audio options

[exothermic]

This weekend I'm planning on buying a new set of heaphones (either the audio technica ATH-AD700's or the ATH-AD500's) and I've decided to also upgrade my pc's sound. Currently using a Realtek ALC889A built into my mobo, it sounds alright for the most part but I have noticed some static and distortion. I fear this will be amplified when I move to a nice set of headphones. I've been looking at several options for sound cards but I'm not sure which I should go for. I game quite a bit but not to the point where I would sacrifice sound quality for hardware acceleration. Btw I'm running Vista 64 with 4gigs of ram.

Choice #1 is the Auzentech Prelude. I like this card because it offers hardware acceleration, EAX HD and from the reviews it also offers great sound quality but the fact that it is constantly out of stock and cost upwards of $200usd has me kinda turned off.

Choice #2 is the HT Omega Claro. Seems like it has great sound quality from the reviews and it's 40-50 bucks cheaper than the Prelude. I'm kinda worried about Vista 64 support for this card.

Choice #3 is the ASUS Xonar D2 7.1 reviews seem positive but again I have no idea what the vista driver support is.

Choice #4 pick up a cheap (under $200usd reciever ) and use the S/PDIF out on my mobo for better sound quality.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[rhansen5_99]

get in on one of the cheap x-fi deals in the hot deals 50 bucks then if you have some mod skill you can hotrod the x-fi to be equivilent to the azentech x-fi card (upgraded opamps and voltage cap) http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=229350
link for the mods
found 50 shipped xtreme music as ascendtec.us

If you get an el cheapo 5 channel reciever you can have all your audio processing there frys.com has the onkyo xxxx for 99 sometimes