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sound card?

C

cdabc123

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I was looking around and wondering if I should get a sound card for my pc if it would make any substantial difference I would be more then willing to get one. my current setup includes
2 klipsch promedia 2.1 speakers
a sub I got from my friend
small marshal guitar amp im using as a tweeter
a pioneer vsx-d209 reciver
and the Realtek ALC898 of my sr-x mobo

I was thinking of buying a Creative Sound Blaster Zx off my freind and was curius of what differance (if any) it would make.
 
How is everything connected? If you are using a digital output to the Receiver, for example, then a sound card is not needed.
 
Last edited:
cdabc123 said:
I was thinking of buying a Creative Sound Blaster Zx off my freind and was curius of what differance (if any) it would make.
Click to expand...

You need to clarify what your goals are. When you talk about "what difference it would make" - what type of difference are you referring to? A sound card does many different things, which may or may not be useful for your specific situation.

If you are talking about basic sound quality from the analog output, then it mostly comes down to the DAC used. The Creative Zx has a good DAC, but it wouldn't be too difficult to find something better. Whether or not it is an improvement over the DAC on your motherboard depends on it's implementation, and I'm just not familiar enough with your motherboard to make an educated guess in that regard. Also, like has been mentioned in the previous post, if you run digital output from your motherboard or soundcard to your receiver, then you will be using the DAC in the receiver. That would be where the actual analog signal is generated.

There is more to a sound card than just it's DAC however. Features like SBX Pro Studio for example, which can do a great job of down-mixing 5.1/7.1 sources to 2 channels (great for headphones), or up-mixing stereo content into 5.1/7.1. There are many other features as well. Only you can decide how important these features are to you.

Also, understand that this isn't an either/or situation. You could, for example, get that Creative Zx from your friend and run the digital output from your sound card into your receiver (or any other external DAC). In that case you would still have access to all of the sound card's features, but it would be the receiver (or external DAC) performing the actual digital to analog conversion.
 
Krispy Kritter said:
How is everything connected? If you are using a digital output to the Receiver, for example, then a sound is not needed.
Click to expand...

currently im running a aux jack to rca cable into the receiver. the receiver is very old and only accepts rca connections. a large majority of the time im listening to a album off youtube and currently i think my setup sounds very nice but i dont have much to compare it to i was wounsering if a sound card would have a positive impact on the sound quality.
 
Doubt you're going to notice a difference. Certainly not enough to warrant a substantial investment. If you're getting it cheap, sure, what's the harm. If paying anywhere near retail, I wouldn't bother.
 
what he said...
or if you plan on doing any recording then the SB would help a bit in quality but you'd probably be hard pressed to hear the difference. only other thing that I can think of is if (I'm not sure if it has it or not) it has the "record what you hear" feature like the old Audigy cards did. I used to find that useful...
 
what would be the best way for me to impriove my system then? is it possible when listening to albums off youtube?
 
1: new amp that has optical in
2: yes. with the record what you hear it acts like line-in and you can literally record anything that plays out of the pc.
 
cdabc123 said:
what would be the best way for me to impriove my system then? is it possible when listening to albums off youtube?
Click to expand...

The audio quality on youtube is lackluster at best. Can you still improve your audio quality? Possibly, but it's never going to make youtube audio sound better than youtube audio.

Seems like you are looking for an extremely simplistic recommendation. All sound cards aren't automatically better than motherboard audio. Generalizations aren't always particularly useful. Whether the Digital to Analog conversion takes place on the motherboard, on the sound card, in an external DAC, or something like a receiver, the basic principles are the same, and it largely comes down to the quality of the components involved. If you are not going to take advantage of any of the actual sound card features on the Creative Zx, and are simply looking for what amounts to a DAC upgrade, you can get a lot more for your money by simply getting an external DAC instead. Or if you want to get two new things for one, get a new receiver that can do digital input (so that it can act as your DAC).

The only creative cards that can really compete with most external DAC solutions are the Creative ZxR and the Creative Titanium HD. The Zx is one step below the ZxR.
 
ok thank you, and i really do appreciate any possible insight as this is FAR from my area of expertise. just two more questions
have receivers changed alot in the past years and would their be any real upgrade going from mine to a newere one of decent quality assuming both are fed analog signals?
i might be concidering a new sub what would be the best under $20? under $50? it does not need to include a amp
 
cdabc123 said:
just two more questions
have receivers changed alot in the past years and would their be any real upgrade going from mine to a newere one of decent quality assuming both are fed analog signals?
Click to expand...

The biggest changes to receivers have been their digital signal processing abilities, but if you are going to feed an analog signal into it, none of that really matters. There are still bargains to be had. You can find high-end receivers that are less than 10 years old from brands like Denon and Pioneer Elite for ~$150 all over Craigslist, receivers that sold for $1000-3000 when they were new. You might not benefit from the digital signal processing abilities but you might benefit from the better internal amplifiers depending on what speakers you end up using. You may not need the extra power, but your D209 is pretty weenie at 60wpc. For a $20-50 sub-woofer I'd also say your best bet is used from somewhere like craigslist, otherwise you're talking about wal-mart level computer speakers.
 
would this be a good combo? a Kenwood eXcelon XR600-1 amp and a hifonics hfx12d4?
 
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