Asus ROG Crosshair IV Formula
Creative X-Fi Audio
Published: 27th April 2010 | Source: Asus | Price: ~£169 |
Creative X-Fi Audio
As previously mentioned, the Crosshair IV Formula supports a variant of Creative's Supreme X-Fi Audio. It should be made quite clear that contrary to what you might believe, the hardware is based upon a VIA Audio Module. As such, if you were to proceed to install the Creative X-Fi software alone, you will find yourself out of luck due to the device being unidentifiable. In order to make Creative X-Fi fully operative, you are required to install the VIA Audio Driver first and then install Creative's X-Fi Software.
We concede that the solution may not be a dedicated Sound Card alternative for the audiophiles out there, however it's only fair to objectively test the Creative X-Fi software before forming any judgement.
The major component of the X-Fi Software is it's Control Panel.
The main section of the control panel allows you to define your speaker's configuration. As the drivers default to a 2.1 style setup, being able to reconfigure our speaker configuration to it's true 4.1 configuration made a significant difference to the audio output. The first notable feature is Creative's SVM. Known as Sound Volume Management, the feature does exactly what it says on the tin. The feature acts as a form of normaliser that attempts to maintain a standardised volume level across all music tracks being played back. From our testing, it seems to work reasonably well.
Also included in the Audio Control Panel is Creative' EAX Effects Package. This tends to be a rather marmite feature as it attempts to simulate the echos of different sized rooms and also adjusts bass and treble. It's great to see that the option has been included however we're less than certain that users are likely to use it.
The utility also allows the user to adjust the depth of sound. Two different upmix modes are available; Stereo Surround and Stereo Xpand. For our 4.1 sound configuration, Stereo Surround offered better sound quality.
Finally, Creative have included their X-Fi Crystalizer. This is a feature that aims to restore aspects of sound that are lost during the compression from a high quality format to MP3 or equivalent. While it's arguable as to how much difference it can really make, enabling Crystalizer vastly improved sound clarity over the basic VIA Sound Driver.
As mentioned already, the sound implementation is not necessarily a sound card replacement. As a matter of fact it really isn't as those who truly care about sound quality will go out and buy the latest and greatest sound orientated equipment. However, as far as sound quality goes, it appears to be a better solution than some of Realtek's Audio Modules.
Most Recent Comments
I suspect the Extreme would be more, am guessing around ~£200?
I'm glad they adopted the red/black colours, looks nicer than the C3F imo and brings it into line with the intel boards.
I've never been one for motherboard looks but I must admit I did get suckered in, was the first thing that caught my eye about it, just waiting for my 1090T to arrive - can't wait to get it hooked up.
The worse review I've seen so far out of everyones is bit-tech, lack of depth, lack of benchmarks, lack of detail etc.
Enjoyed the review, can't find fault with it to be honest, not just saying that either if I thought it was crap I would say so.
not yet anyways:-P
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Originally Posted by name='barkaway'
the reason why i want em to test the 8GB set is that i have one myself, but i have never had the chance to test it cause i dont have the motherboard for it
not yet anyways:-P |
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