SB Live! vs Sound Storm

[Dragonb4llz]

Ive got the Abit NF7-s (not another one...) which handily has sound storm. I was wondering if i should use the SB Live! or the sound storm cos of proccesing power etc, and because my pci slots just look so lonely....

[St3v3]

If it's an audigy, keep it. If not, use the soundstorm (imho soundstorm has better features than the SBLive soloutions).

I have a set of Logitech Z-680's and i only ever need to use the optical or digital out, something the Soundblasters have always lacked. I never wanna pay £150 for a soundcard with optical out.

If its for 2/4 channel output, then the soundstorm should do just fine, it acts like any normal PCI based soundcard.

[Tom]

the soundstorm uses LESS cpu power than any sound card on the market

it also beats ne creative card inc the audigy xcept the audigy 2

[Ravens Nest]

Yeah Soundstorm is much better than Soundblaster live! and comparable to Audigy.

So sell the live!, give it to a friend or stick it in an old computer.

The Windows XP drivers are seriously lacking for the Live! Nvidia's driver for soundstorm are very good and can emulate EAX 1 & 2 and can do Direct3D hardware sound with 64 channels whereas Live! has 32 maximum.

And as been already said by Tom soundstorm uses very little CPU power to run and actually makes games run a little faster

If its for 2/4 channel output, then the soundstorm should do just fine, it acts like any normal PCI based soundcard. I'm afraid i have to disagree, it can do 5.1 channel sound output as i have it wired up to my creative 5.1 speakers and sub this includes the centre speaker and it sounds great

[Austin]

nVidia's full audio is excellent, way better than the buggy, clunky, CPU killing, PCI grabbing SB Live and easily up to Audigy quality. You really can't beat the nVidia audio for sheer cost to perf ratios. However it's not all bad, many folks still love the Live and you should get a decent price for it.

[Dragonb4llz]

k cheers, i dont really notice the difference so i guess i can sell the sb live! for a whole shiny penny to someone guilable...

[Spud1]

yeah i just changed from my audiogy to soundstorm, and it sounds better to me..not sure why but i aint complaining, now i can replace the crap Sb PCI 128 thats in my second PC

[WoLFe]

see signiture, with those rather nice speakers (in my opinion, better than my mates inspires) worth upgrading from a sound blaster live, to a audigy 2? i have the money..so...

[Stoo]

You'd be better off spending it on a processor upgrade to be honest

[Austin]

Athlon 1.4ghz is in many ways faster than the XP1500+ but considering what the super cheap TbredB and Barton can do it makes sense to save your pennies...

www.dabs.com

£37 XP1700+ (DLT3C should be TbredB)
£70 XP2500+ (Barton so double L2 cache)
£15 Volcano 11+ HSF
£89 Abit NF7-S nForce2 (£54 KT600 should be a small step down)
£78 2x256MB Crucial PC3200 (TwinMOS PC3200 is great and cheaper)
TOTAL £219 TbredB or £252 Barton, (£50 less if you took KT600 and TwinMOS)

Should get around 2.2ghz and 400FSB, that's around XP3000+ and XP3200+ respectively.

[KraniX]

wasn't there a load of moaning a while back coz the original nforce said it had dolby so and so but it was actually just an audio codec and not a hardware feature?

i've gone from a live value to a asus nf2 with soundstorm to my shuttle with a basic intel controller ac97 thing and i'll be honest that i haven't noticed a single difference in any of them.

[Zak33]

The entire sound card debacle raises its ugly face again

The facts are : most people dont have good enough speakers/cables to teel the difference.

When you CAN tell is in Sound Positioning.....even with pants speakers you should know when someone is flying up your tail fin, or about to shoot you in the head, or chasing you in a car....

other than that, for Mr Public its a right hard thing to tell apart

Sound Storm rocks and supports loads of stuff, so use it.

I have Audigy 1 and frankly I love it.....but I am WEIRD !

[Austin]

KraniX, IIRC the rpoblems with the original nVidia audio found on nForce1 was diffs between the implementations. Many manu's (Abit, Epox MSI etc) neglected nVidia's audio completely while others only partially implimented it, although most of the time it was simply lacking SP/DIF. The idea of the Soundstorm tag used on some nForce2 mobos is to assure consumers that it has a 100% perfect implimentation that nVidia intedned it to have. Again lacking Soundstorm could mean you completely lack nVidia's audio or simply not have SP/DIF. IIRC nForce1 nVidia audio was able to decode Dolby in real time but couldn't encode, I think nForce2 overcomes this but again it is all IIRC. Soundstorm costs so little to go for and yet easily beats many expensive PCI soundcards in many areas so basicly it's excellent!

[KraniX]

thanks austin, do you feel better for getting that off your chest? lol