Photography

Taken with a Sony DSC-V3 at 3072x2304, with too much coffee and failing sunlight, and resized for the web. This page contains a few photos, so give it a chance to load.

Overview

The board itself is a vast expanse of chips, resistors, and loads of capacitors. We can clearly see the seperation of digital and analog sections on the board.

You can see a clear division of analog on the left, and digital on the right.

The card table is an antique from Vienna.

Obligatory backside shot.

Analog

In fact, the X-Fi has parts that some DIY types have soldered onto their Audigy2 ZS's. I like the design. It uses 3 ST 4558CN op amps, which are high quality 2-channel amps, to drive the outputs.

Op-amps by CS Micro.  High quality.

Those who build CMOY amps for fun (it's obsessive, let me tell you) will go towards the Burr-Brown 2227 op-amps instead. But, I have heard good things about the ST Micro chips and in listening tests, they do kick ass.

ST 33078, upper left, upside down, is a 4-channel op-amp which I think is for the Flexi-jack.

Digital

For the D/A chores, the X-Fi uses a Cirrus Logic CS4382 chip. This high performance, 8 channel D/A converter is used a lot in high-end DVD players and receivers. It does 8 channels in 24 bit and 192 kHz resolution with 114dB Dynamic Range.

Digital section of the card.  Note the Samsung RAM.  X-RAM says MT, for Micron.

8-channel, 24 bit, 192 kHz DAC for output.

The A/D (that is, recording) is handled by a Wolfson WM8775, a 24 bit, 96KHz DAC with a 4-channel mixer built in. There is no doubt that the X-Fi is capable of 24 bit recording now, unlike the first Audigy. If digitizing LP's is a project on your mind, give the X-Fi a look.

4 channel, 24 bit, 96 kHz ADC for recording.

That is not a joystick port.