Since most people don't recommend to use Audigy for music I would probably go for the Terratec DMX 6Fire, however I have some specific questions about it:

First, I was wondering if there is anyobody else here who also plays recent EASports games like FIFA, NBA and can tell me from experience how well these games works with a card like Terratec DMX 6Fire (or Audiophile 2496). Fact is that, unlike Audigy, those cards don't have DirectSound 3D in there hardware and apparently this could result in stuttering playback in games. What about those from EASports, as those are the only games I really play much but I like to play them perfectly without any missing sounds or stuttering, etc..

Second, how well does a card like 6Fire plays back audio and video files (avi, mpeg) cause I've heard that Sensaura (which 6Fire uses for DirectSound) doesn't always work well with Windows Media Player. Any problems with playing back files in Windows Media Player with this card? I would like to know this fo both mp3 and avi/mpeg video files!

Anybody who can answer these questions? Thanks in advance for the info!

Last edited by Dance123 on Oct-14-2003 at 09:19

No problems at all with video and audio files.

With games, you have to juggle sometimes with the Sensaura 3D option. I've seen some games that do 3D sound with Sensaura on (most of them). But some games (warcraft 3) I had to disable sensaura for 3D sound to work (and it is hardware Directsound btw).

Same if you play DVD's with surround. You have to set the number of speakers you are using (2, 4, or 5.1) but disable sensaura, as it will conflict with the decoder of the dvd player program.

But stuttering, never occured.

Thanks for the reply, however in a review of the Terratec DMX 6Fire that you can find over here: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/terratecdmx6fire/ they say towards the end of the article where they test the CPU load when playing games with this card: "A typical situation in games is simultaneous reproducing of 8 to 16 voices. The Audigy advantage is a couple of percents. The Audigy outscores its competitor in stream mixing quality. With the Sensaura disabled the drivers of the DMX 6 fire card turn to the mode of software DirectSound algorithms. This is the mode which we recommend for playing music in universal WAV/MP3 players Windows Media Player and others using DirectSound API."

Now what do they mean by that?!! Why do they recommend to disable Sensaura for playing music with WAV/MP3 players like Windows Media Player?! I thought it was always best to turn Sensaura ON?! If it's best ON for games and OFF for windows media player, does that mean you have to change this settings all the time or what?!!

Anybody can please clarify what they mean, cause it's really confusing me? Thanks in advance!

Last edited by Dance123 on Oct-15-2003 at 02:28

Basically you can leave Sensaura on all the time, except if you wanna watch to surround DVD's or do heavy music production (where you need small latency Asio/WDM/GSIF.

The thing is, the Terratec has hardware acceleration, but Sensaura is an extra software layer to emulate EAX1/2 (not HD yet) and A3D protocols. Audigy have EAX "hardwired" in the card (hey, it's their protocol!). So you won't notice a difference in sound if you listen to MP3/WAV players like Media Player or Winamp if you turn your Sensaura on or off. It's just because Sensaura is an extra software layer, that you'll need some percent of CPU more (it's not fully reverting to Software mode really). Some percentage, nothing to really worry about.

In fact the DMX and the Audigy are aimed at different people.

If you are a hardcore gamer that wants to make music on the side, go for the audigy by all means.
For the DMX it's the opposite. If you want to make music, but still want to have some decent "consumer" support like games and discrete surround (besides the digital stream), the DMX6fire is better. Much cleaner sounding, much better latency. Games are secondary.