Why get a soundcard?

have you not been listening. gaming performance is a kids argument..
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I have read this entire thread... a few times.
You have yet to even come close to validating a single point you have tried to make with anything less then hearsay and/or argumentative nonsense. In fact your assertion that you have owned neither the Audigy 2ZS or The revolution invalidates every single point you have posted here.
 
Need I direct an audiophile such as yourself to this old and trustworthy article on why NOT to buy anything Creative? http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=76742
Straight from WINAMP.. the audiophiles choice for a media player!
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Although Winamp isn't half bad, I'd consider Foobar2000 to be superior in every way except pretty visuals. Way more configurable to eke out every last bit of sound quality from your hardware. After all, the sound quality is what we're discussing here right? My personal experience with owning an M-Audio Revolution with a motherboard that has SoundStorm (Abit AN-7) as well as most articles I have read support the Revo over anything made by Creative (including the Audigy 2 ZS) when it comes to overall combined performance in both music and games. The so-called "performance hit" only occurs when using EAX game mode, which is a joke anyway. It's been said before that if your computer takes a hit, it's time to upgrade. Even with my Athlon T-Bird 1.33GHz, there was virtually no noticable hit in framerate in BF1942. If you buit a computer within the past year or year and a half, you should be more than OK.
 
are there any noticible improvements in sound from the Audigy to Audigy2? just curious...

does the M-audio even have an onboard DSP? i thought it pulled from your CPU through the PCI bus? oh well.. i probably am wrong ...

one card that wasnt mentioned that i think should be thrown into the mix is the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. IMHO i think it ranks up with audigy quality and the only thing that kept me from purchesing one before i got my Audigy1 Platinum is that i wanted the front panel connections of the Audigy.
and since there are people that want to know who has owned what, yes i Still do own both
 
damn lots of tension over Creative issues here. IMHO the ZS is a goddamn ripoff though. Why not just get the good old Turtle Beach SantaCruz that proved to have the best sound over many years and costs like 35 bucks nowaday? I bought one to replace the horrid 6channel AC97 onboard scratchy excuse for a sound on my ABIT IS-7 and I love it cause it was cheap, it sounds awesome and it has both analog and digital 5.1 support that works well. A much better card than the dumbass Audigy in my older box.
 
thank you russian, a white box turtle beach will run you probably no more than $50. and they have exceptional quality for price performance, way better than m-audio, except that your not getting GOBS of connectors (i personally dont have room, much less need for 7.1 or firewire, if i want firewire ill get a 20$ card with more than one connection)

and for some reason i couldnt get the audigy to work *properly* in Mandrake 8.2, Slackware, RedHat, Knoppix(currently using), or Gentoo. sure i could get sound, but when the onboard sound sounds better(i know, blasphemey...) i gave up.
 
Mister X said:
I have read this entire thread... a few times.
You have yet to even come close to validating a single point you have tried to make with anything less then hearsay and/or argumentative nonsense. In fact your assertion that you have owned neither the Audigy 2ZS or The revolution invalidates every single point you have posted here.
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Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I knew thats where you were coming from with that cheapshot that I dont own the junk.

on the CPU issue/point-
The so-called "performance hit" only occurs when using EAX game mode, which is a joke anyway. It's been said before that if your computer takes a hit, it's time to upgrade. Even with my Athlon T-Bird 1.33GHz, there was virtually no noticable hit in framerate in BF1942. If you buit a computer within the past year or year and a half, you should be more than OK.
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zing
 
realrussian said:
damn lots of tension over Creative issues here. IMHO the ZS is a goddamn ripoff though. Why not just get the good old Turtle Beach SantaCruz that proved to have the best sound over many years and costs like 35 bucks nowaday? I bought one to replace the horrid 6channel AC97 onboard scratchy excuse for a sound on my ABIT IS-7 and I love it cause it was cheap, it sounds awesome and it has both analog and digital 5.1 support that works well. A much better card than the dumbass Audigy in my older box.
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I had a TBSC and upgraded to the Audigy 2 ZS and the Audigy has much better sound in games. Music sounds good on both. Since I mostly use the sound in my computer to game, the Audigy is what I kept in my computer.
 
my only point was that for price-wise, the TBSC is a better option. plus back when i played Warbirds, the audigy had a little problem with that game whereas the TBSC didnt.

also, i was comparing Audigy1 to TBSC, not Audigy2ZS. but if there is that much of adifference between Audigy1 to Audigy2, then there really shouldnt be a contest. in windows that is...
 
I couldn't recommend Creative. I've had an Audigy 1 now, for about 3 years. The headphone contacts on the live drive are screwed up after usage, how ever the headphone contacts on my 15 year old stero receiver still work. The firewire interface is horrible. I bought a LaCie 250gig drive, and its nothing but crashes and freezes. I had it RMA'd just in case of it being the drive.

Get M-Audio, I know I will.
 
maybe it was just the live drive. mine still works, even with an arc'd plug(fell out of my pocket while leaning over the electrical plug and happened to fall as soon as the plug made contact, *ZZAP*) and i have had it ever since they first came out(first box it was in was a P3 500mHz)
 
" i want a cave to sound like a cave...i want a warehouse to sound like a warehouse. none of that is posible in REAL TIME without eax. "

id didnt use EAX and listen to Doom3, its stunning.

"you're talking about dolby digital...well, name me 5 games that have real dolby digital support. yah, didn't think so. yes, it's great for movies, but it's nothing in games. "

you miss the point there, he mearly means that a card with a digital out that can do DDE (or DTSE :) ) can output whatever multichannel signal a game can provide (such as doom3) to some proper home cinema surround amps (which are usually head and shoulders above the creative desktop speaker setups).

the game doesnt need to support dd, it just needs to be able to output multichannel sound. the DDE then pushes it out of the digital out to a DD amp.

cuts down on cables (if you have a soundcard that doesnt do dde then you need to connect the analog outs to the multichannel analog ins on your amp, can get messy, but thats about the only drawback).

HDA seems to be kicking AC97 into touch, so if you buy a modern motherboard you wont need a sound card (the HDA can output analog multichannel and do dde). this is for intel processor only at present though.

nvidia are releasing their nforce4 soon, and expect that to be as whizz bang as the HDA stuff.

PC audio is dead! long live PC audio!

pez
 
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