The other day a creative x-fi notebook smartcard arrived in the mail, which I purchased so I could have Creative features on my laptop since my Audigy2ZS PCMCIA slot doesn’t fit in the smartcard slot. The adapters were going for pretty close to the same price that I nabbed the x-fi, so I figured it would only make sense to upgrade.
My onboard sound can only switch between microphone or no mic and all other sounds when recording. And since I like to do machinima projects every now and again I figured this new card would do the job… However I was wrong. What u hear and the microphone only work separately. Which pisses me off because I’ve seen the x-fi in action and figured it wouldn’t be much different. I would have been better off getting the PCMCIA card adapter as my Audigy2ZS could kick it’s ass without question. Although I did find a solution. A USB headset… A fucking cheap USB headset. Why the hell is THAT able to do the job for me but a god damn x-fi can’t?
I’m just glad I didn’t pay top dollar for it. Even on ebay right now if you buy one brand new it’s $99. I got mine over half of that as a refurbished model. I’d really be kicking myself if I got one brand new.
It’s still a nice card so don’t get me wrong since it does have 3D positional audio built in. But the stripped down features? Piss poor.
>Product Review: Notebook x-fi
