Creative Labs Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Elite Pro

The X-Fi Elite Pro was an upgrade from my Audigy 4 Professional sound card, and I had great expectations of it considering its predecessor. On opening the box, I found that they had removed the IEEE 1394 (firewire) connector from the external connection box; this was rather disappointing as it was one of the features I used most on the Audigy. On installation, I found that the disc supplied by Creative was not compatible with Vista - so I had to go to the creative website and download the drivers. This then led to the realisation that the download was no the complete install disc, and if I wanted the complete software suite, I had to purchase it from Creative and the cost of £5 (£1.31 for the disc and the rest was postage).

Undaunted, I continued with the installation and found that the card was every bit as good as I hoped it would be. It is far more feature rich (software-wise) than the audigy but retains the same wonderful sound. The card has 3 possible modes - Game, Entertainment and Audio Creation. The crystalliser software can cause a lot of background hiss when the car is in "Game" mode but that disappears once your chosen game is underway.

I would recommend that you have a good set of speakers to take full advantage of the rich sounds that this card can provide; and if you are running Vista, then ensure you get your hands on the full Vista installation cd - you won't be sorry.