New Soundcard Required - Recomendations required.

[deejayburnout]

Peeps

while trying to use Teamspeak last night on Mechwarrior, I couldn't get any mic sound through my Creative Audigy4 . It and after some checking with my onboard sound, it looks like the mic port is no longer working on the Audigy4.

The Audigy4 is probably the oldest part of my setup and was looking for something a bit newer.

Looking for something not to expensive as my music prduction days are over, and it more for gaming.

needs 5.1 surround and PCI-E slot ( the short ones ).

Do any of them have the ability to plug in the case audio headers as well.

Any input would be aprreciated.

Cheers

[Cheapy]

If your using headphones then the Xonar DGX (PCI-E version of the Xonar DG) for £25 is worth it. Has a inbuilt headphone amp and dolby headphone for virtual surround sound.

[kalniel]

Most soundcards have headers for front panel ports these days. What 5.1 outputs do you require? (5.1 analogue, or PCM output using dolby DTS etc.)

[deejayburnout]

Most soundcards have headers for front panel ports these days. What 5.1 outputs do you require? (5.1 analogue, or PCM output using dolby DTS etc.)

Probably just analogue at the moment, but might upgrade my speakers soon as well due to them getting old. Might look into digital stuff later on.

[kalniel]

Cool. I agree with Cheapy then, Xonar DGX is just about the cheapest option at around £20:
http://www.ebuyer.com/366208-asus-xo...yaa0q0-0uan0bz

It has analogue 5.1 but only stereo over optical/spdif.

If you are looking at digital surround then step up to the Xonar DSX which has dolby DTS:
http://www.ebuyer.com/366207-asus-xo...yaa0p0-0uan0bz

reviews:
http://techreport.com/review/23358/a...cards-reviewed

[deejayburnout]

The DGX looks good for the cash.

The shared ports put me off though.

[deejayburnout]

Looks like my Audigy4 doesn't have a broken mic jack after all, it looks like it is a driver issue.

Reinstalled the card and Windows 7 installed the generic drivers and the mic worked, however quality was poor. So i installed the correct drivers for it from the creative website and it stopped working altogether.

New card it is.

[kalniel]

Creative drivers need creative words to describe them. That was one of the reasons I was happy to go to the Xonar cards - and while they're not problem free they seem an awful lot more stable/long term than Creative ones.

[Thorsson]

Agreed; having used a Xonar card for several years now I'd never go back to Creative.