Sound card ..{which one]?

[Hockeydog3133]

Alright ...Im really in a pickle!!! [haha] Basically im torn between the x-fi platinum and x-meridian [which im hearing is much better than the x-fi]. Ive got z-5500 speakers and basically want whats going to be best for music but at the same time originally what drew me to the X-fi is that it had that i/O drive that I guess i could hook my tv up to through the rca [the only output available on my tv for surround, and z-5500's dont have a rca input]. So I have 2 questions
1st which of these 2 sound cards do you all reccommend
and
2nd Is there any way to get the X-meridian hooked up to rca [the red and white output] , I was reading about some extenderboard called the x-tender on that pg /what about that ,would that work http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/x-meridian.php#xtension_pics

 

[Hockeydog3133]

....no answers ..

 

[Moofasa~]

If you care only/mostly about music -> X-Merdian

If you care only/mostly about games -> X-Fi Xtreme Music

If you care only/mostly about movies -> Any card with digital output

If you care about a little bit of everything -> X-Fi Elite Pro would be the best, but if money is an issue, you could settle for a lower grade of the X-Fi series (basically if you do a decent amount of gaming, I would not consider the X-Meridian).

 

[alg7_munif]

Actually you don't need the X-Fi Platinum, you just need this.. With the cable you can:

1) Connect your TV directly to the Z-5500 receiver and use any Oxygen HD based card to connect your PC with the Z-5500 through digital(note: if you are using digital, all Oxygen HD based cards are the same).
2) Connect your tv to the line-in of any Oxygen HD card and you can connect your PC to the receiver through using both analogue and digital(note: If you want to use analogue, the X-Meridian has the best analogue amongst the Oxygen HD cards).
3) Connect your tv to the line-in of any X-Fi(XtremeAudio is not recommended) and you can connect your PC to the receiver using analogue.

I have a X-Meridian, a Z-5400 speaker and a X-Fi XtremeMusic. When listening to musics on my computer I like the sound in this order: X-Meridian analogue>Z-5400's digital>X-Fi's analogue. The Z-5500 receiver uses the same chip as my Z-5400 so I think that the quality is about the same.