I never suggested this would run native effects or VSTs…
What it will do, but 24 times more, is what the 0404 and 1212 do - run its own effects for you. Since most of the population (in the future) will own an X-Fi card (of some make or other), it won’t matter if you use it, as most people will have it.
(Obviously nobody’s forcing you to use the X-Fi’s effects if you have one!)
I came across similar negative views here:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000340053618/
Such as:
“Even if this thing was God’s gift to Christ as Creative apparently wants us to believe, it’s all worth absolutely nothing unless you have VERY good speakers to notice, the kind that you can’t buy at BB.”
If it runs 24 times as many effects as the 0404 does, it will be useful to many musicians, no matter what speakers they are using.
“So do these new Creative sound cards resample 44.1khz to 48.8khz like the previous Live! series did?”
He obviously didn’t even bother to read all the info. on the Creative site.
“So does this read to anyone else like they added 64Mb of RAM to the card (god knows why) and a bunch of packaged SOFTWARE and called it something new? This looks a lot like the Audigy 2 once you cut all the marketing out.”
Another one who hasn’t even read what the X-Fi can do!
“If it’s for audio creation, $400, is cheap. So cheap that I would be skeptical of the quality.”
Unbelievable! Bear in mind that this was written by somebody in August 2005, not 2002…
Hasn’t he heard of the Emu range? Most of them are well under $400, and about as good quality as you could ever want!
“High Quality? Yes top-end hi-fi lovers really go for 3.5 mm jack plugs to link their equipemnt.”
An idiot suggesting that a 3.5mm jack is incapable of delivering high quality audio, for some reason. How thick does he think the traces on the circuit board are, through which the audio signals all travel?
"Sound Quality? The lack of EMI shielding to the analogue paths on both sides fo the board, means you should be able to hear that nice line noise from the inductor on the neighbouring PCI modem in your PC and all those lovely digital signals and fan coils inside your case in the highest of fedility.
I think I’ll pass…"
Yeah right! I can really hear all the ‘line noise’ on my Emu 0404, Turtle Beach Laguna, and cheap onboard motherboard soundcards - NOT.
“Nothing like sticking $400 worth of sensitive high fidelity audio parts INSIDE A FREAKING PC CASE.”
Why not? Millions of people have managed perfectly well doing exactly this…
Basically that page is full of rant after rant, all incorrect, slagging off X-Fi. They act as if Creative couldn’t possibly have produced a better chip since the EMU10K1! As if nothing has improved in VLSI technology in the last four years.
The Creative cards may or may not be brilliant - they may or may not take advantage of the X-Fi’s power, in ways that are useful to musicians, but since Creative are going to sell the chip itself to other card makers (and are Emu is bound to be one of them), I don’t think this is anything to be negative about.