When is a Sound Card not a Sound Card?

[jonelbe]

OK, I fully admit I'm a novice with multimedia, overclocking and the latest greatest gaming "rigs" and so on, but I work in IT so I have a reasonable idea.

I recently bought a Dell 8400 (3GHz Intel 630) without onboard sound so I need to buy a card for it. I went a bit mad on the graphics - ATI x850xl platinum so seems logical to get decent sound to go with it, right?

Also, I have a Boston Accoustics 5.1 Surround (I think! Its got a large Bass box, 2 front and 2 rear surround) speaker system - admittedly 3 years old but produces excellent quality sound to my ears anyway.

So the question is this...

Given you can spend anything from £5 to £300+ on a sound card. What should I get and how much difference will it really make? It seems to me the main choices in my budget lets say up to £60 are:

Sound Blaster 7.1 Digital or equiv
Audigy 2 Value
Full Audigy 2.

Is spending more on graphics really worth it ? Should I be considering dumping the BA kit and upgrading the surround system?

Any and all advice welcomed!

Thanks,

Mark.

[Zak33]

Well, you shuld never overlook sound....sorry...you shuld never over-listen sound

Second...keep the card

Third: Forget Sound Blaster 7.1...its ancient.

Audigy is better. The newest ones are fine examples.

I also suggest (quite strongly) Hercules & Gainward cards, and best of all

M-Audio Revolution 7.1

But they're rare now.

[directhex]

i'm amazed the difference an audigy 2 zs made to my system

[Zak33]

were you equally amazed by the 4 tons of other software it installed alongside?

[Lee @ SCAN]

were you equally amazed by the 4 tons of other software it installed alongside?

Hexeh is a penguin lover so he probably got some basic drivers & stuff to make it work without installing the bloatware

[jonelbe]

Oops, Sorry I meant "Is spending more on SOUND really worth it ? " ;-) Obviously I think graphics are worth it!!

OK, forget the 7.1.

What about the Audigy range... Value vs OEM vs Retail?

Thanks for your help.

[directhex]

were you equally amazed by the 4 tons of other software it installed alongside?

i did a drivers-only install in windows, and under linux, all i need is a 130k driver already included in every kernel since... well, a long time ago.

[Grey M@a]

I can recommend the Hercules cards, I had a Game Theatre XP 5.1 card that came with an extrenal rack for pluging the likes of mics, headphones, I used it to record bass lines then I moved to the creative Audigy 2 series, I was highly dissapointed :/ Hercules have been the better cards for me, but granted the Audigy 2 does have a clearer sound to them just the drivers are letting me down at the moment. Random setting loss, control panels for the audigy locking up no matter what version of the drivers I use.

Saying this though. I have seen and heard the Audigy 4 series in action and its the best thing I have heard in a while. The audigy 4 is a massive step from the 2 series, a whole better card, might be worth you looking up on the Audigy 4 platinums if you have up to 300 to spend, you have jacks everywhere to plug no end of items into them.

[Zak33]

Oops, Sorry I meant "Is spending more on SOUND really worth it ? " ;-) Obviously I think graphics are worth it!!

OK, forget the 7.1.

What about the Audigy range... Value vs OEM vs Retail?

Thanks for your help.

Audigy is good...but it comes with SO MUCH SOFTWARE and trying to stop it loading and hogging your PC is a bugger.

[Rythmic]

OK, forget the 7.1.

It's a rebadged Audigy 1, so you'd do well too

What about the Audigy range... Value vs OEM vs Retail?

IIRC only difference is the Value and some OEM variants don't have firewire (and of course, less bundled software).

I wouldn't get a very pricey card (plat, audigy4 etc) now, wait for autumn.

[directhex]

most modern sb use a very very similar chip - based on the old emu10k on sblive.

a few use a random company's ca0106 chip (sound blaster ls, sound blaster live 24 bit)

i'd avoid the above two, any others are fine really.

[Zak33]

unless you wat me to come round and sing.
I will...if you ask nicely

[jonelbe]

Cheers all, but what I'm trying to get at is - What difference will it make to me? Am I supposed to be hearing more bass, less hiss/static, greater range? Or is it to do with lesser cards taking away processing power from the CPU, etc? I mean investing in Graphics/CPU/Memory brings very obvious improvements. Sound I'm less convinced.

Anyone have a view on Speaker systems? Clearly an all singing all dancing sound card is largely irrelevant when plugged into 2 cheap battery powered speakers for example.

[Agent]

I can recommend the Hercules cards, I had a Game Theatre XP 5.1 card that came with an extrenal rack for pluging the likes of mics, headphones, I used it to record bass lines then I moved to the creative Audigy 2 series, I was highly dissapointed :/ Hercules have been the better cards for me, but granted the Audigy 2 does have a clearer sound to them just the drivers are letting me down at the moment. Random setting loss, control panels for the audigy locking up no matter what version of the drivers I use.

Saying this though. I have seen and heard the Audigy 4 series in action and its the best thing I have heard in a while. The audigy 4 is a massive step from the 2 series, a whole better card, might be worth you looking up on the Audigy 4 platinums if you have up to 300 to spend, you have jacks everywhere to plug no end of items into them.

Softmodding
Audigy 2ZS sounds great!!! + CMS 3!

You can have most of the Audigy 4 features on a Audigy 2 card. It really makes a huge difference to the sound.

[zaphod]

I like this sound card. Mainly for the Live Dolby Digital


HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold PCI Dolby Soundcard

[ed^chigliak]

I take it you're a gamer with that choice of graphics card in which case you can pretty much narrow it down to sound cards that are known to be good for gaming. The audigy2 zs would be a good choice to maintain those high frame rates in games and do the position sound stuff.