i think you need to ask in Garage Sales...

without Creative front I/O module you still can connect to home theater, by using Coaxial cable from the real panel of card...

lol, your card definitely got Coaxial output, but in 3.5mm mono head configuration, not regular RCA...just go to buy 3.5mm mono to RCA better than buy the expensive front I/O module...

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Added on June 15, 2008, 2:24 amthe big weakness that i know was there are still a lot of crap cap on it...

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 15 2008, 02:24 AM

most of the coaxial using single RCA to RCA cable, but Creative X-FI back output jack using SPDIF, which is mono 3.5mm head....now what you need to do is get the cable which one end is RCA jack and one end is 3.5mm mono head, settle...



This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 15 2008, 02:39 AM

about the Dolby/DTS, the Entertainment mode suppose will output DTS/Dolby bit stream through digital but a lot of complain from X-FI users in Creative forum said that the digital out only can output 2.1 PCM....but i think you need suitable player to playback the movie and bypass the DTS/Dolby into SPDIF...

Creative using a lot of crap capacitor such as Jamicon, wincap and G-Luxon which are well known bad cap and will drift out of spec with the time...thats why a lot of X-Fi user start to mod their cards capacitor to the better one, i'm the one who did it, Najmods and UNDERGROUND did it too...

EDIT: the thread now become X-FI modding thread again

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 15 2008, 02:47 AM

yap, the sound quality will getting worse over time...not late for you to know this cruel reality now...

PCM2.1 just stereo, nothing special....i think for Dolby surround and DTS should be no problem



in Entertainment mode, choose bit stream out of Dolby Digital/DTS to 'on'(external decoder)....intenal decoder will decode the DTS/Dolby by the card itself and output to analog...

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 15 2008, 02:56 AM

sure got...i'm using analog output...

yap, SPDIF and Digital output provided the best sound quality if you have a good external decoder...

do by yourself, lol..

only three of us in this thread but hundred of them in Head-Fi forum...modding is challenging

to output DTS/Dolby through Digital out, you need to use the decoder software such as AC3 filter in K-Lite codec to pass through the SPDIF, because Creative X-Fi can't encode the DTS/Dolby bit stream for digital out in real time...

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 15 2008, 03:34 AM

Actually my card just half modded, so the SQ not much different from stock, will mod the opamps and swap remaining caps soon...

i bought my XtremeMusic by 2nd hand, thats why i dare to mod it...

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Added on June 15, 2008, 11:11 amwell, i rolled back to official driver adi, becasuse the beta can't let the PC resume from standby...

the benefit of the drivere depends on the application used...some will said it is good because it make their application better and some will said thats suck because worst than before, so just stick with the driver version that most suited you, as easy as that..

driver won't affect sound quality, no need to worry about...newest driver might fixed the old drivers bugs and might introduce problem to some applications as well...

DTS/Dolby is a lossy compressed sound stream, and Creative X-FI SFDIF digital out only can output maximum 2 channel uncompress PCM(stereo)....in order to playback multichannel DTS/Dolby through SPDIF Digital to your external decoder(amplifier), you must use the software that can support SPDIF pass-through such as Power DVD and AC3 filter(K-lite codec)(most filter you need to enable it manually), and yes, SPDIF pass-through option in the Creative Console launcher must be enabled...the software will let the precompressed DTS/Dolby Digital in the DVD pass-through digital output into your amplifier to decode into discrete channel.....

without any external third party software/player, your card will only output 2 channel PCM even your movie is DTS/Dolby sound and you enable the SPDIF pass-through in Creative Console.

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 15 2008, 11:16 AM

the reason from Creative was they request license from Dolby/DTS...

but the user explanation was Creative intentionally cripple the function in Vista to boost their new product sales..

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 16 2008, 10:31 AM

mod the opamp and caps far more reasonable than mod the RAM that won't bring any benefit until today....

Actually a lot of opamps out there which are compatible, you can try them all, but you need money as well...

I'm sure there was something wrong in your latest results...the frequency response definitely won't exceed +-0.5dB...

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Added on June 16, 2008, 9:20 pmwhy not you use Maybank2U for Farnell purchase?

Since you desolder/solder the opamp repeatedly, why not you just solder 3 different opamps in the board so that you can compare them directly...i plan to do so, at least 2 different opamps...

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 16 2008, 09:25 PM

you can bypass those muting transistor as well...

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 16 2008, 09:42 PM

may i know which X-Fi you using? non-Elite Pro won't show those excellent results...

are you using line-in for recording or wave?

can you post you graph of frequency response, noise level and dynamic range?

EDIT: i highly doubted that you are using wave recording rather than line-in...impossible XtremeMusic can reach -106dB noise level and dynamic range for loop back test...

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 16 2008, 10:05 PM

men, DSP internal loopback test is useless...see my edited post above..

no, we no need to care about the pinout of those transistor...just solder the cable before those transistor and after SMD output resistor is done...

EDIT: OK, for those transistor in that surround channel, you will see N20+ printed on top...to bypass, just short the upper pin left and upper pin right...

This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 16 2008, 10:56 PM

that was probably the so called 'burn-in' effect...



This post has been edited by coolkwc: Jun 16 2008, 11:14 PM

me as well...i just think that the sound better after 'burn-in' is just our ears more adapted to the 'new' sound over the time...