Sound cards

[Nerf]

I need a sound card, and have no idea what to get.

Checking frys, newegg, tigerdirect I see a whole shitload of different ones and vast differences in price.

So, lay it on me, is there any difference between a $7 5.1 card and the $130 soundblaster new hotness?

I'm running headphones, have an extremely shitty pair of 10 year old desktop speakers I never use, and am wanting this to boost video performance.

[Trippy]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102006

DO NOT get the "X-Fi Xtreme Audio" -- it's not a real X-Fi card (fucking marketing people).

[Nerf]

Did I not mention cheap? I want cheap, if I'm not screwing myself on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102012

Whats the difference between the one you linked, and the one above, aside from price?

Would a $10-20 card boost my performance the same as a more expensive one?  I'm not hooking up a surround sound system, I'm on headphones 99.9% of the time, so I'm not looking for "superior audio quality" per se, just as good or or better than onboard, while reaping the benefits of increased performance.

[Trippy]

The Audigys I've used in the past (the original one and the "Audigy 2") have a lot of noise (hiss) in the headphone/line out channel. I'm not sure if the above Audigy SE has that same problem. The X-Fi doesn't have that problem and has a far more powerful audio processor for more/better sound effects with less CPU usage. Depending on your onboard sound chipset the Audigy SE may not actually be a step up.

[Nerf]

Motherboard is an XFX 680iLt, only sound gripe is the realtek audio shit absolutely sucks for changing values, and some shit is just far too quiet, even with everything at 100%

[Hoax]

Does anyone not called Creative make soundcards anymore?  I haven't been a big fan of Creative's shit since, well, forever.

[Ookii]

What about Auzentech, though they still are basically Creative sound cards from what I hear.

[Nerf]

I picked up the audigy SE earlier, havn't played AoC due to my internet being absolutely fucked, but I like that I can hear things without everything being set @ 100%.

[Murgos]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102006

DO NOT get the "X-Fi Xtreme Audio" -- it's not a real X-Fi card (fucking marketing people).

So, it says "Certified for Windows Vista" on the spec sheet.  What does that mean?  I though that Vista didn't support hardware sound acceleration?

Or is that only DirectSound or whatever it was called is not supported now?

[Trippy]

http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.html

[Sky]

What about Auzentech, though they still are basically Creative sound cards from what I hear.

Not really. For some applications (home theater and music) they are pretty interesting cards. You can swap in your own chips to upgrade and personalize them. They are the only cards doing onboard hardware 5.1 encoding, which is why I bought one back when the soundstorm chip on my old nforce2 board bit it.

Problem is their drivers are trash and you'll get random digital noise in many games (aka full volume sonic doom), blue screens and hard locks. Just enough to drive you mad. Or drive you to buy a creative card + the creative dts 6.1 breakout box. Hmm...maybe it is a creative scheme after all...

[TripleDES]

Don't buy Creative cards. EVER AGAIN!

You guys should really stop subsidizing their shit operation. While the hardware itself may be somewhat decent in theory, the driver's are so fucking shit, it makes a wastedump smell like Chanel Nr. 5. And they don't even intend on fixing it. Instead, they're trying to rip off owners of their older hardware (though they've backpedalled on it) with that DS3D hook.

Especially if you're using Vista, you'll have to put up with a lot of shit, too. 1.5 years after the release of Vista, they still can't stop their hardware from glitching under the slightest load. And anyway, the DSP? Fuck that shit. More and more games go the software renderer only route. It'll be an useless waste of silicon and money.

If you want good sound for a decent price, go get the Xonar DX (not D2 or D2X). It uses great quality components, powers its amplifiers directly via the PSU (3.5" power connector) and has great DACs. The card must be worth something, because Creative tried to start some FUD on its release.

PS, the Auzentech X-Fi is still using the Creative drivers, as such a load of shit, too. Better DACs and amplifiers don't fix the suck.

PPS, I hate Creative.

[schild]

Oh hey, that Xonar is low profile. Good replacement for my Razer as I need a pci 1x card that's low profile. Good call. I fucking hate mini-optical jacks though.

[Sky]

The Auzentech I had was the X-Plosion, didn't use anything creative except for EAX2 emu or whatever the freely available (and crappy one I never used) happened to be. Like I said, it was a great card. Except for the jarring, piercing, ear-shattering digital noise that would randomly erupt during certain games (Oblivion, BF2, Gothic 2, etc etc).

Meanwhile the creative card performs great in games, I use XP and will for as long as possible. So as bad as creative's drivers may or may not be....Auzentech's are worse.

I'm a fan of 'go with what works for you'. For me, that's been creative for the last 15 or so years.

[Nerf]

So my creative audio suite keeps randomly resetting to 7.1 instead of headphones, which completely fucks up AoC.

I spent several hours yesterday trying to figure out why the voiceovers werent working on my noobs, until I finally figured out that creative kept resetting me to 7.1 and I had to force stereo in Conan or it would play the sounds to nonexistant speakers.

I think I finally got it fixed by unchecking some odd default box that gives no information, as it hasn't reset in a few hours, time will tell, though.

Pretty close to taking it back to frys and going back to onboard sound.