Soundcard....

[saltynay]

I have decided to take the plunge and get a hopefully amazing soundcard due to my RMA motherboard arriving without the off chip "onboard" soundcard . Conditions are that it needs to be 7.1 compatible with the 3.5mm jacks any suggestions?

Currently looking at:
KustomPCs.co.uk - ASUS Xonar D2X PCI-E 7.1 Sound Card
KustomPCs.co.uk - AuzenTech X-FI Prelude 7.1

 

[ricanflow]

I would go with the X-Fi myself.

 

[saltynay]

I would go with the X-Fi myself.

There are 8+ versions any hints to which one

 

[baron5]

depends, if you want a amazing music experience, m-audio are really good, especially the delta series. also the cards from E-mu are good. But these cards dont have supprot for EAX so gaming quality isnt as good by far as a x-fi. but the X-fi will give u amazingly good music qualily over onboard but nowhere near a delta card. the auzentech cards bought the x-fi spu i guess u could call it from creative so im guessing that would be great for gaming too, and be better than the creative x-fi for gamign too.

so if gameing, x-fi
xtreme gamer fatal1ty is good or the xtreme gamer for a cheaper price.

if raw music quality
a m-adio delta card

note if u want music card prob best of going to the audio part of this forum but if ur gaming a x-fi cards mentioned.

 

[ricanflow]

Audio quality on the m-audio cards isnt really any better than the X-Fi's..the lower end ones anyways...the m-audio's just have better asio support and the proper inputs/outputs for recording.

In terms of music playback, the X-Fi's have it beat, plus you can mod it to make it sound better.

The only reason i got an X-Fi was because it was really cheap (i paid $35 shipped). And i didnt wanna have to keep turin on all my audio gear when i wanted to game with headphones.

 

[baron5]

i disagree m-audio has much better audio quality for music dedication. the audiophile card is not bad either. the one thing about creative is driver support sucks for vista anyway. but i would go with a x-fi too

hey rican, what you mean by modding to sound good? ive turned off all the **** in creative audio console, what else is there?

 

[saltynay]

I thinking I am going to go with the Asus xonar D2X to use up my spare trisli pci-express ports. It also is meant to be a major contender to the X-fi and many review sites claim its better plus it looks sexy

 

[baron5]

well be sure to tell us what you think, i didn't think it would come close to a x-fi.

 

[saltynay]

I am not an audiophile so I doubt I could go into any detail of sound quality I am more interested in it being extremely loud and not crackling up atm lol. Many people say they moved from X-fi (around the same price) to the Asus and its the best their pc has ever sounded and much more preferable due to the lack of vista support by creative.

 

[ricanflow]

i disagree m-audio has much better audio quality for music dedication. the audiophile card is not bad either. the one thing about creative is driver support sucks for vista anyway. but i would go with a x-fi too

hey rican, what you mean by modding to sound good? ive turned off all the **** in creative audio console, what else is there?

Do you work with audio??

Over the years, with my experience in audio production i havent found m-audio cards to be all that. A couple that i used were pretty disappointing in fact. Creatives pro line of cards (E-MU) are much better.

After i bought an X-Fi i was very surprised at how good the sound was.


Modding as in physically hardmodding the card:
Incredible X-Fi mod *WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY*, 56K WARNING - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

I havent used any cards from asus so i cant say how well they stack against the X-Fi's, but i believe the Auzentech X-Fi gives it a beating.