Creative X-Fi Elite Pro

[Scali]

I'm still using a Terratec EWX 24/96 soundcard, which was a pretty good semi-pro card back in the day, and still works fine for me... however, there are no drivers for Vista. Good excuse to upgrade that 8-year old card now.

Now my brother has an X-Fi Elite Pro, and he says I should get one aswell. While I've not been a fan of Creative in the past, seeing that they're mainly aimed at gaming/home theater, not at music production... This card does seem to have all the basic features. It has a nice hub, with midi in/out, and microphone and line in/out stuff... And it supports ASIO 2.0 with very low latency.

Since most other semi-pro cards seem to be pretty outdated and not yet have proper Vista drivers anyway, perhaps I should actually go with this Elite Pro this time?

Or does anyone have any other good recommendations for music production in Vista? Basically I'll need at least one midi in/out (actually I'd like 2 or more, but I haven't seen any soundcards that do that, only separate MIDI interfaces), ASIO 2.0, and 24/96 or better audio input/output with analog inputs and SPDIF outputs.
I'm basically looking in the pricerange up to about 400 euro.

[losgatosrg350dx]

Originally Posted by Scali

I'm still using a Terratec EWX 24/96 soundcard, which was a pretty good semi-pro card back in the day, and still works fine for me... however, there are no drivers for Vista. Good excuse to upgrade that 8-year old card now.

Now my brother has an X-Fi Elite Pro, and he says I should get one aswell. While I've not been a fan of Creative in the past, seeing that they're mainly aimed at gaming/home theater, not at music production... This card does seem to have all the basic features. It has a nice hub, with midi in/out, and microphone and line in/out stuff... And it supports ASIO 2.0 with very low latency.

Since most other semi-pro cards seem to be pretty outdated and not yet have proper Vista drivers anyway, perhaps I should actually go with this Elite Pro this time?

Or does anyone have any other good recommendations for music production in Vista? Basically I'll need at least one midi in/out (actually I'd like 2 or more, but I haven't seen any soundcards that do that, only separate MIDI interfaces), ASIO 2.0, and 24/96 or better audio input/output with analog inputs and SPDIF outputs.
I'm basically looking in the pricerange up to about 400 euro.

dude i had a old regular x-fi creative, and it was awesome super quiet and super nice, but it doesnt have a great preamp, so u jsut have to do ur preamping before the imput and use the card as a trim/volume mixer, as long as u got a great signla going in

and if it comes down to features i love adobe audition the software runs great and never drops any bits

[albee1952]

The creative stuff is fine for hobby recording but not great for serious (i.e. PRO) stuff. Not sure about the newer stuff but their older top of the line that had SPDIF in actually converted to analog and then back to digital between the SPDIF input and the main sound card! Nothing like converting twice on the way in to mess with your audio. If you want to get into real multi-tracking, thee are several solid interfaces. I am a fan of the firwire interface as it is faster than USB(ignore the posted speeds as they do apply to audio and video streams). My choice was the Digidesign 003 as I wanted to use Protools, but there are lots of great (and less expensive) choices from M-Audio and Presonus and lots of others. Check out the user forums for protools and cubase.

[Scali]

Well, thanks for your input.
I know my brothers Elite Pro has an option of 'bit exact recording'. Perhaps that bypasses the analog/digital conversion (they may do that for adding effects/processing/whatever)...

But my main issue is that aside from Creative, hardly anyone seems to have proper Vista drivers yet, especially for the x64 version of Vista that I am using. There are lots of nice interfaces I could buy, but if they don't support my OS, they are of no use to me.
I'm thinking of getting a separate USB midi interface anyway. That would cover at least the midi requirements (and it would still be useful as additional midi ports when I get a soundcard with midi later). I'd no longer depend on a soundcard for that then. And I have my Zoom G9.2tt that does work via USB under Vista x64.
I just don't know how long I'll have to wait until there will be a proper choice of hardware that works with Vista x64. That's why I'm thinking I might aswell get that X-Fi Elite Pro and get it over with.

[losgatosrg350dx]

dude vista is in a huge class action lawsuit, most peoples computers who have vista...dont even boot, they destroyed themselves and the codes, and youd have to reinstall it every couple days
i think chuck vista and get xp or even win2000 wich is hella stable

[Scali]

Well, I've decided to go for a new audio interface, but I went for USB instead of a PCI card. Since we're in the transitional phase, my next PC probably will require PCI-e, which is not available right now... besides, I can use the USB on my laptop aswell.
The X-Fi Elite Pro didn't look that hot after all, it can only do 24/96 recording. So I ordered the E-mu 0404 USB interface. It has 24/192 recording and playback, decent ASIO 2.0 support, and you can plug a guitar into it directly, because it has a Hi-Z input. It also has a midi in/out, so in a way it's just a really fancy USB midi interface
E-mu seems to have its drivers fixed for Vista now anyway, so that's one less problem. I'll probably buy a 1616 or equivalent when they release a PCI-e version. But the SB X-Fi is definitely out.

Let's just hope this USB stuff is any good

[axemanrio]

Good you didn't waste time and money on the Elite Pro They have a lot of handicaps when it comes down to music production. Dumped my X-Fi Platinum in Feb for an Edirol UA-25, which is simply brilliant. If the E-mu doesn't work out for you, I'd recommend you get the Edirol UA or FA series audio interfaces - their primary function is recording guitar and they do one helluva job.

[Drew]

I'm not sure if this is useful advice for you or not, but is there anyway you can "downgrade" to XP? Vista is an absolute resource hog even with all the pretty visual effects (and, I'll admit, they ARE pretty damned nifty) disabled. Virtually every computer geek I've spoken to, even those who prefer Windows, has ditched Vista in favor of XP simply because it eats up too much memory just running to handle a mix with a good number of tracks and a bunch of plugins.

[axemanrio]

I'm pro-XP as well but my XPS notebook came with Vista, so I tweaked the hell out of it and performance is at it's peak now.

If anyone's on Vista and need tweaks, I can PM it to you.

[Drew]

You've been able to get it to run as smoothly and with as little resource drag as XP? Interesting...

[axemanrio]

Yup, and it worked well with even 2GB memory... although I eventually upgraded to 4GB G.Skill. Prior to getting this XPS I was on a 4GHz X6800 desktop which ran Vista comfortably.

[dreamyreality]

Originally Posted by axemanrio

Yup, and it worked well with even 2GB memory... although I eventually upgraded to 4GB G.Skill. Prior to getting this XPS I was on a 4GHz X6800 desktop which ran Vista comfortably.

Oh, yeah, I managed to run Vista x64 on my 486 as well, my back up 80286 is a big laggy though.

I play games so can't live without DX10, probably I will opt for dual booting so as to get XP for recording purposes