The 3.5-inch drive features mic-in and headphone-out connections. Unlike previous versions of this break-out box, this one offers the choice of placement in either a 3.5-inch (floppy drive bay) or 5.25-inch (DVD drive) bay. The actual sound card that comes with both packages is identical. The only difference between the two products is that the £160 Fatal1ty Champion Series card comes with an additional I/O drive for quick front panel connection to headphones and headsets. The first, cheaper option, is the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series, which you can currently pick up for around £95.Īnd the second is the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series, which is the version we're reviewing. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.First announced in May 2008, the new X-Fi Titanium series (taking over from the X-Fi Platinum series) comes in two different flavours. I really don't know what else to do! I am sorry to bombard whoever is reading this with a bloody book, but it is how it is. On the recording side of things, there is Digital-In - Creative SB X-Fi - Default Device, "What U Hear" - Creative SB X-Fi - Disabled, Microphone FP - Creative SB X-Fi - Disabled-unplugged, and Line-In - Creative SB X-Fi - Disabled-unplugged. The only two options that come up in the Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Sound->Playback menu are SPDIF out - Creative SB X-Fi - Default Device, Internal AUX Jack - Creative SB X-Fi - Disabled, and then all of the nVidia disabled audio options. When I went into the SPDIF out->Properties->Advanced and tried to change the Default format from "2 Channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality)" to "2 Channel, 24 bit, 96000 Hz (Studio Quality", it would change, but when I pressed "Test" to the right of the selection box, a window popped up saying, "Failed to Play Test Tone." This worked before I installed the drivers. When I went to test the audio device in Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Sound, the green bar showed that the test audio was playing, but nothing was coming out of the speakers. The application will exit." At this point the light on the side of the card still wasn't on (and hadn't been since it "died" in my main machine. The weird thing is that, although device manager detected the card as "Creative SB X-Fi", when I tried to launch the Creative Audio Control Panel, it said something to the effect of, "The audio device supported by this application is not detected.
It was showing up as "Creative SB X-Fi", and the drivers had been installed.
I then ran windows update which installed drivers for Creative X-Fi Audio Device - WDM. As of now, the card is recognized as "High Definition Audio Device", in my experiences, a very generic name, lol. The HDMI audio from the GTX 650 Ti Boost was disabled in the nVidia control panel, i'm certain. Without any drivers installed it worked in 2.0 mode! I am 100% sure that it was coming from the soundcard because the only audio cable plugged into the PC was in the X-Fi card. I put it into my media PC with an MSI Z87M-G43 and plugged in the optical cable going from the card to my Onkyo TX-NR609 receiver. There was something peculiar when I tried putting it into another system though. It is also in an ASUS Rampage III Extreme motherboard.
It is running logitech X-530 5.1 speakers with all of the jack plugged in (analog) but software configured to 2.1.
I tried reinstalling drivers, letting windows 7 update install drivers, and reseating it in the slot/trying a different slot.
Then one day, Inexplicably, the speaker let out a soft pop without any audio load, the "X-Fi" light went out on the side and audio was no more.
Ok, so I have had a Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series for around 2 years now running in my main gaming system.