Vista 64 sound card

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flashpoint603

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 6, 2007
Messages
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Hi, I am trying to find a good sound card that will work with Vista 64bit. All I can find is complaints on drivers and compatibility etc etc.

I have never actually used a sound card. Will it be a huge difference compared to my onboard from an XFX nforce 680i?
 
Realtek? Current Realtek chips are pretty good, and most of the difference people claim to hear going to say, an X-Fi, are purely out of expectation of better performance. I should know, I was using an E-MU 1212m till I switched to the Realtek because I'm too lazy to download the 64-bit Vista drivers from Creative (too freaking slow last time I tried). I'm running it by custom silver plated cables to a Gilmore Lite amplifier and into Audio-Technica A700/Beyerdynamic DT990PRO s and the difference isn't making my head explode or anything.

Unless you have a funtastic speaker or headphone setup, the only soundcard you're going to want to go to is an X-Fi, for the extra bells and whistles in games. Sound quality might not be as good if you really listen hard, but other soundcards don't have the same processor that's required for all the high quality game sounds and EAX5.0 stuff out there.
 
jmmtn4aj said:
Realtek? Current Realtek chips are pretty good, and most of the difference people claim to hear going to say, an X-Fi, are purely out of expectation of better performance. I should know, I was using an E-MU 1212m till I switched to the Realtek because I'm too lazy to download the 64-bit Vista drivers from Creative (too freaking slow last time I tried). I'm running it by custom silver plated cables to a Gilmore Lite amplifier and into Audio-Technica A700/Beyerdynamic DT990PRO s and the difference isn't making my head explode or anything.

Unless you have a funtastic speaker or headphone setup, the only soundcard you're going to want to go to is an X-Fi, for the extra bells and whistles in games. Sound quality might not be as good if you really listen hard, but other soundcards don't have the same processor that's required for all the high quality game sounds and EAX5.0 stuff out there.
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are you saying the e-mu 1212m is not compatible with 64-bit Vista? i have for 4gb of memory as well, I'd like to know. thanks.
 
X-Fi XtremeGamer works great with no issues or stability problems in Vista 64 for me.

X-Fi is probably only for you if you area heavy gamer and want the hardware acceleration/positional audio benefit. Otherwise as mentioned, a cheap Realtek or onboard solution will probably suit your needs just fine.

edit: just noticed the rig in your sig, 8800 Ultra, yup your a gamer. Get the X-Fi no doubt, just stay away from the ExtremeAudio version, doesn't have the X-Fi processor.
 
After reading up alot on which sound cards are stable and what not. I have pre-ordered a Auzentech X-fi Prelude for when the next batch gets sent out (week of Oct 29?¿). Apparently Auzentech has put out some good drivers that work well with 4gb and 64 bit. Hopefully this will do me good.

I'll be sure to post my results on stability and SQ differences (to my ears).
 
btw silver plated cables are terrible, silver carrys too much "noise" opposed to gold.
 
XeRo_Dark said:
btw silver plated cables are terrible, silver carrys too much "noise" opposed to gold.
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Can you back it up with any source?

I always thought silver is a better conductor then gold but due to purely marketing concerns golden connectors are used and not the silver ones. What kind of "noise" do you refer to?
 
Uncle Jim said:
Can you back it up with any source?

I always thought silver is a better conductor then gold but due to purely marketing concerns golden connectors are used and not the silver ones. What kind of "noise" do you refer to?
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Use of gold has deeper roots than simply marketing. Silver is the best electrical and thermal conductor, but gold is also up there highly conductive with silver but more more important is that gold is very stable, or resists corrosion. That attribute makes it ideal for exposed contacts.

Tin also works well, but not as conductive as Gold.

For most consumers, Tin is *probably* good enough. So many will claim the use of gold is a marketting ploy.

Electrical Conductivity chart of the elements.

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/electrical.html
 
Uncle Jim said:
Can you back it up with any source?

I always thought silver is a better conductor then gold but due to purely marketing concerns golden connectors are used and not the silver ones. What kind of "noise" do you refer to?
Click to expand...

He doesn't know what he's talking about. In terms of cable connector plating gold is usually used for two reasons:

1) It is highly corrosion resistant. So if you plug a cable in and never move it (as most consumers do) you needn't worry about it. The non-corrosive nature and malleability means that a gold-gold contact is likely to remain solid for a long time. Silver is prone to tarnish. If you were continually plugging and unplugging a cable it'd work better since that'd keep it from tarnishing pretty well and since it is harder than gold (plug and unplug a gold plated connector all the time, it's likely to start rubbing the gold off), but you probably aren't.

2) Because gold is pretty and people think it makes cables worth more. It's as much marketing as anything else. Notice they usually plate the outside as well. This of course does nothing at all, expect make it look pretty and thus sell better.

However I'm guessing the original poster was talking about the cable itself. You can find companies that sell copper cables that are then silver plated. The connectors are still usually gold plated. There are theories as to why they are better (generally related to the skin effect which is not in significant force at audio frequencies) but in reality they neither help nor harm sound. They'll do just as well as a full copper equivilant.
 
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