Question for X-Meridian owners

Associate
Joined
22 Jan 2006
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I am loooking at buying an X-Meridian, and will mainly be using it for upmixing Mp3's. I have an X-Fi right now, but just cannot put up with the Vista drivers any longer.

One thing I do love about Creative cards is the CMSs upmixing mode called StereoSurround, which I prefer over the StereoXpand mode.
StereoSurround envelopes the song around all speakers, whereas the StereoXpand mode (usually prefered by most) keeps the vocals etc to the front, bit like ProLogic II.

Do the X-Meridian drivers have something like StereoSurround?
This will be used on my other machine btw, which has XP.
 
Soldato
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Having owned an X-Mystique for years, I have to say id be genuinely shocked (and i mean that genuinely) if the Auzentech Vista drivers are any better than the creative ones.

Unless you REALLY need Dolby Live or DTS connect I really really would save your money.

In my mind CMSS is probably the best 2 channel upmixer ive come across.

What you have to remember is that although the X-Meridian looks nicely specced and those cards ALWAYS get great rave reviews.. in reality your buying a C-Media chipset, and the driver core is produced by C-Media also.
 
Associate
OP
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22 Jan 2006
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Thanks for that, nice to have an honest opinion.

tbh I love my X-Fi, I really do, and I really love the CMSS upmixing, it's why I've stuck with them... but the Vista drivers basically keep cutting speakers now and again (not completely, you can still hear the bass, just no foreground stuff), requiring a restart.

I am not a fan of the traditional form of upmixing used by most people (the Pro Logic II-esque type), most people hate the StereoSurround mode on the Creative cards and I love it. Wasn't sure if I could get my preferred form of upmixing from the X-Meridian.

I suppose the sensible thing to do is to wait until Creative sort the drivers... it's just real annoying.
 
Soldato
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Oh I agree with you re: the Vista drivers. I have an X-Fi myself, I mean I could be qwrong but given the fact they only have 32 bit Vista drivers out for the X-Meridian it doesnt look like their driver regime has improved since I owned my Mystique.

In the end I got SO fed up of driver bugs that had been there for over 2 years with absolutely no sign of them being fixed that I jumped ship... (most annoying was a high pitched squeeling in certain games unless you dropped the hardware acceleration level in windows down to the very bottom notch...)

The Auzentech cars are superb quality... their achille's heel is the C-Media chipset and thus the C-Media drive core, I think other ex Auzentech owners on here will probably agree with me.
 
Associate
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12 Jul 2004
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272
Agreed with manic.

Creative driver support is currently ahead of Auzentech in terms of platforms supported. This however isn't saying very much.

I currently have a X-Mystique and Meridian sitting in a box doing nothing due to awful driver support. I ended up buying a X-Fi Fatality otherwise I'd still be stuck using onboard. Frankly I'm not missing my Auzentech cards one bit, and I will never go back to them, the only use the Meridian will get is in a future HTPC.

I can safely say I just wont go there again, I will never intentionally purchase anything with any cmedia chipset unless its bolted to a motherboard and I can't avoid it.

Thankfully if you're staying with XP on the other machine you should be good to go, but I'd still say stick with what you have unless you absolutely MUST have the dolby features.

Creative may be bad, but it is bloody eutopia in comparison.
 
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