Sound card recommendations

T

The Phantom

Weaksauce
Joined
May 28, 2005
Messages
66
It's been a long time since I've kept track of sound cards, my current one is an Audigy 2 ZS. I'm running Windows Vista X64, and right now my mic won't stop broadcasting sound, even if it's disabled or not selected, only when unplugged. I blame the crappy support under Vista for the audigy 2. So I was looking into new soundcards.
Here are my req's
1)I'd like it to be PCI-E so it will fit in the top slot above my vid card
2)Needs optical in/out and analog in/out

My uses include music, gaming and movie watching, so a high quality sound is great.

Would you recommend the X-fi Titanium FATAL1TY(fatality is easliy accesible where I live in canada vs reg titanium)
or the Asus D2X which is about 60$ more than the creative.
 
Unfortunately you should disregard the X-Fi entirely. Even though it's a great soundcard on other motherboards and OS's, your motherboard unfortunately is listed in many threads as having the SNP (snap crackle pop) and 4GB X-Fi incompatibility.

Your best bet is the Asus or any CMI 8788/9 based card. With the quad core you won't notice the CPU usage and I don't know of many software sound systems (Miles, OpenAL, etc) that regularly push 64-128 streams.

The only bad part about a _GOOD_ soundcard these days is the price. They're all packaged with high quality DAC's and board components (not to mention DDL support) that pushes up the price quite a bit for a relatively niche market.
 
lawless2142 said:
Unfortunately you should disregard the X-Fi entirely. Even though it's a great soundcard on other motherboards and OS's, your motherboard unfortunately is listed in many threads as having the SNP (snap crackle pop) and 4GB X-Fi incompatibility.

Your best bet is the Asus or any CMI 8788/9 based card. With the quad core you won't notice the CPU usage and I don't know of many software sound systems (Miles, OpenAL, etc) that regularly push 64-128 streams.

The only bad part about a _GOOD_ soundcard these days is the price. They're all packaged with high quality DAC's and board components (not to mention DDL support) that pushes up the price quite a bit for a relatively niche market.
Click to expand...

Do the Auzentech X-fi cards suffer the same SNP problem as the creative X-fi?

*Edit - A quick search revealed this... http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1350668 about the X-fi's and P5Q-Deluxe's
 
dont know about the SNP problem, but id like to throw my hat in the ring for HT Omega Claro line of cards. Excellent fidelity, drivers are rock solid, and small. They do exactly what they should and arent bloated. Customer service is top notch too. The have answered my emails within minutes and have resolved any questions I have had. Im hooked up to a HTR with speakers and sub to game, watch movies, and of course music. I came from Audigy 2 and I will never ever touch pc speakers or Creative garbage again.
 
+1 vote for HT Omega Claro Plus
or
Auzentech
or
Xonar
I dont recommend Creative.
 
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