Soundcard Advice

[Tidus]

I'm looking at getting a new PCI soundcard in the £40-£100 price range, I have an AMD Althlon 2500 PC so I only have PCI slots avaliable until I upgrade my system in Q1 2009 then I can move the card to my new system, I'll be pairing it with a Logitech Z5500 Home Theatre System which I'll be buying at the same time.

I've never brought a soundcard so I'm clueless about them and my current speaker system is dead so I'm looking to get something new fast to go along with the new HT.

The Logitech Z5500 has 2 Digital inputs 1x Digital Coaxial & 1x Optical and I have 2 devices I want to use with the digital connections, my PC and PS3. So I'll need a card that has 1x Digital Coaxial Out so I can run my PC through D-Coaxial as my PS3 will be using the Optical connection, an Optical in would also come in handy but is not required.

Any recommendations are welcome, I'm currently on 32-Bit Vista and will be using 64-bit when I build my new Pc.

[DDY]

Since you're using digital coax any sound card (even onboard audio) with that feature should suffice for now.

The main reasons why you would want to use a soundcard is if you are:

1) A gamer
2) A musician
3) Using an analogue connection

You're currently not a gamer of today's standards (I doubt you'd be after EAX5 when you have a Athlon 2500 ) so that rules out (1), you're using digital coax so that's (3) out too. Finally you didn't mention anything about needing ASIO or anything like that so I guess (2) is also out.

I don't have a specific recommendation but as I said, anything with digital coax out will do. Skim around the various etailers like ebuyer and scan for something around £15. But, that's assuming your current motherboard doesn't have digital audio out, if it does... Stick with that .

[rufeo]

Pretty much agree with DDY comments. The logitech z5500 has got ddl and dts hardware decoding so it does seem to be a good option using the optical inputs on it esp. for a HT system. if that is the case and you don't plan on playing many pc games then analogue is pretty much useless to you. if your mobo has optical out then just stick with that. if it hasn't and you don't mind using analogue out for the time being, then you can save the money by not buying a soundcard and using it for your upgrades.

if you do want a new card then i would suggest the asus xonar d1, it's a good card and will do the job very nicely. but it's kind of hard to be certain as you haven't really said what you'll be using your pc for....

[Tidus]

I'll using my new PC to play games, my current pc is just used to play music/Video files while I use my PS3 to play games. I'm not to interested in EAX5, I just want the card I get to be good for music / games so I can install it into my new system which will be quad core with a high end graphics card for games (I'm just waiting for AMD/Intel's upcoming CPU's before I upgrade). I have been looking at the Asus Xona cards but a review I read said they used around 30% of an AMD 4200 CPU with filters enabled and that isn't good if I run a game with this card in my system.

[DDY]

Hold on to your money for the time being, buy a new sound card when you get the new gear in 2009 because you don't need a sound card yet. Again, unless your current motherboard lacks digital coax, a £15 sound card would suffice.

Even so, if you're not interested in EAX or other game audio processing technologies you may as well stick to onboard sound with your new system which will certainly have digital coax out.

I say this because there is no difference, nadda, 0%, zip... in sound quality between a £200 soundcard and £30 motherboard onboard audio while using digital optical or coax out. All the digital to analogue stuff (where the quality matters) is done away from the PC, in your case it's done on the z5500.

[Tidus]

Thanks for the quick reply's, my current PC doesn't have an optical or coaxial out but I do have 5.1 through mini-sterio connectors which I could use in the mean time, the Z-5500 has integrated hardware decoding so I wasn't sure if I should bother with a sound card or not but I did hear some people say that the Z-5500 mid-range sound was lacking, so the card would have made it sound a bit better.