

And thats why Asus Xonar soundcards are so popular. as they generally sound better, made of better components. and a little cheaper.

If EAX was still around. XF-i cards would no doubt still be the most popular range of cards.


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## RejZoR (Jul 19, 2011)

And here we are at EAX nonsense again. Why do ppl think X-Fi is just EAX and nothing else?


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## $immond$ (Jul 20, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Wrong and wrong,
> 
> the 64Mb doesnt 'speed up' EAX. It just acts as a dedicated buffer for sound effects - a feature that was more of a marketting gimmick then anything else and to rub more salt in the wound, it rarely saw use. only a few games supported the feature. and just because you turned on EAX in the sound options doesnt mean the 64mb will get used. the only games which made use of the 64mb was BF2 when you set the sound option to XF-i Ultra or something like that but tbh it did hardly anything at all or at least i noticed no difference at all going from an Audigy 2 ZS to a Xtreme Music to a Titanium Fatality Pro. and as further proof of the usless the 64mb is, I can enable XFi-Ultra mode on BF2 with any Xonar card ive come across and the game has played perfectly fine with no problems what so ever.
> 
> ...



Makes wonder why Asus doesnt include Xonar cards in the higher end Motherboards. ahem.. Crosshair and Rampage Extreme...
I managed to track down the Titanium Pro for $99 CAD so I am happy with it.

TBH I would rather own a Xonar Essence STX but I cant afford $200 for a sound card at the moment.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jul 20, 2011)

It's not about EAX, it's about Open Al which is used in many games. A X-Fi based card offloads open Al and in the case of xram cards the ram is utilized but I don't know to what effect.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 20, 2011)

$immond$ said:


> Makes wonder why Asus doesnt include Xonar cards in the higher end Motherboards. ahem.. Crosshair and Rampage Extreme...
> I managed to track down the Titanium Pro for $99 CAD so I am happy with it.
> 
> TBH I would rather own a Xonar Essence STX but I cant afford $200 for a sound card at the moment.



they are paid by creative to release Asus boards with Creative cards of course.


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## Dent1 (Jul 20, 2011)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> It's not about EAX, it's about Open Al which is used in many games. A X-Fi based card offloads open Al and in the case of xram cards the ram is utilized but I don't know to what effect.



Most of the other cards on the market support Open AL too.

Also, xram does nothing on modern systems. A little bit of slow 64MB buffer isnt going to make a difference on today's midrange gaming systems which boast 4GB+ of ram and 4+ cores.


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## Mussels (Jul 20, 2011)

$immond$ said:


> I need an optical out on the sound card for my sound system and it has to use PCE-e.



id you're running optical, these gamer cards are worthless. none of the fancy equipment they have affects sound quality at all on digital connections, with the exception of encoding techniques like converting analogue signals to digital formats such as dolby digital or DTS - and my onboard can do that.



if you're running optical for SPDIF, you need to really rethink getting these high end cards.


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## $immond$ (Jul 20, 2011)

Then I might as well think of dropping 10k in high end audio equipment as well. This can become an endless loop. I managed to get the X-fi titanium Pro for $99 CAD. I don't think you can beat the price to quality ratio at this range. As for the 64MB X-RAM it will be probably be completely useless to me but the card will be better than my onboard VIA with crappy emulation. I didn't buy the card for the X-Ram, I bought it because it was on sale and I am familiar with the sound quality with creative cards. My surround sound system (Samsung HT-C550) I also managed to get for $99 CAD, it lacks an equalizer and a lot of features but my sound card should suffice for it.


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## Mussels (Jul 20, 2011)

$99 aint that bad, not like you blew $300.


since it has dolby digital/DTS encoding, you also get features the most basic cards do not have, over SPDIF/optical


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## $immond$ (Jul 20, 2011)

Mussels said:


> $99 aint that bad, not like you blew $300.
> 
> 
> since it has dolby digital/DTS encoding, you also get features the most basic cards do not have, over SPDIF/optical



I was really considering getting the Xonar STX but for the same price I got a decent sound system and decent card. Its not the greatest of quality but it definately beats what I had before from a long shot.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jul 20, 2011)

Dent1 said:


> Most of the other cards on the market support Open AL too.
> 
> Also, xram does nothing on modern systems. A little bit of slow 64MB buffer isnt going to make a difference on today's midrange gaming systems which boast 4GB+ of ram and 4+ cores.



You're right that xram doesn't do anything noticeable. I'm just saying it does something. Back when it was causing crashes in UT3 the cards without xram were actually the better buy as they didn't crash but gave the same audio quality. I don't think Open Al performance is really equal across all brands though. I've heard many times that HT omega cards sound like crap for gaming due to poor or no Open Al support.


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## RejZoR (Jul 20, 2011)

ADI Soundmax has the best OpenAL support out of all 3rd party OEM's. Add the excellent BlackHawk features by SonicFocus and i think it's by far one of the best onboard soundcards. I'm just using it instead of X-Fi Forte because i have to rearrange the cards in PCIe slots and i am just amazed.


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## erixx (Jul 20, 2011)

after many many years and cards, my XFI Ti is the first Creative card that is not Destructive.

Note: I use analog 5.1 output to analogue Logitech 5.1 system (cant remember part name, purchase was 4 years ago. It is more than I can use in an apartment building)


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## Dent1 (Jul 20, 2011)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> I don't think Open Al performance is really equal across all brands though. I've heard many times that HT omega cards sound like crap for gaming due to poor or no Open Al support.


The HT Omega supports OpenAL. 

I would think that with OpenAL being open source there shouldnt be any bias between two different branded soundcards using the OpenAL API, unless coded in a brand bias way which defeats the purpose of switching to OpenAL.

IMO, I think people complain about the HT Omega for gaming for other reasons, unlike creative soundcard it doesn’t come equipped with loads of dodgy equalisers, crystallisers and enhancements turn on by default hence people say gaming sounds flat compared to Creative’s artificial sounds.

Also,a lot of these guys are running crappy headsets or cheap Logitech speakers @ 5W per channel and then complain about the sound quality. A high end soundcard like the Omega deserves a nice Home Cinema setting.


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## Ross211 (Jul 28, 2011)

Mussels said:


> id you're running optical, these gamer cards are worthless. none of the fancy equipment they have affects sound quality at all on digital connections, with the exception of encoding techniques like converting analogue signals to digital formats such as dolby digital or DTS - and my onboard can do that.
> 
> 
> 
> if you're running optical for SPDIF, you need to really rethink getting these high end cards.



Yes, I second this.  What is really going to matter are the DAC's in the Samsung receiver you are running digital audio to.  If you run digital audio to your Samsung receiver the whole DAC process is done by it.

$immond$, I'm betting the DAC's on your X-Fi Titanium Pro are much better than in your receiver, although I'm not 100% sure though  

I'd ask you to try the analogue outputs on your new lovely X-Fi Titanium Pro to use its DAC's but I don't think it's possible with your current audio setup.


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## Anusha (Aug 2, 2011)

If I can get with shipping and all,
1. X-Fi Titanium (used) $94
2. X-Fi Titanium Professional (used) $118
3. Xonar DX (new) $119 - yes I know, it is not supposed to be this expensive, but it is over here.
4. X-Fi Forte (new) $153
which should I get to go with a Roccat Kave?


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## Ross211 (Aug 3, 2011)

Anusha said:


> If I can get with shipping and all,
> 1. X-Fi Titanium (used) $94
> 2. X-Fi Titanium Professional (used) $118
> 3. Xonar DX (new) $119 - yes I know, it is not supposed to be this expensive, but it is over here.
> ...



I vote for the Auzen X-Fi Forte, you won't regret it.  It includes an independent 3.5mm (1/8”) headphone amp and can drive any headset with impedance from 16Ω ~ 600Ω perfect.  It includes a breakout cable for analog I/O, and of course it has digital connections if you have a high end receiver with better DACs (the card supports DTS NeoC & DTS, Dolby Digital Live, blah blah blah Dolby).  

The card allows you to replace the OPAMP for the front L/R channel too without having to desolder and resolder.


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## kenkickr (Aug 3, 2011)

I would *HIGHLY* recommend the X-fi Forte.  Unbelievably impressive sound.  I wish I never sold mine


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## chinesekiwi (Aug 8, 2011)

kenkickr said:


> I would *HIGHLY* recommend the X-fi Forte.  Unbelievably impressive sound.  I wish I never sold mine



Not for the price it isn't now, particularly considering the much better Titanium HD is $130. Also let's not mention Auzentech's now actually non-existent after sales support.


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