Live
The design of Live! was a new architecture from the previous AWE line of processors, and was state of the art in 1998. The concept was an architecture that allowed for the first time, Effects processing in real-time with interactive audio to produce 3D audio and Environmental Effects. It was a traditional pipeline design that allowed multi-channel digital audio to flow in and out of the sound engine, interactive effects processing, and multi-channel audio inputs and outputs.
Audigy
The design of Audigy was a major improvement over the Live! with a 2x increase in the dedicated effects processing unit, major optimization of the overall effects processing architecture and added 24-bit ADVANCED HD™ capabilities. The 2x increase in the dedicated effects and tank processing unit and the major optimization in the architecture yielded a 4x improvement in overall effects processing capabilities without a huge increase in required MIPs processing. These changes provided the ability to run 4 simultaneous effects (3 high quality reverbs and 1 other high quality effect) that delivered the EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 standard versus just 1 effect on the Live! (1 high quality reverb) that delivered the EAX 2.0 standard. The other addition of the 24-bit ADVANCED HD engine allowed 24-bit playback and recording versus 16-bit with the Live!.
The changes for Audigy from Live! are noted in bold in the diagram below.
X-Fi
The X-Fi is designed with a completely new architecture, unlike any other audio processor that has ever been conceived. This new architecture follows the concept of a software design rather than a traditional pipeline design in audio or graphics architectures. The design follows the ring architecture as shown below. This architecture is very flexible in signal routing, with 4096 audio ring channels that route audio to any of the processing elements. The Tank, SRC, Mixer, and DSP processing elements on this ring are far superior and more complex in technology as compared to the entire Audigy audio processor.
::Information by soundblaster.com
