Creative Labs Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Elite Pro

I am not really that much of a gamer or a audiophile so this was my first high-end sound card, which I only brought because it was going so cheap. It comes with a breakout box used for all the inputs and outputs that you need, the PCI card which goes inside the pc, remote, cables, stand for the breakout box, volume control cable, mine came with a drivers disk for Vista and XP(I assume they have updated that looking at the other reviews).
Firs thing you notice is that the breakout box is large, but is of a excellent build quality you really can see what you pay for. The PCI segmant is equally impressive visually, with lots of components on the board for the processing of sounds.
The actually performance of this sound card is amazing. Hook up a decent pair of speakers to the setup and you get a really nice, rich, distortion free sound setup. I was amazed totally from moving to a cheap USB sound card to this.
Gaming and entrainment is all of top quality and really makes things come alive. It really is worth the money you spend on this if you want a decent sound card.

To start with the negatives, the only thing I really did not like about this card, although I do not know if it must be atributed to the card itself and its software or to some other reason or factor on my PC, is that I had a quite hard time installing it and have it work smoothly. It took many efforts and a lot of time. I had to make a lot of installations-uninstallations, tried various versions of drivers and s/w to finally get to make it work. But once it did work, I can only say only positive comments about this card. Excellent product, brillient sound whichever use you put it to, gaming is so realistic (oh, that turbines sound on Flight Simulator left me ecstatic. As if I was in the real cockpit or indeed nest to the runway...) music sounds as if the band or orchestra plays right in front of you and cinema effects are better than those heard in theaters. Nice software and apps too with well designed interfaces better from all previous cards I have used. I bought it because at some point my Audigy2 Platinum EX made some weard awful sounds and stopped working. Although it later proved that this happened due to corrupted drivers and registry and no actual card failure existed to the Audigy2, I had already ordered the Elite Pro and could not withdraw from buying it. I did not regret it at all nevertheless. I love its I/O console offering much control and many I/O connections as I need. I believe that the Elite Pro is a semi-pro card with excellent features and many functions and abilities for the music professional develpper too. I love this card now ant I wish its longelivity. And last but not least, my systemboard is PCI-based with no PCI-e slots so I had to stick to PCI architecture. ...Well, I think roughly, that's about it...

I have used some of the biggest names in sound card technology, but I find creative still produce the best packages. In our studio we have tested it on Windows XP and Vista 64 (which is terrible for audio hardware) and it works perfectly on both. The sound quality is great both through a large PA and through a HiFi amp.

I was surprised by the size when compared to its predecessors like the audioligy and the extigy, this one is big, but if you have the space this isn't a problem. After 3 months use, I give this item 10/10.

As a person who spends hours listening to music and playing games,I wanted to upgrade from the Creative Audigy 2 card I had used for some years. I wanted the best available and at the best price. The XFI elite is astonishing,the sound from a good recording is made even better,poor recordings are cleaned up and sound crisper and clearer. The ablilty to position sound from individual speakers means that whatever shape the room, you can get the best ambiance. I have a set of "Creative GigaWorks speakers" also bought on Ebay, they have their own handset,which is now used just to turn the speakers on and off. The handset for the Xfi, is much more substantial and I am still learning to use it.
All in all,I am very satified with the product and I will probably not need to upgrade again as I don't think much else can be done to better the quality of the sound. But then I've been wrong before.

The elite pro is a good quality soundcard, but has a lot of driver problems.
I would only recommend this card to someone with a top-end set, otherwise you may as well purchase a middle-of-the-road soundcard and experience very satisfactory results. There is a constant popping noise with this card which a lot of people including myself have encountered making the card totally useless. Creative have failed to solve this problem and have blamed the motherboard manufacturers, or there maybe hardware incompability ossues.
All in all i would advise people to stay away from creative cards and opt for m-audio or some other reputable manufacturer, after all their is very little difference between the soundcard manufacturers