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I know next to nothing about sound cards. Can anyone here give me a few pointers on what to look for? what brands are good and what are shite?

Creative has an effective monoply on the consumer market, there are a few super duper high end cards out there but unless your using it to hook up an amp your don't need em


"Decent(IE Games sound pretty good) Cards like Creatives older Live 5.1 cards can be found for $20-$30 bucks online

"OEM" Creative cards(Nothing but the drives no sound mixing software, no game bundles just the drives) can be found for between $40 to 60$(For the brand new Augiy 2 Cards)

The Creative folks sell the same card($60) then bundled it with games($90) change the name to "gamer something" Or bundle it with mixing software($85) and call is music edition

Or bundle it with + plus the useful front bay connect box($200) and call it preminum

You can't go wrong with Creative's Audigy 2 and above cards. They'll more than meet your general needs (music, gaming, etc----note, some of the Audigys have had some EAX issues with UT2004, but that's the game's problem, I think)

Shinova wrote:You can't go wrong with Creative's Audigy 2 and above cards. They'll more than meet your general needs (music, gaming, etc----note, some of the Audigys have had some EAX issues with UT2004, but that's the game's problem, I think)

Alot of games have a problem with EAX, its the games problem as far as I know, but creative is not helping.

Any of the audigy 2 line is perfect, if you just want a basic card (for a 2.1 system max), the Soundblaster is perfect.

I haven't bothered with a sound card - the mobo has 5.1 output, and as I'm only using a pair of unpowered shitty speakers, I won't be changing any time soon

andrewgpaul wrote:I haven't bothered with a sound card - the mobo has 5.1 output, and as I'm only using a pair of unpowered shitty speakers, I won't be changing any time soon

Thats six percent or more of your proccessing time your loosing because of that, like on board video cards, onboard sound(Except in rare cases) realies entirely opon the CPU to do the work, stressing you most expensive(On avarage behind the video card) componet unessarly and slowing down your entire system

Or in other words *Waves hands* Doooom... DOOOOOM!!!!

M-Audio Revolution

Creative's internal processing routines tend to do funky things to the sound when they shouldn't.

Mr Bean wrote:

andrewgpaul wrote:I haven't bothered with a sound card - the mobo has 5.1 output, and as I'm only using a pair of unpowered shitty speakers, I won't be changing any time soon

Thats six percent or more of your proccessing time your loosing because of that, like on board video cards, onboard sound(Except in rare cases) realies entirely opon the CPU to do the work, stressing you most expensive(On avarage behind the video card) componet unessarly and slowing down your entire system

Or in other words *Waves hands* Doooom... DOOOOOM!!!!

NVidia's Soundstorm™ nForce2™ integrated sound is one of the rare cases.
I plan on getting a separate soundcard only when I replace my A7N8X Deluxe.

Creative's craptastic drivers and apps can kiss my ass.

Ah, the soundstorm, what a wonder that was, too bad no one is sticking Soundstorm anywhere else today.

Stuart Mackey wrote:I know next to nothing about sound cards. Can anyone here give me a few pointers on what to look for? what brands are good and what are shite?

integrated sound on the Asus AV8 motherboard (5.1 surround).

Mr Bean wrote:Creative has an effective monoply on the consumer market, there are a few super duper high end cards out there but unless your using it to hook up an amp your don't need em


snip

Thanks Chaps.
These super duper high end jobs, what are they like?
What I am after over all is something for use in a sound studio, so it has to produce accurate sound on a constant basis.

Glocksman wrote:

Mr Bean wrote:

andrewgpaul wrote:I haven't bothered with a sound card - the mobo has 5.1 output, and as I'm only using a pair of unpowered shitty speakers, I won't be changing any time soon

Thats six percent or more of your proccessing time your loosing because of that, like on board video cards, onboard sound(Except in rare cases) realies entirely opon the CPU to do the work, stressing you most expensive(On avarage behind the video card) componet unessarly and slowing down your entire system

Or in other words *Waves hands* Doooom... DOOOOOM!!!!

NVidia's Soundstorm™ nForce2™ integrated sound is one of the rare cases.
I plan on getting a separate soundcard only when I replace my A7N8X Deluxe.

Funnily enough, that's what I have

Stuart Mackey wrote:Thanks Chaps.
These super duper high end jobs, what are they like?
What I am after over all is something for use in a sound studio, so it has to produce accurate sound on a constant basis.

Look at M-Audio, E-Mu and Terratec products for that sort of thing.

phongn wrote:

Stuart Mackey wrote:Thanks Chaps.
These super duper high end jobs, what are they like?
What I am after over all is something for use in a sound studio, so it has to produce accurate sound on a constant basis.

Look at M-Audio, E-Mu and Terratec products for that sort of thing.

Thank you, my good man My shout at the pub

Stuart Mackey wrote:

phongn wrote:

Stuart Mackey wrote:Thanks Chaps.
These super duper high end jobs, what are they like?
What I am after over all is something for use in a sound studio, so it has to produce accurate sound on a constant basis.

Look at M-Audio, E-Mu and Terratec products for that sort of thing.

Thank you, my good man My shout at the pub

You might want to check specifications of all these cards, some have differant inputs and quality level, for differant kind of work.

Ace Pace wrote:

Stuart Mackey wrote:

phongn wrote: Look at M-Audio, E-Mu and Terratec products for that sort of thing.

Thank you, my good man My shout at the pub

You might want to check specifications of all these cards, some have differant inputs and quality level, for differant kind of work.

Indeed. Of cource we shall be talking to the client involved soon to define exactly what his reqirements are.

Ace Pace wrote:Ah, the soundstorm, what a wonder that was, too bad no one is sticking Soundstorm anywhere else today.

Thats what I have on my Leadtek K7NCR18-D Pro and it absolutely blows any creative product away. The only problem I've encountered with this chipset is that it has some thermal issues, (Under full load, sometimes it'll start having noise spikes that sound like a poorly encoded mp3.) but thats nothing a cheap 486 heatsink and some thermal epoxy couldn't solve quite easily. All in all, its WELL worth hunting for.

Vertigo1 wrote:
Thats what I have on my Leadtek K7NCR18-D Pro and it absolutely blows any creative product away. The only problem I've encountered with this chipset is that it has some thermal issues, (Under full load, sometimes it'll start having noise spikes that sound like a poorly encoded mp3.) but thats nothing a cheap 486 heatsink and some thermal epoxy couldn't solve quite easily. All in all, its WELL worth hunting for.

However, no modern motherboard has Soundstorm, which kinda sucks, adding 50-150$ to a gaming PC hurts.