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Benchmarks

I used a couple of benchmarks, AudioWinBench99 for DirectSound tests, and the RightMark AudioAnalyzer 5.0 for audio performance.  The RightMark folks are nuts.  I would have loved to include UT2003 also, but the results are just too inconsistent to be useful.  Generally, you'll see about a 3-5% drop in game performance using the 6-fire.

Sorry about the funky screen capture.  As you can see, the 6-fire aint the best and it certainly aint the worst.  In some cases, it beats the Audigy2, but mostly it trails by a few percent.

Ah, RMAA 5.0; another sound card review, another version of RMAA.  At the time of this review, RMAA 5.0 has just been released, but it works great.  So, get ready for the huge onslaught of graphs!  Muahaha!  Ive included the 24 bit/96kHz graphs here.

6-fire: -0.13, +0.01 (20-20kHz), Audigy2: -0.53, +0.03 (20-20kHz).  Theoretically, the Audigy2 should have a frequency response of up to 96kHz in its highest mode (24 bit/192kHz), far, far above human hearing.  As our cat can attest, violins have some overtones well above 20kHz.  Both cards extend up to about 40kHz, which should just about cover it.

6-fire: -97.8 dB (A-weighted), Audigy2: -89.3 dB (A-weighted).  Both cards as silent as the grave.  The 6-fire has very low noise, and is pretty clean.

6-fire: 97.7 dB (A), Audigy2: 89.2 (A).  Hmm.  Not too close to the 144dB of dynamic range that 24/96 is supposed to provide, but not too bad either.

6-fire: 0.0010 %, Audigy2: 0.0018 %.  THD graphs the harmonic overtone components (and difference tones) of a 1kHz signal.  Less is obviously better.

6-fire: 0.0082 %, Audigy2: 0.029 %.  This is the biggie.  A punishing 19+20kHz tone is fed and the difference tones are graphed.  These are very good results for the 6-fire.

6-fire: -88.3 dB, Audigy2: -84.9 dB.  Crosstalk is when one channel leaks into the other channel effecting the stereo image.  Again, less is better.