No downside here

This cheap ($29.00) upgrade has been a pleasant surprise on a few levels.

I’d never bought a really fancy-shmancy soundcard before now, having always thought – apparently mistakenly – that whatever came with the current motherboard was good enough. I was, at long last, ready to blow a whole C-note, since the onboard audio had permanently abdicated as the result of upgrading to Windows Vista 64. It took very little research following this event to discover the one improvement that’s worth examining: 24-bit (as opposed to the standard old 16-bit) DAC. Simply put, it assembles the output information from smaller pieces, resulting in improved detail and imaging. It’s analogous to graphics resolution – the smaller the pixels, the prettier the picture.

I had looked at various offerings, and at one point debated going to a slick-looking USB-style external sound box such as the E-MU 0202. This was mainly based on the theory that the inside of a computer is full of unwanted RF that can invade the signal path. However, the only parts that would be affected, it turns out, are the analog stages near the jack panel, and I imagined that in most soundcards – even cheap ones – those parts are probably pretty well designed to reject external noise.

The Soundblaster X-Fi series, particularly their somewhat high-end (by my standards) “Xtreme HiFi” model, also warranted some consideration. However, I found another review which stated that Creative deliberately misrepresented another of their products - a board whose packaging bore the name "X-Fi Audio," but which actually contained the less-sophisticated, older design Audigy innards.

The eventual conclusion was that for my purposes – clean playback of MP3’s through a couple hundred watts of decent basic bi-amped stereo, which includes nice satellites with fabric-dome tweeters, heavy-magnet HC mids and a 15” sub, along with the ability to occasionally rip radio and vinyl LP material, I didn’t need or want any of the following:

Soundblaster’s “Crystallizer,” which sounds like ‘something-for-nothing’ witchcraft and tech-speak B.S., an opinion supported by several extremely geeky engineering reviews found somewhere on the web.

Optical / digital interface. Unless you’re into home theater and and every conceivable ambience-synthesizing option, this seems like little more than additional needless complexity.

MIDI. What do you think this is, a recording studio? Besides, my pretty little electric piano has its own computer and just sits there collecting dust anyway.

Surround: HAHAHA… don’t even get me started about that scam. This ain’t no yuppified home theater, it’s a place where the Moody Blues and Jimi Hendrix reign supreme. We don’t need no stinkin' Dolby or THX.

Returning to the subject of “X-Fi,” the latest fashion trend involving a humongous microprocessor containing 500 bazillion transistors that command one order of magnitude more processing power than an entire middle-generation IBM mainframe: the idea of having all that extra signal-processing capability was seductive at first, but for me the benefits still boil down to clean, natural-sounding output. There’s no future likelihood of additional software complexity being piled on that would make use of so much excess horsepower, so when the final decision came, it turned out that the humble little Audigy SE had everything I was looking for – again, nothing more than the 24-bit DAC.

After downloading Windows Vista 64 drivers from Creative, the new device installed with nary a hiccup. The results were immediate and obvious. Imaging and detail were noticeably improved, and the character of the sound seems “warmer,” as if the balance of even/odd harmonic distortion has been shifted to resemble that of a tube (or, for you banger-noshing Brits, “valve”) amplifier. It could be partly psychosomatic (psychoacoustic?) but I could swear this thing sounds more melodic and musical, and not so ‘hard’ or ‘synthetic’ as before.

The bottom line: Although I’ve never felt that I have the aural sensitivity (or capacity for cork-sniffing wine-steward rhetoric) of a truly snooty audiophile, I’m exceedingly pleased with the amount of bang that was had for the few bucks involved in this unit. The remaining two-thirds of that aforementioned hundred-dollar bill continue to reside in my wallet, and everything is hunky-dory in Mudville.