Best Non creative soundcard

M

Manaknight

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
Messages
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hey all, I'm sick of terrible support and constant crashing from both my audigy 2 and x-fi cards on my system. Normally i just work through this stuff but it seems i'm not alone and everyone is pointing fingers for the blame (creative blames mobo's who blame nvidia who blame creative etc etc), so i'm done and want to move away from their cards altogether. Which would be the way to go for a heavy gaming light audiophile, I know of turtle beach cards but never used one myself (in fact i've been straight soundblaster since the pro days).

Just not sure where to go for quality hardware sound that works with a DFI ultra-D and 7900gt. I'd like to be able to enjoy games like eq2, wow, oblivion and others without doing the sound loop hardlock over and over again

any ideas would be excellent
 
This is strange how I see people site incompatibilities, but I've never had any problems with my DFI Ultra-D and X-Fi... ever (although I am using an X1900XT and get paranoid and reformat the moment something weird goes wrong with my sytem). I don't think I've ever had a hard-lock on this system. Regardless, I think you might be interested in Auzentech cards, but they tend to use more CPU processing power than Creative's cards.

http://www.auzentech.com/

However, I heard that their latest card with lots of fun features will be released very soon and available mid-October at retailers. Check it out here:

http://www.auzentech.com/images/x-meridian/index.htm

DDL will allow for 5.1 encoding / output through digital (coax and optical, it looks like both now), which is what really interests me in these cards. I like the idea of one optical cable to rule all my sounds from games, instead of 3 analog. This is already present on their X-Plosion card, but I can wait another month and a half to see how their latest card measures up.
 
I have both X-Fi and TB Santa Cruz, also had Audigy2, and luckily Creative cards have been fine for me. SB Live had issues though. I would also say look at the Auzentech cards too as I have heard good things about them. I would say the M-Audio Revolution but they neglected to add 3D hardware acceleration so for a gamer it's not such a good choice.
 
appreciating the ideas, mucking around to make the damn thing work now started getting me creative driver bsod's, so i'm pretty set in purging soundblasters from my system.

any more insight is great, i wont be able to upgrade until the other sb cards are sold
 
I must say that other than a pretty red color, the Bluegears card looks no different than other cards on the market, such as...

http://www.club-3d.nl/productshow_zaptv.php?ordercode=CMS-THDTS&show=&filter=&p=1_full

http://www.sondigo.com/inferno

These are the same guys who claimed in the past to be the manufacturers or developers of the X-Mystique, when they were just distributors for HDA -- now Auzentech -- the true developer of the card. So now they claim to be have a unique sound card that looks to be the same generic design everyone else is using (other than the color, which does NOT improve sound no matter how long you stare at it).

The only original design forthcoming that I can see is the one from Auzentech, a company that really does design its own soundcards--and to great affect, based on the X-Plosion I currently own.

They have a link to specs on the left margin of their index page..
http://www.auzentech.com/
 
You do realize those cards do not have native 44.1 KHz bit rate modes...they up convert to 48 KHz.

(seems to be a picky topic with some)
 
But the Bluegears b-Enspirer supports upto 24-bit/192KHz and 120dB and dolby headphone and dolby pro-logix IIx and so on which the others don't have. With 109.99, I think it is a good deal.
 
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