Sound Cards?

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belleshel
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Sound Cards?

Postby belleshel » Wed Jan 29, 2003 3:38 pm

My sound card is integrated (on mb), and sounds fine for gaming. But pushing music to my home stereo it leaves a lot to be desired (low volume, high static). I'm thinking of the Creative SB Live 5.1 w/Digital port, can snag it for ~$25 for a new one. Any suggestions? Never had a dedicated sound card before.

Thanks,
Belle
Silsaterur
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Postby Silsaterur » Wed Jan 29, 2003 3:43 pm

I am partial to Turtle Beach soundcards... but then I have also been partial to other things that turned out for the worst. If your amp takes digital input, for gods sake, USE IT!

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rylan
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Postby rylan » Wed Jan 29, 2003 4:16 pm

The sblive is a decent card. The SB Audigy series of cards are much better however, with massively improve signal to noise ratio and supports 24bit audio decoding.
thanuk
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Postby thanuk » Wed Jan 29, 2003 4:44 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by belleshel:
My sound card is integrated (on mb), and sounds fine for gaming. But pushing music to my home stereo it leaves a lot to be desired (low volume, high static). </font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Might not be your soundcard at all. I dont know jack squat about pushing music from a computer to a stereo, but i know if you have an input to a stereo from an outside source, and you have shitty speaker wires, the weakened signal will sound absolutely horrible by the time it gets to the speakers. After all the cash you spent on the equipment, dropping 25 bux on a roll of high quality speaker wire instead of the 10 dollar roll of shit wire might solve your problems. If you have high quality speaker wire, disregard this Image


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rylan
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Postby rylan » Wed Jan 29, 2003 6:11 pm

Integrated sound chips on motherboards suck. The amp is poor and picks up a lot of noise from the system, and also the sound is actually done through a partial emulation mode by the cpu.
moritheil
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Postby moritheil » Wed Jan 29, 2003 6:33 pm

that card's a decent one.

Never get integrated, it sux0rs Image

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Malacar
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Postby Malacar » Wed Jan 29, 2003 6:46 pm

I have an Audigy. Love it. Very crisp clear sound.. And I have yet to hear breakup or static at very high volumes.

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belleshel
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Postby belleshel » Wed Jan 29, 2003 7:01 pm

Im just looking to play music from my computer to my stereo (which has 4 dig, 8 analog inputs). I don't even have a DVD/RCDRM for the computer. Decent quality sound is fine, don't need state of the art Image Don't really need any line ins (microphone, telephone ect). Just a dig-out to my amp. Audigy seems a fairly big price bump, really worth the extra cash? If there really is a big differance then I'd go for it.. Seems to have a buncha junk on it I'd never use.
Thanks,
Belle

I've replaced all my wires with the lower gauges, first thing I did after buying my system Image

[This message has been edited by belleshel (edited 01-29-2003).]
rylan
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Postby rylan » Wed Jan 29, 2003 8:25 pm

Well you can always get the value or oem edition or something like that. No need to get the plat with all the extra junk. Looks like its around $60 on pricewatch.

I think its worth it just for the signal to noise ratio of over 100dB, but the built in firewire port kicks ass too.
Guest

Postby Guest » Wed Jan 29, 2003 8:43 pm

If you can afford the extra cash dollars (they run around $112 from newegg.com) I would strongly suggest going with the Audigy 2. The Audigy 1 is also quite good.

The Audigy series have an instruction set that is all on card powered. Meaning that the hit to your CPU for sound functions is near nil. If you are a hard core gamer who wants every last % or your computer just isn't that great/fast, then I would really recomment the Audigy.

The SBLive cards aren't bad, but they use like 15% proc usage when playing, which for me isn't acceptable.

-Garg

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Daz
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Postby Daz » Thu Jan 30, 2003 8:02 am

SB Audigy.

Accept No Substitute.
belleshel
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Postby belleshel » Thu Jan 30, 2003 7:33 pm

Got the audigy 2 from newegg should be in here in a couple of days....
About the same time Erlans is back in right? *nudge* Image

Thanks,
Belle
Eilorn
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Postby Eilorn » Thu Jan 30, 2003 9:49 pm

I don't have one, yet, but am saving up for an external sound card... they're (SB Extigy, Onkyo SE-U55) really external components that connect to your computer via USB, and connect to your stereo via RCA, coax, or optical. All the digital-to-audio conversion is done outside the computer, in a low noise audio environment, away from the myriad Image electrical noises endemic to computers.

They implement the 'standard' USB audio interface so they're usable by PC/MAC/Linux/Whatever.

Eilorn.


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[This message has been edited by Eilorn (edited 01-30-2003).]
rylan
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Postby rylan » Thu Jan 30, 2003 11:32 pm

fyi USB sound interface isn't that great. Uses a lot of cpu time and quality is lower than internal.
Eilorn
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Postby Eilorn » Fri Jan 31, 2003 6:08 am

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by rylan:
fyi USB sound interface isn't that great. Uses a lot of cpu time and quality is lower than internal.</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If it's using a lot of cpu time, and the sound quality isn't that great, then something is wrong: You should be shipping PCM data straight out the cable to be converted by the external component. This is the same data that you'd send to the sound card. Compressed formats (mp3, ogg, wma, etc.) have decompression/reconstitution overhead, but, you'd have that overhead, anyway. If there is any problem, it's probably in the implementation of the USB audio DRIVER, not in the external component.

Eilorn.

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