USB Sound Cards worth it? If so which one?

N

Naldo

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The onboard sound that came with my iDEQ sucks, so Im looking into getting a USB sound card? Is it worth it? The only ones I know of are the 2 by creative (MP#+ and Audigy NX). I wont be hookingit up to surround sound or anything, I ust want better SQ and more power delivered to my headphones. Do any other compnaies make USB soundcards that are better than the ones by creative?
 
Ok... I'm not familiar with the computer you are talking about.

If it is a laptop and there is no option for a PCI sound card then yea, i'd say the Audigy 2 NX is worth it.

I personally own one and use it with my laptop and the sound quality is quite decent, however don't use it with a microphone... I have noticed a large level of static background noise when using the microphone input for some reason.

I prefer the sound quality of the SB Live 5.1, however that is obviously an internal PCI solution.
 
I'd also recommend the Bithead. headphone.com makes a lot of well-regarded audio gear, while the same certainly cannot be said for Creative =]
 
I wouldn't recommend the Bithead.
Poor sound quality and very bad drivers make it worse then the Audigy NX as a sound card.
As a Headphone amp it is pretty nice... but there are better products out there for less money.
 
Mister X said:
I wouldn't recommend the Bithead.
Poor sound quality and very bad drivers make it worse then the Audigy NX as a sound card.
As a Headphone amp it is pretty nice... but there are better products out there for less money.
Click to expand...

Is there any other external sound cards that might be a better choice than either of those? I can't say I've been following external sound cards too closely.
 
I think Zalman came out with one...but I have no idea of the quality I've never read any reviews on it.
 
I use the USB NX for my desktop with a 5.1 and I think its great. I don't use it for headphones very often, but I have no complaints when I do.

The remote is the best part about it, you can pretty much control your entire computer from it. I like not having to get up to turn off my computer at night :)

Also, I don't know of many other sound cards with SPDIF out and optical in/out
 
Since people are in here who use this card do you get a fairly prominent hiss sound in the background when using your Microphone input? That's the only thing that has dissapointed me with this card. The sound quality is quite good otherwise but my onboard laptop Mic input is far superious in sound clarity which really surprised me with the high quality 24-bit/96khz sampling rate that the Audigy 2 NX offers.
 
The audigy seems nice, but its got alot of stuff on it I more than likely will never use, my onboard has spidf in/out and I havent found a use for it yet, so I dont need that, I also dont have any 5.1 speakers to hook it up to, so I dont need that. I know the audigy supports 24bit/96khz, but all my MP3's and stuff are 16bit/44khz, so I dont think I'd ever get the benefit of that extra headroom (I dont have a dvd drive, nor any dvd audio CD's). Anyone use the USB MP3+? Is the SQ on that one comperable to the audigy? Do either of them deliver more power to the headphone port?
 
If you have a S/PDIF output, then why not get a good outboard DAC? It'll be two channel, but all of your purchase price will go towards sound quality. I know that the ART DI/O has a reputation as a good budget DAC, after modifications are done to attenuate the voltage to line levels.
 
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