Which soundcard

[Porkie]

Well, we have had the which headphones thread, so how about the which soundcard thread.

I am looking to get a new one, but i am unsure which one to go for.

Ideally it needs to have digital out and in, though out would do. Oh, and it has to be reasonably priced, this counts out the Audidgy Platinum.

Cheers guys. :)

[Say_Ten]

You want digital in and out at a reasonable price? Good luck!

[KermitTheFrag]

Forget anything Creative (incl SBlive). At best they are cons (Audigy) with crap drivers, broken digital IO and are VERY noisy (even the audigy which lies about its noise floor at -104dB) with crap connectors (a so called pro card with 3.5 jacks - huh!).

Three options:-

Hercules Fortissimo 2 ... optical in/out. Good chipset, not too noisy. Does EAX, A3D. Wishy has my old one. I liked it, he likes it ;) ... about £50 new retail. http://www.hercules.com/

Personally, I swear by M-Audio cards. They dont have A3D, EAX or even speaker/headphone outs but they're the nicest sounding cards out there.

M-Audio DIO 2448 ... good home hifi/digital card, but you need a headphone amp/hifi to use it:-

http://www.m-audio.com/products/m-audio/dio2448.php

~ £80

[TelexStar]

actually i'm in the market for a new soundcard - that Hercules one sounds quite nice actually!

U say it has optical in/out does this mean that i can record directly to minidisc from my PC?

[KermitTheFrag]

yeah it'll do that no problems. They are half decent cards (well for consumer ones!)

[Spanky]

Yeah i got the Hercules one and its pretty cool, I got mine hooked upto a huge amp and the sound quality is very good (I had onboard sound before!!)

Kustom PC's are doing them for £35 including VAT and Delivery

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/product.php?subcat=30

[Tsung]

at best they are cons (Audigy) with crap drivers,

Yes I made the mistake of buying the Audigy card. Dear o Dear, the software installs and takes over your machine. Everytime you start windows, a SB Audigy logo with with the most annoying "ring" tone appears/is played. The "ring tone" is more annoying that the Pentium one!!. Can you get rid of it??? No way.. God knows where they hid that feature, in the end I reinstalled my pc, put my old sblive back in, and gave the Audigy card to my parents.

* Side note.. The software that came with the card is also crap, its disfuntional at best, even simple things like playing CD can cause it to totally lock up ur pc..

My Advice avoid Audigy.. ^ go with one of the others :)

[Bowser]

I've been using my sblive 1024 card for ages now. Altough people me diss them for crashing thier systems i've never had any trouble with them at all. As long as you've got up to date drivers for your o/s it will run like a charm in my view.
I have looked at the Hurcules cards and i did like what i saw but i can't warrent a reason to change it from mine....yet.

[Mingtea]

Originally posted by *Tsunami*


Yes I made the mistake of buying the Audigy card. Dear o Dear, the software installs and takes over your machine. Everytime you start windows, a SB Audigy logo with with the most annoying "ring" tone appears/is played. The "ring tone" is more annoying that the Pentium one!!. Can you get rid of it??? No way.. God knows where they hid that feature, in the end I reinstalled my pc, put my old sblive back in, and gave the Audigy card to my parents.



do you not read when you install stuff? it so blatentley says "install drivers only"

[werewolf]

i've been using the Live series of cards for nearly 3 years now (i have one of the original "Live Value" series cards here that i used when building my k6-2 back in March 99), never had a serious problem with any of the them (i've now got 3 of them in our machines).

[Big Giant Head]

I had a live 1024 and it locked my machine at random, even after me and tguyver spent nearly an entire day at a stratlan getting all the irqs set up properly (damn those legacy drivers etc)

put a SB 16 ISA in and it worked fine, now running an SB 5.1 card also fine

[werewolf]

weird

the SB Live 5.1 and the SB Live value are essentually the same card.

[Big Giant Head]

different mobo now admitedly

the 1024 is still lying around here somewhere but frankly I can't be arsed to try it again

also the 5.1 doesn't use liveware ;)

[KermitTheFrag]

Liveware ... now thats a crock of **** ;)

Losing my SoundBlaster was the best thing I EVER did.

I will admit that they stopped making good cards after the AWE64 Gold. That card did, and still does rock even though its ISA PnP.

[m00]

Yeah... I accidentally gave mine away *doh* (Ed: AWE64)
My SB Live seems to work OK, but I can hear the odd crackle etc.
I can live with it, but I wouldn't want to be doing any audio recording/editing with it.

[Porkie]

Cool, thanks for the replies. :) The hercules sounds like the kind of thing i am looking for.

I personally havent had a problem with my SB Live, but i really need the optical in / out for my minidisc.

[Jez_Gafys]

Id would kind of have to agree the AWE64 was one of there best creations this was mostly down to midi. Back in them days the creative General midi was suberb and very true to live. The the Lives came out and the midi quality was lost what a shame :(

But saying that I like the Lives mine works fine, had it for yonks and sound is very crisp, etc, etc. Oh and I wouldnt attept to use any other card then a creative one because im still up on pure dos and some of these other cards are really Windows only. Dont forget the sb is still the soundcard standard!

[KermitTheFrag]

ewww DOS!!!

/me pukes....

MME/ASIO is really the standard these days. SB's emulation was and still is proprietry

[KasiuS]

Just had a look at thoose Hercules GameSurrond Fortissimo II quite an impressive bit of kit for only £35 with 2 digital out does it support dts and 5.1 or would that be asking to much :confused:

[KermitTheFrag]

The hardware will support it (its a box standard crystal codec) - dont know about the drivers.

[Tsung]

do you not read when you install stuff? it so blatentley says "install drivers only"

Yes I did read it, and yes I have had it installed "drivers only". That doesn't give creative an excuse to write sloppy software, does it?. If I had a choice of the soundcard without the sloppy software for £10 less I'd bought that one.

Also, why creative feels the need to remind me what soundcard I have installed everytime I start my machine is a mystery. I've already bought the card, no need to keep reminding me.

[Bowser]

Originally posted by *Tsunami*


Yes I did read it, and yes I have had it installed "drivers only". That doesn't give creative an excuse to write sloppy software, does it?. If I had a choice of the soundcard without the sloppy software for £10 less I'd bought that one.

Also, why creative feels the need to remind me what soundcard I have installed everytime I start my machine is a mystery. I've already bought the card, no need to keep reminding me.

Download the drivers off the net and you lose all the extra bulls*it you get on the disc.

[KermitTheFrag]

err the drivers still suck though.

The only good drivers for the SBlive were the EMU ones and they cost money (!).

[Say_Ten]

I've got an SB Live! and I don't have that crappy popup, check your startup folder and the registry for it. Should be able to remove it without too much effort it is some crap loading. Anyway, the Sound Blaster really are ****e but they're compatible, which is the problem, take a look at the frequency respsonse ffs.

[KermitTheFrag]

what the f*ck!!!!!!!!! I've not seen ANYTHING that bad...

is that the D->A output I assume ?

[Porkie]

I think i might go for one of those hercules things, but what the hell is this supposed to be exactly.

http://www.newq.com/products/newq3379.asp

[m00]

EQ/effects box, I think...

[KermitTheFrag]

yes pretty much. It looks nice, but it trashes the sound quality even more. I wouldnt touch one in a million years!

It's got a DSP that allows you to do the effects that crappy cheap kenwood hifis and the like use. Like super-bass and all that poo.

What a load of arse (!).

[Say_Ten]

Originally posted by KermitTheFrag
what the f*ck!!!!!!!!! I've not seen ANYTHING that bad...

is that the D->A output I assume ?

You are correct.

[KermitTheFrag]

all i can say is "ouch".

[Zenith]

Originally posted by Say_Ten
I've got an SB Live! and I don't have that crappy popup, check your startup folder and the registry for it. Should be able to remove it without too much effort it is some crap loading. Anyway, the Sound Blaster really are ****e but they're compatible, which is the problem, take a look at the frequency respsonse ffs.

Could you explain that graph to the non-audiophile please? :)

[wishy]

I like the fortissimo. aint used the opticals at all yet. But there you go, its there. I highly recommended it. Lots of places sell the, the price is reasonable, the quality is good.

[wishy]

(forgot to mention)
Only slight niggle is the breakout cable for audio out, which i'll probobly loose at a lan one of these days

[Bowser]

I'll stick with me 1024. Theres no extra external cables (That i will loose) on it :)

[wishy]

Just ****e compatability with VIA boards

[Hitori]

im quite happy with my ac97 onboard sound, does what i want it to do

then again i havent heard any high-quality sound, my other computers having sb 128 pci (uttr ****e) and sb 16 isa (not bad)

cork

[Bowser]

Originally posted by wishy
Just ****e compatability with VIA boards

Mines in a Abit KT7a mobo with via chipset. Still runs fine.

[KermitTheFrag]

as long as you dont do huge disk transfers...

btw im losing my AMD/VIA ... Intel Tualatin it is :)

[Bowser]

Originally posted by KermitTheFrag
as long as you dont do huge disk transfers...

I don't have trouble there either, any more bugs i need to know about that don't happen on my system?

[werewolf]

Originally posted by KermitTheFrag
as long as you dont do huge disk transfers...

btw im losing my AMD/VIA ... Intel Tualatin it is :)


would you call 20gig huge? ;)

i've yet to encounter 99% of the problems people have reported with the SB lives (i've got 3 machines with KT7 and KT7A's here that all have SB Lives in them)

[Jez_Gafys]

Id have to admit that Ive had two sblives and never really had any problems I use a KT7233a bollox thing with via rubbish, and big scsi drives and ide drives, etc etc and ive never had problems with file transfers, driver compatabiltys, slowdowns,. lockups, hanging, etc, etc. As far as im concerned creative make good cards, as this is from usage over the years ive never had anything different becuase theyve never caused me problems

[KermitTheFrag]

You guys just must have been lucky. SBlive was a bitch in any PC i poked it in from day 1. I know tons of people who just cant get them to behave.

Plus having tasted the sweet honey of Delta cards, there is no comparison.

[Say_Ten]

Originally posted by Zenith


Could you explain that graph to the non-audiophile please? :)

Yes, as you move up the audio frequency range the output of the sound card is +-6dBa. 3dBa is equivalent to a doubling/halving of power and is quite noticable by the human ear so without a doubt you'll notice the differences here. If you run a sweep up the octaves you'll hear the volume of the output going up and down. So when you're playing games/listening to music the output is quite severly distorted, not in the getting too loud for the system kind of way.

[Dizzie]

I'd stick with the Gamefortissimo II soundcard. Good for games and has digital connections for the minidisc. Only £30 ish to you my friend.

Plus you can switch between speakers and headphones without reconnecting everything behind your case.

[Bowser]

Originally posted by [e38.Dizzie]
I'd stick with the Gamefortissimo II soundcard. Good for games and has digital connections for the minidisc. Only £30 ish to you my friend.

Plus you can switch between speakers and headphones without reconnecting everything behind your case.

You can with the SBlive 1024 my friend. Just need the drivers from creative web site not what come with WinXP. To activate the 2nd port. :)

[KermitTheFrag]

yes but the sblive sucks (!) :p:

[Bowser]

But to your beliefs kerm my pc components should of crashed and burned by now.
Each to thier own opinion.

[Dizzie]

Originally posted by KermitTheFrag
yes but the sblive sucks (!) :p:

you put that well kermit :D

[KermitTheFrag]

Originally posted by Bowser
But to your beliefs kerm my pc components should of crashed and burned by now.
Each to thier own opinion.

No but its a fact that the SBlive sucks ... see Say_Ten's frequency response graph above.

[Dizzie]

If you really wanted to make a sucky PC you could have an Intel chip & a SBlive Sound card. No offence intended.

[KermitTheFrag]

nah Athlon + SB = death (j/k) ;)

I'm moving back to Intel platform after a crap load of trouble with pro audio cards and VIA based chipsets. The Intel i815ep chipset + a pentium III is also the only one way I've had a machine that is 100% dependable (ie I physically know that it's never going to crash). Thats more important than raw power IMHO.

[Bowser]

1.4 athlons to be exact.

1.4 with anything and it will cause nothing but trouble dunno if its the via boards, sound card or running winxp on it. there were something it didn't like.

I changed to a 1.333 (Not much diif in speed) and all my troubles went away.
My system only played up when i install vertual cd 4 on it and that had something to do with it conficting with my zip250 and raid card. I've took it off now i'll have to make do with the cds.

[KermitTheFrag]

nah i tried the cards with someone's 1.2 (which i chipped the core - oops but it still works ok ;) ). It didnt work with 1.2 either.

The card IRQ rate and bandwidth is simply too much for the poorly specced and designed VIA bridges to handle. Thats the problem. Also bus latency is terrible and the BIOS settings dont actually appear to effect it.

VIA haven't quite got an overall clue about the PCI standard yet... neither have creative which as you can imagine aint gonna be good.

[Big Giant Head]

my 1024 didn't work on my old athlon 850 slotA on an AMD760 board

let alone a via :)

[KermitTheFrag]

no comment... ;) nothing worked on those slot a boards!

[Say_Ten]

He he, I've got an Athlon 900 running on a Asus A7V133a, which has a VIA chipset, with an original SB Live! Value. Never had a problem with it at all. That doesn't take away the fact the frequency response is shocking though :(

[KermitTheFrag]

/me bows before Say_ten.

I'll lend you my delta card. if you can get that working properly in an AMD box I'd be VERY surprised!!