• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

m-audio or wait for Audigy 3?

X

Xerak

n00b
Joined
Apr 23, 2002
Messages
38
I plan on buying a new soundcard soon to compliment my new headphones.
So far I am looking at the m-audio delta or audiophile 2496 but I do play some games so I’m not too sure about them. I don’t give a toss about 3d audio/EAX etc, so long as my games have decent stereo sound I’m happy. What I’m worried about it that the m-audio cards may put a lot of pressure on the CPU. Can anyone confirm that the m-audio cards will be fine for playing games with basic stereo sound?
Does anyone have any idea of how much extra load they will put on the CPU?

I don’t like how the Audigy 2 series sounds for music playback so before I go out and buy an m-audio card I was wondering if anyone has any information of when Creative is releasing the successor the Audigy 2 Series?. I mean Creative must release a card with decent sound quality sooner or later.
 
The Audigy 2 ZS has been out for about five months now. Creative Labs is normally on an annual release cycle, so if you want to wait for the successor to their current lineup, then you will probably have to wait until September/October.

If all you care about is stereo sound, then probably the M-Audio would suit you better now. Calulating 2-channel audio shouldn't be too hard to do, regardless of the sound card you use.
 
Will the new pci standard (pci-xpress is it?) make any difference to future sound cards in terms of sound quality?
 
Originally posted by Xerak
Will the new pci standard (pci-xpress is it?) make any difference to future sound cards in terms of sound quality?
Click to expand...

Don't think so. It may allow for "quicker" onboard sound processors and other such things to take more load off of the CPU.

Only thing that holds back sound quality on sound cards is the components and circuitry. Mod an Audigy 2 or Revo 7.1, throw on some beefier caps and better opamps. I had that done to my Revo (Some Panasonics and ELNA caps, and upgraded all the opamps to Analog Devices AD8620s).

If only I could figure out how to change the buffers properly since rear channel audio is actually clearer on the Revo than the front/center.
 
Originally posted by Xerak
So far I am looking at the m-audio delta or audiophile 2496 but I do play some games so I’m not too sure about them. I don’t give a toss about 3d audio/EAX etc, so long as my games have decent stereo sound I’m happy. What I’m worried about it that the m-audio cards may put a lot of pressure on the CPU. Can anyone confirm that the m-audio cards will be fine for playing games with basic stereo sound?
Does anyone have any idea of how much extra load they will put on the CPU?
Click to expand...
I suggest the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 instead. It may be a "consumer" level card (M-Audio's words), but it has newer and better DACs than the older M-Audio cards you mentioned. Being the newest PCI based product from M-Audio, it also potentially has the best board design of M-Audio's history of products. Overall, it seems that the Revolution 7.1 is your best bet.

The only reason why the Revolution 7.1 is a drag on the CPU is because it lacks hardware acceleration of popular 3D audio algorithms/reverbs. When these features are enabled, the computer has no choice but to load the CPU with these calculations. Simply disable these features, and there is no performance hit. Besides, you didn't seem all that interested in them anyways.
Originally posted by Xerak
Will the new pci standard (pci-xpress is it?) make any difference to future sound cards in terms of sound quality?
Click to expand...
No, PCI has more than enough bandwidth to handle the audio throughput of audio standards of today and into the foreseeable future. Take, for instance, 24-bit, 192 kHz, 8-channel (7.1) sound. It has an bitrate of 4.608 MB/s. Compare this to the bandwidth ceiling of "standard" 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI, which is 132 MB/s.
 
Originally posted by keLston
If only I could figure out how to change the buffers properly since rear channel audio is actually clearer on the Revo than the front/center.
Click to expand...
That's impossible, or at least placebo effect. The front left and right are handled by a 2-channel DAC, but the center channel, along with the rears and side channels are handled by a 6-channel DAC with different specs. The point here is that the front center is not tied to the front left and right like you would want to think.
 
The wait might be shorter than anyone anticipated. Before they launched thier last line the ZS, most stores were starting to rebate or heavily discount the previous model. From the audigy platinum on down. In last weeks paper compusa had a $100 rebate on the zs platinum. With instore rebates bringing down the platinum zs down to ~110. Maybe they overpurchased the line, but it seems suspicious to me.
 
In case you missed it E-MU just released a new card so the foundation is already there for Creative to base a new card on.
http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?product=2211&category=754&maincategory=754&nav=spec
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a new Creative card. Or any other piece of Computer hardware. Once you start doing that it never ends
On second thought if they ever implemented half of the features that E-MU card has into one of there consumer level cards...... the competition would be in serious trouble
 
I suggest the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 instead. It may be a "consumer" level card (M-Audio's words), but it has newer and better DACs than the older M-Audio cards you mentioned. Being the newest PCI based product from M-Audio, it also potentially has the best board design of M-Audio's history of products.
Click to expand...
The delta series and the Revo has pretty much the same core and DAC. The core on the revo is pretty much just a consumer level envy24 with less input options and the DAC with an updated samply rate. Keep in mind that the envy24ht is no where near as flexible as the envy24, hance the consumer level.

But the two cards shouldn't even sound different unless you're running 196kHz. Anyways, M-audio's delta series isn't even up to date with today’s pro-cards. It's more of a high-end consumer music/ht card or DJ's on a budget.
 
But then again, why even consider the more expensive M-Audio soundcards if they don't have a sound quality advantage but cost more? Sure, the higher end M-Audio cards have more features and I/O possibilities, but these features aren't any more appealing to someone who just wants a nice soundcard to complement his headphones.
 
Pro-cards are mainly used for recording. Which the delta series wins hands down over revo. Someone that just wants to drive there headphones or computer speaker is better off using consumer market cards, that's where revo comes in.
 
How long before a sound card comes out that has the capability of sending audio over i.Link (IEEE-1394)? I've seen a lot of people complain about audio jitters when using optical/coaxial output, but this isn't a problem for i.Link. AFAIK there is only a few high end DVD players that use i.Link for DVD-Audio or SACD.

Reason why I'm asking is that I'm wondering how long it will be before we can see uncompressed multichannel audio over a single cable outside of the nForce2 + SPDIF (DD5.1).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top