Creative Sound Blaster Xtreme-FI Music and Live Cards

I have these two cards from previous builds. Are these better then my onboard sound?

My motherboard is a Gigabyte gaming 7. I am planing on restoring my older build and using one of these cards for it. The older built is with a Abit NF-7 mb, AMD Athlon XP 2400M cpu and will probably install Linux on it. Not sure what I plan on using it for but still, was a good MB at the time, shame that they are no longer around.

The live cards are ancient - time for the trash. The X-Fi models however are all supported with current drivers, and will still be better than your onboard in most cases.

http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=126331

XtremeMusic would be pretty good. Modded XtremeMusic is even better!
http://www.head-fi.org/t/589078/almis-x-fi-mod-hotrodding-sound-blaster-x-fi-models
http://www.head-fi.org/t/226975/hotrodding-the-x-fi-a-laymans-guide-no-56k

Still using a whole bunch of modded XtremeMusics and Titanium Fatal1ty Pros in every rig

Great to hear my card is still good after all these years. Thanks for the links, first I ever hear that it can be improved , will look into it.

Well unfortunately this card is not made for my motherboard. Will look into if an audio card would really be better then what is on the board.

Bummer, i'm guessing that it's a traditional PCI card and that your board only has newer PCI-E slots?

In regards to a sound card being "better" than your onboard, there are two main variables. The #1 thing that will impact your sound quality is your DAC, where the actual digital to analog conversion takes place and the analog signal is actually created. The 2nd thing is any features on the card that you might have use for. If you are not looking for any features, there are plenty of standalone DACs available these days that you can plug in directly via USB and use as an external soundcard. In many cases you can also run traditional Coax or Optical digital output from your onboard or soundcard into the DAC, which would still allow you to use the features of your soundcard or onboard (minus the built-in DAC of course) if you wanted to. If you have a receiver that you use, you can usually run digital into the receiver and use the DAC in the receiver.

If you just want output, and have the money to spend on expensive toys, you could take a look at iFi USB DACs:

https://www.amazon.com/iFi-Micro-iD...=UTF8&qid=1485031885&sr=1-84&keywords=usb+dac

https://www.amazon.com/iFi-Micro-iD...rd_wg=L1lqY&psc=1&refRID=ZA24NF69XJ1MZK4D97XR

If you want something cheaper there's FiiO:

https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-E10K-He...e=UTF8&qid=1485031595&sr=1-2&keywords=usb+dac

Finally, the Creative external Sound Blaster or X-Fi supposedly aren't all that bad either.

Marzoom said:

Well unfortunately this card is not made for my motherboard. Will look into if an audio card would really be better then what is on the board.

Click to expand...

Is your Xtreme X-Fi the PCI-E version?

Depending on what you are doing on the NF7 board you might want to use the onboard sound, I personally wouldn't put any money into an AGP-based system.

If the onboard audio has poor/non-existent Linux support then the Live might be more attractive - it may be old but so is an Athlon-XP, you might actually have better compatibility as they are contemporaries.

Or hell, just get a good, used HT receiver with S/PDIF or HDMI for cheap. You should be able to pick one up all day on Craigslist for ~$30 - $50.
That's what I did at the office using my old Onkyo SR606 to drive my Denon D600s - overkill, but f*ck it

^ Are those 4:3 monitors?

Yup. 3x HP ZR2440W + 2x Dell 2007FP - 1200p baby

Also oops - noticed that the pic above is a little outdated.

Marzoom said:

Well unfortunately this card is not made for my motherboard. Will look into if an audio card would really be better then what is on the board.

Click to expand...

Unless you have a really high-end motherboard (and sometimes not even then), the Recon3D SoundCore-driven cards will be the best of all (in the following order - Z series, Recon 3D series, X-Fi series) all in PCI-Express.
All are driven by the same Recon3D SoundCore chipset - apparently, Creative is STILL up to tricks, by using custom detection routines in the drivers (as they did with the original X-Fi before - so you can't use Z drivers with the non-Z-branded Recon3D it replaced).
And this is with at-least midrange 2.1 speakers (such as the 2.1s from Logitech or even Cambridge AKA Creative - let alone Klipsch).
An old quote (which I heard first in this subforum) still holds up - "Friends do NOT let friends get stuck with onboard audio - unless they drive Apple hardware."