Creative Sound Blaster X-fi Elite Pro ( 70SB055000002)

I KNOW THIS IS A NUMBER ONE SOUND CARD FOR PC.THIS SOUND CARD OH MY GOD ITS SO CLEAR BELIVE IT OR NOT.
THIS IS RATED NUMBER ONE.YOU CANT SAY HD SOUND CARD ARE BETTER THAN THIS OR DOLBY,THIS IS EVERYTHING FAR FROM HIGH-DEFINITION SOUND.

PROS
- VERY GOOD SOUND
- UNSTOPPABLE
- WAY BETTER THAN HIGH -DEF SOUND AND DOLBY ITS COMBINES
- TO GOOD TO BE TRUE
- TO GOOD TO BE TRUE
- YES! NO SOUND CARD IS BETTER THAN THIS
- FOR EVERYONE INCLUDING:GAMERS,STUDIO RECORDING AND MANY MORE!!!

CONS
- CANNOT AFFORD IT TO MUCH MONEY...LOL

The product I had ordered came to me in a very good packaged condition and it was within the estimated time of arrival. The product is of high quality and performace. It is really professional!! Keep the good show.. I will defenitely recommend to my friends.. Cheers to Amazon!!

I installed this card about two weeks ago and it is working great. I really like the console which allows me to plug up a mic, my keyboard with the 1/4" jack, my keyboard with midi in/out, and my cd player all at once. It installed and worked on the first try. I did have to download the updated driver to fix a few minor problems but that was easy and painless.

Well as others have said, the sound from the X-Fi system does make you go wow! The crystalizer generates body, the CMSS-3D generates depth, to music which is just missing in MP3 files (especially). The cmss-3d give an amazing simulation of surround sound, btw.

The X-Fi Elite Pro comes with a large breakout box with controls for adjustment of the crystalizer, cmss-3d, EAX and 3DMDI which are not present on the internal box -- although these really only routed to a software control and so the internal box would be a good alternative. The external breakout box needs only a supplied 26pin cable (looks like a vga cable to me!) to work. All the plugs and cables supplied are gold plated. This external box, btw, does not have firewire -- not too sure if the internal boxes do (the older systems used to).

FYI: If you buy the standard card you can update to either the internal or external breakout box; even if you buy the internal breakout box version I believe you can upgrade to the external box in the future, as the connections are present for either box. However, the X-Fi Elite box is shipped with only an external connection! Although, curiously, it does come with 64 MB of XRAM for internal sound processing, of ("some") games.

On a minor problem point, first un-install ALL the other sound drivers you can from your system before installing the sound card because conflicts are hard to sort out after (I unfortunately found this out the hard way). Also the shipped drivers will need updating when you get the card; simple to do from the website. I found that my breakout box controls didn't work until I loaded up the new drivers!

On the software side, the unit is shipped with cubase LE, an upgraded Wavelab Lite (which has some great filters and wave effects), a demo games disk (to illustrate X-Fi ability in gaming I suppose) and patches for Doom3 and Unreal Tournament. Other software includes an array of sound management controls which should be enough for anyone but the most demanding of sound engineers!

All in all if you want the best sound from your music files, games or you want to process music then one of these cards will be for you! I suppose I could have given it 5 stars but I had trouble loading all the software (some times it hung for no reason -- it could have been checked better) and so 1 star off for this.

The only need for the breakout box is, of course, if you want attach sound a variety of inputs (particularly optical). The external breakout box then has the advantage of being cute and easier to adjust. This would probably be good in both a home entertainment environment or if you are doing a lot of sound engineering.

the good..
very nice music out of box.. even better if you upgrad(mod) the DAC. one of better sound with cheap price. there better one with higher end DAC but cost 400+ easy. able to decode thx, dolby etc so got 5.1/7.1 from movie.

now.. here the bad.. and lot of it!
1. even the card support 7.1 but thats only if you using analog connection. for music and game, ditial connection only give you 2 channel. (movie got full 5.1) thats due to no encoder with this board. unless you pay another 150$ for encoder, so if you want to got lowest background noise possible you need to accept the fact either pay extra 150$ or no surround sound beside dvd movie.
2. cheap hardware.. the DAC is ok, the chip is one of best. but beside those 2, everything else is low end stuff... very disaapoint since i'm using their card from game blaster/al lab age. with cheap hardware its much easier to break down then old soundcard!
3. not so easy to install.. i work in IT and belive me.. when the card work its awesome but it also have alot of problem with hardware conflict. software itself also using tons of memory that dont need to.

if you already having 5.1 or 7.1 speaker which using analog connection then this card is good for you. however, expect to pay another 150$ if you want go 100% digital and still want game with 7.1 sound.