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A little background. I used to do a lot of gaming on both my PC and consoles, but about a 2 years ago I basically moved completely to my consoles and my PC hasn't seen a game for that long. I have started to "de-game" my PC. The first thing to go were my surround sound speakers. I sold off my 7.1 Creative set and bought a pair of Swan D1080MkIIs.
That led to my problem. The D1080s are a great set of speakers, apparently too good for my Audigy X-Fi. The audio from the X-Fi sounds muddy. Right now I moved back to my on-board (AD1988) sound. The sad part that sounds better than the X-Fi. I would just leave it at this, but at higher volumes the on-board sound gets interference. Main thing is I can hear my hard drive through the speakers. This problem goes away when I use a sound card.
So, what sound card should I get? The only thing the card will be used for is playing music on a 2.0 system. I have always just bought Creative cards for gaming, but now sound quality is the most important and I have no clue what to buy.
I am kind of leaning toward the M-AUDIO Audiophile 2496. My speakers use RCA in, so its outputs aren't a problem. But I would like to get something for cheaper than that.
That led to my problem. The D1080s are a great set of speakers, apparently too good for my Audigy X-Fi. The audio from the X-Fi sounds muddy. Right now I moved back to my on-board (AD1988) sound. The sad part that sounds better than the X-Fi. I would just leave it at this, but at higher volumes the on-board sound gets interference. Main thing is I can hear my hard drive through the speakers. This problem goes away when I use a sound card.
So, what sound card should I get? The only thing the card will be used for is playing music on a 2.0 system. I have always just bought Creative cards for gaming, but now sound quality is the most important and I have no clue what to buy.
I am kind of leaning toward the M-AUDIO Audiophile 2496. My speakers use RCA in, so its outputs aren't a problem. But I would like to get something for cheaper than that.