Soundcard question

[F022Y]

Ello all,

Just thought i'd throw this one out there to see what others thought. Recently the X-Fi card that came with my Asus Crosshair III decided to die (was just a soundmax card using software emulation anyway), so I managed to find out an old Creative X-Fi fatality PCI card and popped that in but finding suitable Win 7 drivers has been a nightmare, so this leads me to my question.

What soundcard do you lovely people use?

I mainly game (Diablo 3, BF3 and CS:S) and for this I use a speedlink medusa 5.1 http://www.speedlink.com/?p=2&cat=173&pid=2691&paus=1, and a simple logitech 2.1 speaker setup for when I'm just sitting back watching a film, youtube or watching that facebook video of a relative trying to dance like John Travolta at a wedding.

Thanks in advance

[kalniel]

I'm using an Asus Xonar Xense, which is pretty much an Essence ST, and while it's great for music and films, if you're mostly playing games then an X-Fi is cheaper and more suited.

[Biscuit]

Personally i dont like Creative so i went with a Xonar aswell, but i went with the D2X and its awesome. Only real downside being the bloody floppy connector for additional power

[F022Y]

I was looking at the D2X but seems like everyone suggests the Creative recon

[kalniel]

I was looking at the D2X but seems like everyone suggests the Creative recon

Who? I'd avoid the recon!

[Biscuit]

I was looking at the D2X but seems like everyone suggests the Creative recon

Everyone are idiots

[Smudger]

Not sure, but I think I'v got the Creative Soundblaster 4. It's very old, but does the job. Might be an Audigy, actually, Soundblaster seems a bit too old...

[Rookie1986]

Creative SB Fatal1ty Recon 3D Pro, I did the the champion edition but the front I/O wouldn't fit my Corsair Obsidian 650D (no matter how hard I tried) so I sent it back for the Pro version. The main use for my Recon 3D is with my Astro A40's and MixAmp for gaming but I do have a lovely set of Mordaunt speakers that I can also use if I want to listen to music or watch movies.

Rookie

[Platinum]

Xonar Essence ST here, awesome card.

[F022Y]

Looking at the D2X as a replacement, seems to be the best middle of the road card.

[krazy_olie]

The latest xfi drivers have been quite stable of late, do they not work at all?

Xfi xtreme music working fine on win7 x64 atm

[MajorWales]

If your an audiophile, and looking at about £50-£150, you've got some ASUS Xonar's available, or you could go X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty pro/champion, if you wanted. I've got the X-Fi Champion myself, which is really great overall. the I/O drive is very nice, with push knobs for microphone and volume controls.

It's great, and can give a very wide variety in amount of bass and treble you get, or even use the X-Fi Crystalizer to enhance music (NOT GAMES!!). the X-Fi CMSS-3D is quite good as well, it's like Dolby Pro-Logic II or EAX, which gives 3d sound on any set of headphones/speakers. It also has a setting to play your voice back to you, and almost instantaneous when you speak - there's like less than 1ms delay.

There's a wide variety of settings to control, such as bass boost, how much bass boosting you want etc, up to 12dB, and you can change the cutoff frequency, to whatever you want, or as low as your headphones/speakers allow. you can have voice changers also, so you can mess about with your friends using the "scrappy kid" voice, or maybe the "Munchkin" voice to spice up reality in CoD games

If you don't change audio settings much, get the pro, and not the champion, as the I/O drive won't be needed. If you have a home theater system, you can plug this into it and use the Dolby Digital Live encoder, or the DTS Connect encoder, for the optical out on the soundcard. the DTS Connect also sort of works with headphones also, giving a nice-ish feel in music, as everything is spaced around you.

I've only had the Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Chamption and the onboard on my computer (Rubbishtek!!), so I cannot really recommend any other card, but I can tell you all about the card if you need me to.