No way.

Yeap he did the mod for me, at first i didnt like the sound and posted medicore review in his thread, but after one week plus of burn in..... x-fi standard babeh!!

wonder why he close his thread? i cant edit my post! =\

main power cap (the huge one)
[attachmentid=1037909]

caps that lie in signal path (brownish colored) + ad8066 opamp (at most bottom left)
[attachmentid=1037912]

[attachmentid=1037952]

sexy? listen to how she sings......



sory bro XTREME for putting such bad review at yor thread...this the only way to compensate =\

This post has been edited by andrew9292: Jun 22 2009, 11:02 PM

Guys currently i still using my old Audigy4. Plan to upgrade to X-fi series SC. Izzit worth to buy PCI Express X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro?

You can download Daniel-K's driver for free if you know where to look.

This is useful only if you are using the optical out. It's live encoding to DTS/DD regardless of what audio stream you are playing.

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Added on June 30, 2009, 2:34 pmEAX is already dead. Probably doesn't matter anymore as most new games don't support it.

This post has been edited by Matrix: Jun 30 2009, 02:34 PM

Hey guys, do you only get 2/2.1 speakers in game mode even if u're on 5.1 speakers setup? i can only get 5.1 on entertainment mode.. T.T

I think you need to change to 5.1 setup in Windows, on each mode



Well, I finally get my hand on Elite Pro! Its my dream to use this card. Reviews comes soon

fast fast la, lol...

Alright2 I been playing it for few minutes and this is what I get:

Stock impression:

Bass is very powerful, but a bit loose and lacking a bit of punch, its seems 'out of tune' with music. Vocal comes out very smooth, pleasantly nice, but background detail smear and muddy, some detail can't even been heard or its very distant. High detail is lost, sounds like it don't have much treble at all and feel distant.

All in all, it excel in vocal, not really bright and pleasant to the ear, but it feels slighty empty with not much detail. I think I know why it called analytical this CS4398, because it presentation is a bit dry and lacks character I heard from older DAC

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 2 2009, 09:20 PM

Oic, then I waiting for your 'modded impression'...

Lol, that going to take a while, I'm not at home on weekday, and only back on weekends. I just got this card few hours ago and I'm not in the mood of modding it now I got some component but I need to finalize what I'm going to use

EDIT: Weird thing is, the Elite Pro analog output and filter is similar to XtremeMusic, they put the capacitor to block DC before the opamp, contrary to on the datasheet, I wonder why, they just double up the capacitor for no reason. Maybe some DIY sensei can lighten things up, littleghost you hear me? I been thinking of making my own output stage on separate PCB following closely to datasheet

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 3 2009, 12:11 AM

Finaly home at last to do some mods

Some componetes I change is LME49720 opamp, Nichicon MUSE caps for opamp supply and Sanyo OS-CON on digital part of the card. The only thing lacking is I only have 2 Rubycon Blackgate NX HQ 47uF for coupling, but I do change the non inverting signal that go to the opamp, I can just short the caps but I afraid of DC offset

I spend 1 week reading datsheets and look at the card, looks like there are one caps that Creative put the wrong values on it, and it's on Vref of the DAC. They cut corners I guess

Initial impression, the vocal is still stands out but the background detail improves, the high isn't piercing on the ear thankfuly. But its more picky this time, mp3 sounds awfully flat as it reveals all its flaws. It was tonally accurate, I guess thats why people say its analytical and a bit dry I might add. I will took some time for me to adjust for this sound

EDIT: So much typo, I guess I'm too excited

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 7 2009, 11:54 PM

happened to me on my audigy too, when i modded to ad8066....

sounds very flat and no excitement on mp3, but on CD's or FLAC it's good ; )

I have the AD8066, I totally forgot about that I bought it

I managed to reduce the dry sound, on the stock coupling caps I put some mylar 0.1uF caps as bypass, it sounded more musical

Dude ! .. u really got an obsession for Elva Hsiao huh ?!!

Picture time!

Guys,

I have a noobie question. Please help.

I am currently using the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 (USB). I also just got my Edifier C3 2.1 speakers today.

The soundcard has 4 ports/output (Front Left, Front Right, Rear and Subwoofer) and the Speaker's Amp has 2 ports/input (Left, Right).

How do I connect them? Do I just use dual RCA to 3.5mm connector from the amp to connect with the dual RCA to 3.5mm jack from the souncard? Or should I go get 2x RCA to RCA cable?

Wow, your mod much more cleaner and neater than Extreme's mod...

alamak last time he mod my card, no doubt it sound more detail,
but when use RMAA to test, it slow a lot of inter-channel leakage and imbalance, plus noise floor decrease about 3dB.... poor soldering...banyak burn marks on the card also

This post has been edited by andrew9292: Aug 8 2009, 06:39 PM

You can't blame him, modding soundcard is hard, because of its multilayer PCB. Its hard to even to melt the solder on the card.

CS4398 is one great DAC! Especially the vocals, although it seems a bit too much of it, but it does shows how good vocal can sound. I absolutely can't sleep last night, listening to Katie Melua at 3 with light and fan off, its just sound so sweet!

hmm...wonder what your combination of LME49720 sound like after all parts fully burn in

The LME has been used before, with all other caps. I have my own technique removing SOIC without damaging them, most people just cut them out but I keep all of them just in case I needed them back, no matter how bad they were. I never really believe in burn-in in solid state devices

EDIT: I have bypass the coupling caps after the DAC just by using solder while the caps still there just for testing, it seems that it have no ill effect unlike I got from XtremeMusic

EDIT2: I properly short the coupling caps, removed them and just use a wire to connect them, and I removed the big orange tantalum 33uF caps because I afraid it might blow up if it fails. I truly love how it sounds now, its more revealing and detailed than before!

This post has been edited by Najmods: Aug 9 2009, 01:54 PM