Thursday, July 29th 2010

Creative Announces Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 Software Suite

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Jul 29th, 2010 09:36 Discuss (64 Comments)

Creative Technology Ltd. today announced the Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 software suite - a powerful audio platform equipped with cutting-edge audio technologies designed to enhance ordinary PC systems limited by only basic onboard audio. The Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 software suite builds on the success of the original Sound Blaster X-Fi MB, bringing enhancement of onboard PC audio to even greater echelons. Through THX TruStudio Pro audio technology and the latest Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0, users get to enjoy premium audio quality, effects and features on their PC systems.

Gamers can anticipate being blown away by the amazing realism from the unrivalled headphone surround and gaming sound enhancement technologies delivered by the Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2. Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0 features state-of-the-art multi-environment rendering and reverb modelling, delivering an ultra-realistic and incredibly immersive 3D gaming experience for powering the next generation of cutting-edge PC games. The additional audio cues provided by EAX can also give gamers a competitive advantage in early detection of enemies.

"We are extremely excited to see the Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 software going into ASUS Republic of Gamers motherboards, with ASUS being the top manufacturer of motherboards in the world and constantly committed to delivering the most innovative and best performing PC solutions to enhance the gaming experience of power users. Our partnership will continue to push the boundaries of PC gaming audio, providing the much-needed realism and immersion in game-play that modern PC games demand," said Steve Erickson, Vice President and General Manager for Audio and Video at Creative.

Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0 allows greater detail and speed in gaming audio and adds a dedicated bass feed for 128 voices, so gaming audio becomes more cinematic. Developers can also add interactive music to games, where the music can change based on actions during game-play.

Additional features of Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0 include EAX Voice, EAX PurePath and EAX MacroFX. EAX Voice allows gamers to literally become part of the game by speaking and hearing their own voices with the same effects as the environment their character is in. EAX PurePath delivers the most accurate and cinematic surround sound ever experienced by allowing developers total control over Low Frequency Enhancement (LFE) and which speaker(s) gaming audio is played through, while EAX MacroFX recreates close-up audio so accurately that bullets would never have sounded more frightening as they zip past players' heads only centimetres away.
THX TruStudio Pro provides the latest groundbreaking technologies that are products of years of collective experience and research by Creative and THX. THX TruStudio Pro creates unprecedented levels of audio realism, adds dynamics and punch to every gunshot, explosion and gaming sound; and includes stunning surround effects, producing an incredibly realistic surround sound experience even from just a pair of stereo headphones. The THX TruStudio Pro suite of technologies features THX TruStudio Pro Surround, THX TruStudio Pro Crystalizer, THX TruStudio Pro Speaker, THX TruStudio Pro Dialog Plus and THX TruStudio Pro Smart Volume.

Other audio technologies such as EAX reverbs and a 10-band graphic equalizer allow users to enhance their music even more. These essential audio effects and controls are conveniently placed in a central and intuitive Sound Blaster Console. In addition, a suite of cool players are included to enhance the PC music listening experience, giving users full control over their music streaming and integrating seamlessly with iTunes and Windows Media libraries.

Key Features of Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2:

THX TruStudio Pro audio technology creates unprecedented levels of audio realism, adds dynamics and punch to every gunshot, explosion and gaming sound; and includes stunning surround effects, producing an incredibly realistic surround sound experience even from just a pair of stereo headphones
Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0 features state-of-the-art multi-environment rendering and reverb modelling, delivering an amazingly realistic and immersive 3D gaming experience
Creative VoiceFX technology allows users to morph their voices into other personas to help players stay in character and add flair to their online role-playing experiences
Creative ALchemy is a powerful tool that restores EAX effects and 3D surround audio for legacy, DirectSound 3D game titles running on Windows Vista and Windows 7, re-enabling that same great gaming experience
Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 comes with native OpenAL support, ensuring compatibility with a wide range of PC games developed with OpenAL for an incredible 3D audio experience

For more information please visit this page.

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64 Comments on Creative Announces Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 Software Suite

#26

Perseid

Especially if you're mixing 128 sounds through software. You don't need Creative's funky magic drivers to do that and it's going to eat the same amount of CPU either way.

#27

RejZoR

crazyeyesreaperalso who needs 128 sounds seriously are you going to sit there and tell me you can distinguish between 128 different sounds hell 64 different sounds or 32 or 16 chances are slim that you can after about 20 sounds at once its just gonna sound like gibberish so ive never had any use what so ever for creatives sound cards that said. Other sound cards for HTPC usage or for better music playback i can understand when it comes to audiophiles. But that said if your willing to spend ALOT of time with an integrated Equalizer you can get some damn good sound to rival creatives garbage

That's what you think, but i know it better. There is a difference in terms of far more sounds going on at the same time with much less "pauses" in between. There used to be an old SB Live! demo showcasing Unreal with 16 and 32 sounds. It's the same effect in newer games.
However it's a much higher chance of hitting the limit in FPS games than in any others, because weapons them self use up many channels. Take L4D2 as an example.
Loads of zombies screaming, music rumbling in the background, 4 automatic rifles going on at the same time etc.

Also games are designed to use as much sounds as there are allowed by the soundcard.
So anything that goes beyond it's capability is simply clipped. Either the hard way by soundcard or the soft way by the game audio engine that plays only the global sounds (like music) and the sounds closest to player until the limit is reached. New games are mostly all capable of rendering 128 channels at once, it's all up to soundcard to render that. Or the CPU in which case the games will feel different even on quad cores. Like it's all sluggish during gameplay...

@perseid
Yes, but only in the X-Fi MB case. With proper hardware X-Fi chip, that's not the case.

#28

Wile E

Power User

SasquiInteresting move. It certainly reeks of Creative trying to pry cash from customers who realise that onboard sound hardware is just as good as most of their products.

Being "Creative", is certainly going to cost money. How much is the question.

No it isn't. That's not even debatable. Same features =/= same performance.

Batou1986And what game released in the last year used eax or any of creatives so called features ?

Creative might as well stop making soundcards there stuff is junk, i bought the X-Fi- plat a while ago i have yet to see any game that it works properly in more less any games that support it.

In fact BF2 and BF 2142 touted xfi as a feature for the best sound which is why i bought it yet when enabled in game it sound great for the first 5 min then sounds start looping i can hear grenades blowing up from miles away and then it just turns into one big screeching cacophony of sound and crashes.

the only thing i do like is being able to upmix 2.0 to 5.1 when listing to music.

No probs in BFBC2 with X-Fi here.

hatBetween the audiodg memory leak and cpu usage problems, the driver butchering for the Audigy series on Vista and later, and the recording problems (such as my microphone input sounding like I'm talking through a fan, this is a common problem too), I wouldn't even think about touching Creative with a 10 foot pole.

To Creative: GJ on releasing stuff that already existed. Next time you release something, I hope it's a fix for all the problems everyone's been having with your hardware.

We went over the Audiodg memory leak before. Ir seems to be more an issue with the programs accessing it than Creative's drivers. I have no mem leaks in mine at all, neither does anyone else I know.

crazyeyesreaperalso who needs 128 sounds seriously are you going to sit there and tell me you can distinguish between 128 different sounds hell 64 different sounds or 32 or 16 chances are slim that you can after about 20 sounds at once its just gonna sound like gibberish so ive never had any use what so ever for creatives sound cards that said. Other sound cards for HTPC usage or for better music playback i can understand when it comes to audiophiles. But that said if your willing to spend ALOT of time with an integrated Equalizer you can get some damn good sound to rival creatives garbage

No, no amount of eq or effects will make on-board sound better than a dedicated card.

All that said, this software is nothing more than gimmicks. It will not make your on-board magically more accurate or clean. X-Fi MB is crap.

#29

SluggyJ

also who needs 128 sounds seriously are you going to sit there and tell me you can distinguish between 128 different sounds hell 64 different sounds or 32 or 16 chances are slim that you can after about 20 sounds at once its just gonna sound like gibberish

Well I read some were that to get a realistic sound for say a shot gun in a game takes about 8 sounds to create... Anyway I thought My Create X-fi plat was great, I absolutely loved it and would recommend it to anyone until Windows Vista came out and Microsoft decided to change the way there sound model worked... my games was never the same again and alchemy never really worked properly, I sold my X-fi and stayed with onboard, Since the Microsoft change its sound model Creative have not been able to bounce back

#30

RejZoR

That's just loads of rubbish. Only ALchemy works properly and all the other stuff like GX mode on ASUS cards works on every 5th game. As for ALchemy, i know only ione game that doesn't like it.
I've had Xonar Essence STX and as much as i liked it's overall quality, i hated it's rubbishness in games.

#31

D4S4

All in all - hardware = speed & quality (if you set it up properly, i know many people who have messed up their sound totally with the damned eq and other crap drivers offer :banghead:)
- software = "cool" soundin' FX :rolleyes: (almost any full fledged audiophile would start spitting all over the place, cursing the freaking compressors and eq effects - it's no longer the original sound, the way it's supposed to sound)

X-Fi MB = one big no no imho. :D

#32

hat

Enthusiast

Wile EWe went over the Audiodg memory leak before. Ir seems to be more an issue with the programs accessing it than Creative's drivers. I have no mem leaks in mine at all, neither does anyone else I know.

I know of two other people, who just happen to be the only two people I know in real life that have X-Fi cards, that have had the memory leak issues. That and half the internet having the issues along with them. Creative's official solution as of now? Disable the enhancements! Cripple your card by disabling the features that are causing the problem!

There are so many applications that cause these issues. I know of Ventrilo for myself, but I have also heard of people complaining that playing music causes it, and even L4D2... with so many applications having the same problem on Creative's hardware, but not on anyone else's, it seems to me that the problem is on Creative's part and it's up to them to fix it.

So there's my explination about the memory leak problems. Even expunging that from my argument, there's still the driver butchering for the Audigy series and the recording problems to worry about.

#33

RejZoR

Funny. This is my second X-Fi card (used to have X-Fi XtremeMusic and now X-Fi Forte) and they both work flawlessly. They have occasional glitches here and there, but those are isolated non repeatable problems that happened on every product out there.

@D4S4
Actually, X-Fi MB is great for netbooks. You have a crappy i945 audio where X-Fi features make it a bit better.

#34

D4S4

Yeah, i forgot about that... My focus were desktops. Anyhow, i can imagine that software eatin up netbook's battery if it's so processor hungy... :shadedshu

good ol mp3 player FTW :toast:

#35

RejZoR

There wasn't any noticeably faster power drain.

#36

crazyeyesreaper

Not a Moderator

as i said wile e i can understand using some sound cards that are on the market creatives offerings on the other hand just dont cut it anymore my main point being no one has the ability to distinquish 128 simulatneous sounds from EAX etc making that a giant gimmick and this mb software probably still can do EAX properly when emulated making it a still broken seldom used feature. Now as i previously mentioned some sound cards are usefull for those whom are audiophiles and need that extra clarity but theres certainly far better choices for that than anything creative has.

#37

KainXS

well after using audigy mb, x-fi mb and trustudio, I would say its not worth the time, in most cases, the only real reason to buy it is for crystalizer and thats iffy, some people hate it some people like it, and if you want to buy it for gaming, its still not worth it, for some notebooks it might be good considering that the add in cards for notebooks made by creative will alot of time not let you use your speakers, and you have to use the headphone jack on the card, making the MB your only alternative..

I would like to see creative make a comeback though, I was thinking why they don't try to make a partnership with AMD or Nvidia to get X-Fi running on the codecs integrated in their gpu's, I wouldn't buy it but alot of people who don't know any better would and they can make a lot of money, it should be possible too.

#38

hat

Enthusiast

RejZoRFunny. This is my second X-Fi card (used to have X-Fi XtremeMusic and now X-Fi Forte) and they both work flawlessly. They have occasional glitches here and there, but those are isolated non repeatable problems that happened on every product out there.

@D4S4
Actually, X-Fi MB is great for netbooks. You have a crappy i945 audio where X-Fi features make it a bit better.

Not sure about the X-Fi series, but the microphone choppiness I described before is another common problem, something about the Audigy series not having proper 64 bit support if I recall correctly. Inb4 "check your mic", because the mic works perfectly with onboard, and the "What U Hear" function would also record in this choppy fashion, the same way the mic did.

#39

Mussels

Freshwater Moderator

hatNot sure about the X-Fi series, but the microphone choppiness I described before is another common problem, something about the Audigy series not having proper 64 bit support if I recall correctly. Inb4 "check your mic", because the mic works perfectly with onboard, and the "What U Hear" function would also record in this choppy fashion, the same way the mic did.

you arent making it up, i get the same problems with my SB live 5.1! and audigy cards. either the mic is very choppy and stuttery (or just full of static)... but it works fine on every non creative card, and in XP on the creative cards.

creative only make things work on their latest hardware - if you've had trouble free times with creative, just wait. you'll run into the shit sooner or later.

#40

RejZoR

I'm not using Mic, but if What U Hear exhibits the same problem, i don't have one, because the sound is perfectly fine. As far as i was recording video from games using Fraps and a What U Hear to capture game sound.

#41

hat

Enthusiast

You don't have a Creative card...

#42

RejZoR

Then what it is? It has an X-Fi chip, only thing that doesn't share with it are opamp/DAC/high end capacitors and other similar stuff that only affects sound quality but not sound features offered by the core processor. Essentially it's a Titanium card with higher grade components, nothing else. I also had real Creative made X-Fi (Xtreme Music) that worked flawlessly. But that one was on PCI bus.

#43

ToTTenTranz

Wow, Creative bashing season is now open. Again.

Now we see people complaining about their 12 year-old soundcards not working correctly in current operating systems.

I wonder why we never see people bashing nVidia because their Riva TNT doesn't work with Windows 7 64bit.

#44

hat

Enthusiast

ToTTenTranzWow, Creative bashing season is now open. Again.

Now we see people complaining about their 12 year-old soundcards not working correctly in current operating systems.

I wonder why we never see people bashing nVidia because their Riva TNT doesn't work with Windows 7 64bit.

Fair enough. What about the audiodg issues then?

#45

ToTTenTranz

Musselseven more proof that all the fancy features creative claim are hardware driven on their cards, are really just software and driver tweaks.

strangely, the link given at the end of the post doesnt mention X-fi MB2 at all - just the original

All the "fancy features" are made through hardware indeed.

But like pretty much everything in computing, the features can be run in software mode.

The difference is that 5 years ago (when the original X-Fi was released) we had the Athlon 64 X2 @ 1600Mhz and the dual Pentium 4 @ 2GHz.
All the features couldn't run through software mode without a substantial performance hit.

Nowadays the CPUs are 5x faster and the performance hit is now negligible. Therefore, using a dedicated sound chip for sound processing isn't really needed any more.

Do you have any doubts that an i7 runs Quake 2 in software mode a lot faster than a Voodoo 2 in hardware mode?

#46

hat

Enthusiast

True, but 5 years ago, we were playing games that were from 5 years ago. Hardware grows more powerful, but the software becomes more resource hungry as well.

#47

D4S4

I still like dedicated hardware much more. Either do it properly or don't do it at all.

btw - i can't wait for sound fx processed by the gpu - i bet some company has it under development :rolleyes:

#48

RejZoR

Actually it has been aleady done on GPU. I just don't remember what was he exact deal, but i know it was accelerated by GPU.

#49

Wile E

Power User

crazyeyesreaperas i said wile e i can understand using some sound cards that are on the market creatives offerings on the other hand just dont cut it anymore my main point being no one has the ability to distinquish 128 simulatneous sounds from EAX etc making that a giant gimmick and this mb software probably still can do EAX properly when emulated making it a still broken seldom used feature. Now as i previously mentioned some sound cards are usefull for those whom are audiophiles and need that extra clarity but theres certainly far better choices for that than anything creative has.

You can't distinguish 128 individual voices, no, but you can damn sure hear a clear difference between 64 and 128, even tho you can't single out every individual sound. 128 voices fills out the sound a hell of a lot more.

As far as audio quality, there's no better choice than a Forte in it's price range. Not only does it sound as good or better than all the others in the range, it has more features, and can use those Creative effects for the rare occasions they are still in use.

#50

RejZoR

And many features work on non EAX games as well. Like CMSS-3D that creates incredible 3D positioning on only 2 speakers (i'm talking proper 3D space positioning, not some cheap echo effect filter), Elevation Filter handles reproduction of sounds above and below so you perceive them the same way you do in real life (they just sound different if they are above or below you).
And also sounds that are close to you sound very different. So you can always tell if a car is trying to pass you by or zombie is tearing you on the right side in L4D. Most ppl don't even know these things exist and affect sound because they all just run around screaming how Creative sucks. But as an old user of Aureal Vortex based soundcard and long time Creative user i know how to appreciate good sound. Not just in terms of raw quality but in terms of proper 3D sound positioning. Been taking sound as advantage in gaming for ages and have been accused of wallhacking several times, because i could read the 3D sound so well, it looked like i'm using a wall hack.

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Creative Announces Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 Software Suite

64 Comments on Creative Announces Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 Software Suite

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