Help choosing sound card
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A little while back, the main sound output on my motherboard went out, I believe due to a power surge. The front audio jack has been doing fine, but now I am moving my home theater and computer around and plan to run the computer through my surround sound receiver. Hopefully someone here can suggest a good sound card for me.
What I want is something that can handle most things well, but it doesn't need to be for gaming as I rarely use my PC for more than VNs. Also, I want something that can handle 7.1, preferably with a TOSLINK out, though since my receiver has direct line input it's not a necessity. The price needs to be around $100 or less. As for connections, my motherboard has PCI and PCI express x1, though space could be an issue with the PCI express since it is close to the video cards fan.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
What I want is something that can handle most things well, but it doesn't need to be for gaming as I rarely use my PC for more than VNs. Also, I want something that can handle 7.1, preferably with a TOSLINK out, though since my receiver has direct line input it's not a necessity. The price needs to be around $100 or less. As for connections, my motherboard has PCI and PCI express x1, though space could be an issue with the PCI express since it is close to the video cards fan.
Spoiler:
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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I have a Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer card and it works pretty decent. I absolutely hate their drivers and their support though and I can recall on more than one occasion having to uninstall the card and run driver cleaner in order for it to work right. The CMSS-3D also has a bad memory leak on Vista/7 which will max out your RAM and eventually make your computer BSOD if you don't disable it. CMSS-3D is used to turn a stereo source into a surround sound source so you should probably take that into consideration. If I were you I would try a brand other than Creative. Also take into consideration that if your trying to get any EAX effects out of your games that in Vista/7 you can only get up to EAX3 while in XP you could get up to EAX5. Also, only a limited number games will actually benefit from any X-RAM on the card so that shouldn't be a deciding factor. Also whether the card uses up the regular or the X1 slot shouldn't matter either. You should be aware that some cards don't actually have any hardware acceleration at all and instead uses the CPU like the X-Fi XtremeAudio cards. If a card has more than 64 voice slots you can be pretty sure that it has hardware acceleration so keep that in mind.
If I were you I would just look at the sound cards on Newegg and sort by highest reviews and go down the list. Check the reviews people give them and also check Google for any reviews before you make your purchase. And since you said you weren't looking for something to game with you can probably just get an adapter card which will provide the outputs you are looking for like like this one. Even though some of them give the item bad reviews you have to take into consideration that more often than not the problem lies with the user so even though 1 person says the card is crap and doesn't work keep looking at reviews and you'll find people who will say otherwise.
If I were you I would just look at the sound cards on Newegg and sort by highest reviews and go down the list. Check the reviews people give them and also check Google for any reviews before you make your purchase. And since you said you weren't looking for something to game with you can probably just get an adapter card which will provide the outputs you are looking for like like this one. Even though some of them give the item bad reviews you have to take into consideration that more often than not the problem lies with the user so even though 1 person says the card is crap and doesn't work keep looking at reviews and you'll find people who will say otherwise.
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tswarthog
The Iconoclast
If at all possible you would do yourself a favor to not go through Creative, their sound quality is horrible at best. My computer came with a so called 24 bit high def Creative x-fi card however one day I wanted to see what the build in sound could pull if not ran through the driver from Creative. To my amazement I found that my motherboard had a 24 bit hi-def build in sound card then when set up for 24 bit mode on the setting 5.1 my sound quality probably improved over 3 fold. Most notably in the mid and low range bass and just general sound.
So because of that experience I cannot recommend Creative
So because of that experience I cannot recommend Creative
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tswarthog wrote...
If at all possible you would do yourself a favor to not go through Creative, their sound quality is horrible at best. My computer came with a so called 24 bit high def Creative x-fi card however one day I wanted to see what the build in sound could pull if not ran through the driver from Creative. To my amazement I found that my motherboard had a 24 bit hi-def build in sound card then when set up for 24 bit mode on the setting 5.1 my sound quality probably improved over 3 fold. Most notably in the mid and low range bass and just general sound. So because of that experience I cannot recommend Creative
Creative soundcards are avarage at best. But what makes them awesome is that they are the only brand of cards with X-fi support. < This alone makes it worth buying any Creative soundcard if you're going to sue it for gaming purposes.
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tswarthog
The Iconoclast
GameON wrote...
tswarthog wrote...
If at all possible you would do yourself a favor to not go through Creative, their sound quality is horrible at best. My computer came with a so called 24 bit high def Creative x-fi card however one day I wanted to see what the build in sound could pull if not ran through the driver from Creative. To my amazement I found that my motherboard had a 24 bit hi-def build in sound card then when set up for 24 bit mode on the setting 5.1 my sound quality probably improved over 3 fold. Most notably in the mid and low range bass and just general sound. So because of that experience I cannot recommend Creative
Creative soundcards are avarage at best. But what makes them awesome is that they are the only brand of cards with X-fi support. < This alone makes it worth buying any Creative soundcard if you're going to sue it for gaming purposes.
I would almost recommend he buy a newer motherboard with built in sound. X-fi support is great and all but my internal sound still shreds Creative because the overall quality is just so good. Not to mention he would gain a performance boost from the new mobo. The X-Fi feature of Creative sound cards is just not potent enough to justify around $100 of cost.
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Flaser
OCD Hentai Collector
To all of you: even 16-bit sampling (a'la CD) is better than what our recording equipment can handle. Just for listening to music, any sound card will do. What you should be looking for is either a good built in amplifier - this is extinct, the last card I saw this on was an Ensoniq card I used quite a while back - or clear signal output.
A separate sound card (that's not dirt cheap) will always outperform motherboard integrated chip-sets as they are usually better decoupled from the rest of your system. However chip sets are already as good as cheap sound cards, so it doesn't matter which you use. Since you're only looking for playback I wouldn't bother with high-end sound cards. Here is why:
The only reason why you'd need greater sampling depth is because you may do transformations or modulations on the signal that result in lower resolution. However in PC games this is done before the sound is sent to your sound card, so your card supporting 24-bit doesn't do jack-shit!
Who needs 24-bit sound cards? Musicians who work with MIDI and audio samples that they mix with the sound card. In that case the extra bits can come handy as they can retain fidelity even after multiple transformations. Your average user or audiophile will never use this feature of the card for anything.
If you have a quility sound system, I wouldn't even bother with all of that: just buy a card that supports digital output through S/PDIF or fibre cable and plug it into the amp - the sound quality will *always* better than what can be achieved with what can be crammed onto a small PCB (a sound card). This isn't about number of components but sheer physical separation and spacing needed for decoupling and clear signal generation.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/82
A separate sound card (that's not dirt cheap) will always outperform motherboard integrated chip-sets as they are usually better decoupled from the rest of your system. However chip sets are already as good as cheap sound cards, so it doesn't matter which you use. Since you're only looking for playback I wouldn't bother with high-end sound cards. Here is why:
The only reason why you'd need greater sampling depth is because you may do transformations or modulations on the signal that result in lower resolution. However in PC games this is done before the sound is sent to your sound card, so your card supporting 24-bit doesn't do jack-shit!
Who needs 24-bit sound cards? Musicians who work with MIDI and audio samples that they mix with the sound card. In that case the extra bits can come handy as they can retain fidelity even after multiple transformations. Your average user or audiophile will never use this feature of the card for anything.
If you have a quility sound system, I wouldn't even bother with all of that: just buy a card that supports digital output through S/PDIF or fibre cable and plug it into the amp - the sound quality will *always* better than what can be achieved with what can be crammed onto a small PCB (a sound card). This isn't about number of components but sheer physical separation and spacing needed for decoupling and clear signal generation.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/82
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tswarthog
The Iconoclast
What they need to do is make a decompresser for computer audio. I have one of those now almost ancient pieces of equipment that takes the shitty compressed music file that they cram onto a CD and decompresses it for the highest possible sound. My dads car has a system called the Fat Noise that came with software to decompress the MP3 files into these massive high def music files that can be stored on a large cartridge, plugged in, and enjoyed via Bose speakers.
If they could do something were the computer actively decompressed music while listening that would be beyond kick ass. However I imagine that would take up some serious processing speed.
If they could do something were the computer actively decompressed music while listening that would be beyond kick ass. However I imagine that would take up some serious processing speed.
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Flaser
OCD Hentai Collector
tswarthog wrote...
What they need to do is make a decompresser for computer audio. I have one of those now almost ancient pieces of equipment that takes the shitty compressed music file that they cram onto a CD and decompresses it for the highest possible sound. My dads car has a system called the Fat Noise that came with software to decompress the MP3 files into these massive high def music files that can be stored on a large cartridge, plugged in, and enjoyed via Bose speakers. If they could do something were the computer actively decompressed music while listening that would be beyond kick ass. However I imagine that would take up some serious processing speed.
STOP THIS BULLSHIT!
...unless it works with magic pixy dust it's impossible to regain information that was not sampled in the first place! You're using loads of space to listen to the very same data that has been transformed to take up more space.
One more thing: CD music is not compressed! It's the product of direct A/D conversion: 44KHz, 16-bit sampling with linear quantization.
You don't know what the fuck you're speaking about. Read any good electronics or tele-communications book (the ones that technicians and engineers are taught) and it will be written as TRUTH: To restore an X hertz sound, you need 2x hertz sampling - even in analogue technology.
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Flaser, do you have any good links to share for understanding compression and the like? Could you explain what KHz and bit sampling mean and how they relate to sound output? I'm interested in that stuff, I don't know better and I want to change that.
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Anomalouse wrote...
Flaser, do you have any good links to share for understanding compression and the like? Could you explain what KHz and bit sampling mean and how they relate to sound output? I'm interested in that stuff, I don't know better and I want to change that.Compression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_compression_%28data%29
Bit sampling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28signal_processing%29
Amazing what Wikipedia can do.
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Thanks all for pointing me in the right direction. Sound cards are probably the one area I know next to nothing about. In various PC magazines they always talk about using X-Fi cards in "gaming" rigs, but I have seen a lot of negative reviews for Creative. Needless to say, this caused a little confusion. However, I think I will just go with one of the cheaper cards similar to what Nachbar suggested. As long as I can hook it up to my receiver, and it has decent sound I will be happy.