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A good replacement for Soundstorm

S

Stile

n00b
Joined
Nov 19, 2004
Messages
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I have an Asus AVN8X-Deluxe motherboard and have enjoyed it for quite a while. I recently decided to upgrade to an Athlon 64 system and can't decide what I need. Audio is important to me, as I like to have DivX stuff played back in 5.1 I have this computer hooked up to a Kenwood reciever, and an Infocus X1 projector. I use the system primarily for watching movies, playing Mp3's and some light gaming. What is the best sound card I can get to replace my soundstorm? I haven't as of yet bought any new equipment, I was hoping that the Nforce 4 would have soundstorm again, are there any onboard solutions that will do what I need? Thanks.
 
It seems like sound is your main concern, so go with the M-Audio revoloution. You also couldnt go wrong with an audigy 2...less of a resource hog if you want to do gaming.
 
Will the M-Audio solution allow me to contiue playing everything in 5.1 while using SPDIF out? I use the digital coax out on the motherboard as of now.
 
Stile said:
Will the M-Audio solution allow me to contiue playing everything in 5.1 while using SPDIF out? I use the digital coax out on the motherboard as of now.
Click to expand...

NONE.
 
Does your receiver have 6-channel RCA inputs? If so, invest in some good quality analog 1/8" stereo to RCA Y-cables and get a Revo.

There's nothing else on the market that can encode your content to Dolby Digital 5.1, you'll have to go analog and let your soundcard do the audio processing.
 
Stile said:
Will the M-Audio solution allow me to contiue playing everything in 5.1 while using SPDIF out? I use the digital coax out on the motherboard as of now.
Click to expand...

Only Soundstorm currently offers 5.1 over SPDIF.
 
Bah, is there anything coming out eventually that will offer similar features to soundstorm? My reciever is rather cheap and it doesn't have the RCA inputs for 6 channel. So I guess I am S.O.L. on this one. Maybe I will leave this system until something else comes out. Thanks for all of the help.
 
DVDs are already encoded in 5.1. Can't you just pass the 5.1 encoded stream through to the SPDIF? If not, what other point is there to the SPDIF out? You just can't encode something that is not already encoded in the first place, ie. games. If you can find a receiver with 6 RCA inputs, you'd be able to switch between RCA and SPDIF on the receiver depending on if you are playing games or movies.
 
Stile said:
I like to have DivX stuff played back in 5.1
Click to expand...

Those rarely have AC-3 surround tracks. It's usually stereo. In that case, you'd end up using some matrixing algorithm along the way anyhow. You can feed the receiver a stereo PCM signal from some sort of S/PDIF output and use the receiver's onboard (PLII?) matrixing, or you use multichannel analog hookups some after some software algorithm in your video player or soundcard drivers.
 
What is your budget? Although it isn't the newest, if you have the money, I'd be tempted to go with a Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/terratecdmx6fire/

If that's out of your price-range, then what you get depends on what you do most. For home theater, I'd probably go with an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 or if you want the cheap version, the Chaintech AV710. If you want to game, the Audigy 2 is your best bet, as it has Directsound hardware acceleration so less load is placed on the CPU while gaming. The Audigy 2 sounds good, but the VIA Envy24 sound cards have a reputation for quality sound that goes above and beyond.

The reason I like the Terratec is not only how it is set up, but it could potentially be the best of both worlds. Most Envy24 based sound cards use a variation of the Envy24HT, which lacks Directsound hardware acceleration. Apparently, the first Envy24 chips (without letters) had this feature, and the DMX 6Fire is one of the few cards on the market using this higher-end more professional chip.

Note: Terratec has replaced this card with the Terratec Aureon 7.1 "Universe" card, which upgrades it to 7.1 channel sound. I couldn't get more data, but I'd guess the new card has a variant of the VIA Envy24HT audio chip.
 
My budget is $800 to replace the board, chip and video card. I was hoping to find an onboard solution that was comparable to soundstorm, or to get an add on card that would do something similar. DVDs I am not worried about on this system, I use an external DVD player for that, its stuff that isn't encoded in 5.1 that I have a problem with. I might end up looking for a reciever that supports 5 channel stereo, I just like to have sound coming from all the speakers when listening to mp3's and and unencoded video. I have found that PLII sounds washed out compared to the 5.1 output that my onboard solution allows.
 
I hadn't thought it about all that much. As I said I was hoping for an onboard solution. I guess for a stand alone card I wouldn't really want to go more than $100.
 
The quality of speakers is much, much more important than the quality of your soundcard. What sort of speakers do you currently have? How much would you allocate to upgrading them?
 
The system I am running this off of is a Kenwood HTB 506 http://www.nextgenelectronics.com/htb506.shtml

I think it sounds pretty good, before I was using a Klipsch pro media 4.1. I am really not concerned with having anything better in the way of sould quality, honestly I can't tell the difference well enough for it to affect my decision, I just want to be able to have my computer tied in with all of my other stuff. A this point one of my friends is getting rid on a Harmon Kardon reciever. It supports 5 channel stereo, which will probably be good enough for me, I only really want the discrete channels on DVDs, I want my music on the other hand to be simply played out of all the speakers at the same time, and have it sound pretty good. Thank you all for you help.
 
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