What sound card to get?
 

any idears guys
At the moment im useing my motherboards MSI P67A-GD65 on-board sound, with roccat cave 5.1 headphones
But would like to get a proper card
regards
Doc

Something from ASUS, stay clear from anything Creative has to offer.

If you can afford it: Xonar D2X

Or you can go with something from Auzentech.

+1

Xonar = good
Anything from creative = crackling sound or no sound. Terrible drivers.

i bought an asus xonar D1 recently, cant fault it for the price, with my sennheiser headphones the sound is amazing.

cheers for the advice guys
regards
Doc

I have the D2X and DG, for the minor difference between the two when gaming (on my speakers & headphones) I'd recommend the DG because it's so cheap.

Well said - if you don't have the equipment to reproduce the sound your card makes, then go with a cheaper one. TBH I am not so sure that Rocat Cave can use the whole potential of the D2X (nor any 5.1 headset by that matter).

But there is more than a minor difference between the two. ;)

+1, spent over $100 on my creative soundblast titanium fatality champion edition blah blah and the god damn thing has near constant static and the mic wont work in the from ports.

-edit- To be fair though it has a really create headphone console that allows simulated 360 directional sound by changing the volume and pitch/tone emitted from each side of the headset.

+1 on Asus Xonar.

I use the Xonar D2X, best soundcard I've ever owned.

But very pricey :rolleyes:

If you like music with a touch of audiophile in you, Xonar Essence ST(PCI) or Essence STX(PCI-E) are great soundcards. They cost the same as a D2X though lol.

Asus Xonar DS, or DG, might be the card for you. Note: They are PCI cards.

I'm using creative soundblaster products for about 17 years or so now and never ever had one single problem to complain about.
AAA sound here with an first gen X-Fi right now.

Went through DOS 5.0 to 6.1, win 95, ME, XP, Vista 32 and 64 Bit as well as Windows 7 64.
I never had a single issue with creative drivers.
Friends often had different products and I always came to the conclusion, that my soundblaster sounds better and is more accessible than any other stuff. I'm fully satisfied for ages now.

Can only recommend creative from my point of view.
Face it ;)

It is, but I got a rare bargain on Ebay for mine, it was not long after they came out and not many knew how good they were, the other bidders were easy meat :cool:

LoL cre8tive Delay I've never seen a sound card fan boy before :)

Do you work for Creative Labs? But hey ... if it works for you fair play.

lol. He does have a point though. Soundblaster was almost the default for dos games back then, it was semi plug and play. If you had a generic sound card you almost allways had to mess with IRQs and DMAs to get the damn thing to work. Ah the fun of making boot disks.

Unless you are doing some manner of sound mixing, or have $500+ speakers you are not going to notice any difference. On-board sound these days is great, and telling the difference between it and a real sound card usually requires cranking the volume up past safe hearing levels.

Are you hearing some manner of static or distortion? Or is there some cash burning a hole in your pocket?

Oh I agree, I go back to DOS 5 as well, owned quite a few Sounblaster's in my time, under this very desk is an old P200 with a Matrox card and an original 3DFX mk 1 card I've put together for nostalgia with DOS 6.22 on it as an OS, folk these days have no idea of the hassle we had back then, trying to free up enough conventional memory to run Strike Commander and such like, fun though.

Much as Creative have had some good cards, they have made some garbage too, also there was that case where they lost a lot of customers when they tried to stop a third party guy making free drivers for Audigy's and such like that Creative refused to carry on supporting for Vista I think it was, they backed down on that one, they had to.

I don't think I'd ever support any bit of silicon to the hilt, as soon as I see something better I'll go for it, no brand loyalty here :)

The biggest advantage of a sound card is that you can pair it with good set of headphones = cheapest way to have a good sound, as some audiophiles would say.

Other than that, the statement is true. If you have crappy speakers / amp (particularly if you use any kind of PC speakers) investing in a sound card is not going to help much. Xonar DG/DS is the best option then.


Essence is an under priced product, for what it offers IMO. The only downside is that after trying your MP3's with this - you will be forced to switch to FLAC. :)


Be careful of that - double check with your MBO.

xFi Extreme Gamer in my rig (Creative), superb card.

as for my nick: this is only a coincidence and has got nothing to do with creative labs :)

But you are right, I'm a fanboy to put it that way. But my mood could easily change if I would run into problems with creative labs sometime. My money will always be invested properly, even if that means to change my brand 8)
--
As to onboard sound: unless you have a decent soundprocessor on your mainboard, never go with onboard sound. The sound might be ok nowadys but the performance isn't. Your CPU has got to process sound here.
Using a soundcard frees ur CPU and that way increases your fps :)
Also, a onboard soundcard is most likely not capable of bringing you complex sound effects or precise surrond positioning.

Ive had a SBLive with the breakout front console for about 5 years now and I'll never buy a Soundblaster product again.

Between the crappy drivers, constant crackling, and complete disregard by support I'm done with them.

People still buy sound cards??? Most on board should be fine.

Save your money and put it towards something else like ram or videocard

Sorry for quoting myself but it just fits:

@Oldschool61:

Agreed, I've always leaned towards performance PC builds with high end motherboards, but even the best of them with on-board sound do not compare to a dedicated quality sound-card that does its own processing and leaves the CPU to do the work on the sim ... it always amazes me how some guys will spend thousands on a PC build but cut corners in this area ... one of my friends did exactly this, I asked him why he never pushed the boat and got a decent sound card and speakers too, he said he'd rather spend that money on neon lights multi colour fans and cathodes to light the inside of the PC, I just said "Oh" ... never told him it looked like a Circus for fear of hurting his feelings LoL. he's now getting an expensive custom paint job on its case done ... each to their own I guess.

Creative XiFi external USB
plus eDimension ForceFeedBack headphones,no contest
best gaming experience ive had so far
:):):):)

This isnt completely true. If you use software "rendering" it is but most onboard sound now is a chip just like on yopur PCI card so in reality your not losing fps. The only thing is a difference in quality and audio features from the sound chip. The term onboard sound refers to a sound processing chip just like your add in card but usually of lower quality, but still not CPU intensive. Several years ago that idea may have held true but not so much today.

The difference between onboard and dedicated SC is narrower than it was years ago but the difference is still night and day. Why anyone would pay hundreds of dollars/pounds for a new rig and then use onboard SC is beyond me. "It's good enough" is the usual reply, but anyone who has tried a good SC compared to onboard usually never goes back to onboard.

I am using a Xonar DX, the positional audio and range of sounds from it compared to onboard is amazing. See this review from a few years ag o for the Xonar DX, the listening tests mostly apply to music but I found the same for games. For example in my tests on Rise of Flight the onboard sound was tinny and lacked range compared to the Xonar DX.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14500/6

I went from the Auzen X-Fi Prelude to the Essence ST since music and movies are just as important as gaming to me, and I gotta say that the details and quality of the Essence ST is far superior to the Prelude. I don't get the same dynamics in gaming, because the Essence ST don't have EAX etc. but still, it's the best buy I've made in regards of audio.

You still use motherboard bandwidth. Yes, you have a separate chip for processing audio but in 99% of all motherboards it's basically just one chip, no other components like powersource through extra caps etc. That's why soundcards sound better than onboard. They are designed to provide good audio, nothing else. Take a look at the new Gigabyte X58 Assassin motherboard, notice how much extra crap is on there for soundquality/features, and see how much extra space it takes to process/provide good sound frequencies.

It is night and day, even on crappy speakers. I used to run my sound on a couple of Logitech Z-10's. It doesn't get much more plastic than those and still I noticed lots of differences and more clear sound from them when I hooked up a Prelude, instead of using the "7.1" onboard. But the better speakers you have, more easily can you discover noise. People disputing that has their ears full of wax or reduced hearing.

Been looking this up on net and most info says with multicore cpu's and fast processors of today any drop from onboard sound is irrelevant.

Sources?

These kind of arguments are futile though, for every link you find to support what you say a contrary link can be found.

At the end of the day the proof is in the listening and unless one is tone deaf the difference are there.

But no offence, folk will do what they do and want to justify what they do, so long as we are each happy with our route that's all that matters.

IMHO of course :)

Very true, but it isn't FPS you buy a £50 soundcard for is it?

Unless an individual (not necessarily you) has a decent soundcard to hear the difference their opinion on this matter is worthless. I knew a few people who said their onboard sound was good enough for games and they are perfectly correct, it is good enough in that it does make sounds. The thing is that with a dedicated soundcard it makes much better, richer and clearer sounds with much better quality. I have tried my onboard sound on my ASUS P6X58D-E motherboard, it does not compare to the Xonar DX in either quality or range of sounds, and that is using the same speakers for both tests.

Ok, we get it. You don't see the need for having a soundcard because a possible loss in FPS would be minimal.... You are missing the main point of using one though.