separate sound card

[zalazin]

My system specs are:

ASUS P5PE-VM 865G 775 AGP mobo with Pentium D 820, 2gigs DDR 400 Dual channel

onboard sound max and ethernet

250 WD SATA for OS and Games
250 WD PATA for vids photo mps ETC

7800GS leadtek VC

Samsung 16 X DVD burner

Antec true 480

Win XP pro sp2

a couple of quick questions

I have an old Soundblaster 5.1 Live sound card with digital out:
Will it drop the audio load off the CPU's if I install it and disable the soundmax intgrated audio?
Is the Soundblaster better than the integrated Soundmax?

Thanks

 

[Audioguy]

It would probably sound better. If it would take some load of the CPU would depend on what your doing at the time. The Live! was only capable of EAX 1,2 so if you were playing a game using those artificial effects it would help to prevent the the FPS from dropping a by processing these artificial effects onboard the card itself. I would suggest getting a device that is a little more modern if your interested in good sound. You could get better sound quality with that Live by using KX drivers but you will lose the EAX, given the limited support it's no big deal anyway. I would suggest you try them out, they were made by musicians for flexibility and sound quality when recording music. THey have a effect and virtual cable approach to DSP. I thnk there is over 100 Hardware accelerated effects to choose from..if your into playing with this sort of thing...

 

[zalazin]

where do I get the KX drivers?

 

[Audioguy]

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/down.php?language=en
These driver will breath new life into that old Live!
grab the full version right at the top. Don't get discourged if you find them hard to use at first they are very powerful and require some learning regarding signal flow and effects. All the power lies within the DSP page of the mixer.
which is skinnable and new effects are being written all the time.
here's a good picI got from another forum.
KX on a SB Live! 5.1

 

[MVSdinosaur]

My system specs are:

I have an old Soundblaster 5.1 Live sound card with digital out:
Will it drop the audio load off the CPU's if I install it and disable the soundmax intgrated audio?
Is the Soundblaster better than the integrated Soundmax?

Thanks

I'm glad you asked that, I have onboard sound with my gigabyte and was wondering if there is a significant advantage in purchasing a separate sound card.