Sound card quandry

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 9:41 am

I've been searching and I haven't found too much info, I'm wondering what the general consensus is for soundcards, sounds like X-Fi is decent and M-audio audiophile series are pretty good. someone else suggested the chaintech 7.1. There are a few considerations to be made: I've got a Marantz sr7300, which is a little higher end than what most people have, hooked up to a pair of Paradigm monitor 9s using high-end monster cable. ($250 speaker wires, lol). Anyway, with this setup I'm wondering if I should use optical out and do the DAC in the Marantz, or get a high-end card and transmit analog to the reciever.

Also, my case has PCI-E only, so I might have to go USB, and is there a downside to a USB sound card?

Thanks for your input.

Telstar · Post by **Telstar** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:24 am

djkest wrote:I've been searching and I haven't found too much info, I'm wondering what the general consensus is for soundcards, sounds like X-Fi is decent and M-audio audiophile series are pretty good. someone else suggested the chaintech 7.1. There are a few considerations to be made: I've got a Marantz sr7300, which is a little higher end than what most people have, hooked up to a pair of Paradigm monitor 9s using high-end monster cable. ($250 speaker wires, lol). Anyway, with this setup I'm wondering if I should use optical out and do the DAC in the Marantz, or get a high-end card and transmit analog to the reciever.

Also, my case has PCI-E only, so I might have to go USB, and is there a downside to a USB sound card?

Thanks for your input.

USB cards are great and don't have the problem of the pc noise to create sound distortion inside the case. Look at the EMU offering.

PCI-e I feel to recommend only the Asus Xonar -the pci-e version is not available yet.

Besides, creative and m-audio are more or less crap for sound quality.

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:42 am

Besides, creative and m-audio are more or less crap for sound quality.

Uhm... M-Audio is far from "crap". Comparing them to Creative is almost an insult :/

djkest: I think you can go digital.

Telstar · Post by **Telstar** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:56 am

Matija wrote: Uhm... M-Audio is far from "crap". Comparing them to Creative is almost an insult :/

I sincerely hope they make better soundcards than speakers.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 11:00 am

am I correct in assuming that if I use an optical out than the actual sound card I have makes less of an impact on sound quality?

M-Audio sound cards are fairly highly reguarded from people I've talked to, they have sound cards with full sized RCAs and others designed for a recording studio type environment.

The EM-U looks pretty good, although it looks like it has quite a bit more than I need.

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 11:24 am

Creative has had a bad name because they did make horrible drivers in the past. Now they are doing the same over again with Windows Vista.
The Creative X-Fi has still no drivers for Windows Vista, only some beta drivers, which do not support all the "nice things" which the X-Fi has to offer.

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 12:08 pm

Telstar wrote:
Matija wrote:Uhm... M-Audio is far from "crap". Comparing them to Creative is almost an insult :/
I sincerely hope they make better soundcards than speakers.

Uhm... M-Audio also makes high-quality speakers (studio monitors). Are you sure you aren't confusing them with someone else?

djkest wrote:am I correct in assuming that if I use an optical out than the actual sound card I have makes less of an impact on sound quality?

That probably depends on your receiver. Maybe it lets analog pass through directly to the amp section, while digital goes through a DSP... Try checking out some audiophile reviews of the 7300.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 5:32 am

If you buy an M-Audio or E-MU card make sure it supports all the functions that you require. I say this because these cards are aimed at audio production and some of them donâ€™t even support Dolby Digital or DTS output over S/PDif I think!

djkest wrote:am I correct in assuming that if I use an optical out than the actual sound card I have makes less of an impact on sound quality?

I thought so to but when I used an E-MU 0404 PCI instead of the onboard sound I noticed the sound quality improved noticeably. Both output using an optical connection to the same amplifier input using the same cable so there were no other variables introduced.
I can only put the difference down to jitter!

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 6:19 am

O_O

i agree, M-Audio > Creative.

i have creative cards, and my M-Audio 24/96 [delta/audiophile]. IMHO, the M-Audio card [despite its price tag] is well worth the money if you're really intent on high quality audio. they do work in Linux, for a while i had it working with Ubuntu x64, but when i finally found a way to install adobe flash player, i had to go back to onboard because of output issues. Ubuntu is the only distro i can verify it working with, i don't have the time to really flip around testing distro's, although i would love to sometime.

essentially, they work out of the box for linux, but you have to be careful about how you work with your outputs, it took me a long time to get it right [trial and error].

with creative, while i never had an issue with it, if you compare recordings i've done with both cards, there's a noticeable difference in quality. but the last thing to keep in mind is that when doing any form of editing, i've had the M-Audio appear to skip during intense use/playback, such as editing in Adobe Audition, its not the audio, its just the speed of the PCI bus, so thats just my $0.02.

its worth the quality if you're willing to spend the money, even if its just for playback.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:37 am

Matija wrote:
Besides, creative and m-audio are more or less crap for sound quality.
Uhm... M-Audio is far from "crap". Comparing them to Creative is almost an insult :/

djkest: I think you can go digital.

I have an M Audio Revolution 5.1 which feeds a very nice NAD 302 power amp and speakers I built to get quality and detail. I have a friend with a Creative card....and the difference is huge. I liked my old Turtle Beach Montego better that most Creative cards

The Chaintech shines on playback. It's not strong on the ADC relative to an M Audio. If you are recording from mics or analog tape---that's significant. If you are all digital---then the Chaintech is a steal.

However--there's no USB version. What mobo has no PCI slot? That's a helluva thing to be without if Audio is major.

USB is good---and you MIGHT avoid some hassles with internal noise. A QUALITY PSU helps--it helps to have a good mobo---I'd favor solid capacitors (Biostar T Series,Gigabyte D series,SOME high end Abit + Asus.)

If you don't hear a difference between an M Audio card and a Creative...it says one thing...those dinky plastic speakers you have....suck.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:09 am

I'd mention that besides cards from M Audio,Terratech,Echo,that use versions of the Via Envy 24,there's also cards using the Oxygen chip,with Auzentech and Bluegears good products. Sounds like the Asus Xonar can be outstanding-but I'd want it to establish a rep first.

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:02 am

I think one of the most important requirement is MIA... the use.
Is gaming priority, or watching movies/listening music or is it sound editing?
(one size doesn't fit all, except maybe badly)

AC3 and DTS sounds of movies don't require really anything from soundcard if those are just passed to separate decoder while anything done with analog output asks for good DACs, analog components and robustness against noise from other PC parts.
3D sound (=games) tests are harsh reading when it comes to CPU load of software cards.
Sound recording and editing again adds its own requirements.

sjoukew wrote:The Creative X-Fi has still no drivers for Windows Vista, only some beta drivers, which do not support all the "nice things" which the X-Fi has to offer.

Well, Micro$oft ain't helping in that by making use of hardware hard...
First they removed DirectSound&its EAX-extensions (requiring OpenAL wrapper for getting sounds to work in games which use those) and one diagram in Creative forums showed that M$ added more sh*t... err, software layers in front of accessing hardware.
(I wonder is this bloating use of CPU for sounds part of that "increased" performance of Vista with all that wasting of resources for constaneous DRM checks etc.)

kittle · Post by **kittle** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 10:16 am

I'll post my own experiences here...

Im a "budget audiophile" myself. homemade speakers that sound darn close to the B&W floorstanders going for $4k a pair and a pioneer elite amp.

I had a turtle beach card. upgraded from an old soundblaster card that died. The sound quality difference was amazing, but I quickly found that gaming performance was very bad. Whenever i turned on '3d sound' my framerate dropped by 50%
Since I do gaming qutie a bit and zero recording, i eventually upgraded to a sb audigy 2 card. sound quality dropped

but gameing performance is now very nice.

I also found it worthwhile to make my own patch cables to run the 5.1 output from the sound card to my amp. Less loss over connectors, and less loss to the pocketbook from overpriced cables

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 10:35 am

Okay, so we can clarify here, since you guys are wondering about usage.

Gaming PC: SB Audigy 2 ZS, which based on what I've heard here is probably fine for that. Speakers used on this are some Klipsch Pro-Media 2.1s I've had for about 5 years now. I like these speakers for the money, and for gaming. I'm not really sold on 5.1 computer gaming, it would require a special room to accomplish this.

Media PC: this is the one in question. Currently, it will reside in a SFF shuttle case, which only has a PCI-E x16 and x1 slot, and also a mini-pci I believe, which is not helpful. Usage will be the following: Streaming music and playing movies. The movies may be from DVD, but more likely be downloaded (legally) from sites like Amazon Unbox. I'm not sure of the sound format they use (mostly dialogue driven stuff).

The music is mostly MP3 sampled at 320 kHz, but I'm working on implementing FLAC. Unfortunately, FLAC is a lot of work, I have to re-rip my CDs in WAV format, then encode them with FLAC, delete the waves, and seperate them so I still have the MP3s. (I might be missing something here)

The media PC will be hooked up to the reciever, however I do have a Pioneer Elite DVD-Audio/ SACD player with 6-channel burr-brown DACs so for CD/DVD/SACD audio and movies I'm thinking I can just stick with that.

Telstar · Post by **Telstar** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:50 am

Matija wrote: Uhm... M-Audio also makes high-quality speakers (studio monitors). Are you sure you aren't confusing them with someone else?

Absolutely not.
I listened to the 5", 6" and 8" tweeters monitors in a shop with a studio mixer source. Their sound was dull, dirty and unpleasant. M-audio monitors are definitely NOT high-quality.

I liked instead in the same place the Event ALP5 and the Tannoy Reveal 5A that i then bought.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:50 am

I had some questions when I needed a soundcard, since the onboard audio doesn't support real-time encoding of Dolby Digital or DTS. That's all I was looking for, since all I use is my home theater and an optical cable for pc audio(well, i've also got a usb headset). My search ended with the Sondigo Callisto. It uses a c-media chip. It's a USB sound card that offers real time encoding of DDL and DTS. The onyl downside is that the only output is an optical out. It was exactly what I needed. I didn't come across any other USB sound cards that offered this for the same $50 price tag.

Telstar · Post by **Telstar** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:53 am

djkest wrote: The music is mostly MP3 sampled at 320 kHz, but I'm working on implementing FLAC. Unfortunately, FLAC is a lot of work, I have to re-rip my CDs in WAV format, then encode them with FLAC, delete the waves, and seperate them so I still have the MP3s. (I might be missing something here)

Yes, get EAC, plus autoflac plugin, it is much faster, like ripping in mp3 with lame.

But before you do all the work, try with a cd that u know very well to see if you hear the difference.

I suggest u the asus xonar in pci-e version.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:53 am

I wonder if there are sound cards that are better than others and decoding and playing back MP3 and other digital audio formats?

I also remember there was a guy on here who made audiophile soundcards, dont' know where he is tho.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 7:15 pm

Telstar wrote:
djkest wrote: The music is mostly MP3 sampled at 320 kHz, but I'm working on implementing FLAC. Unfortunately, FLAC is a lot of work, I have to re-rip my CDs in WAV format, then encode them with FLAC, delete the waves, and seperate them so I still have the MP3s. (I might be missing something here)
Yes, get EAC, plus autoflac plugin, it is much faster, like ripping in mp3 with lame.

But before you do all the work, try with a cd that u know very well to see if you hear the difference.

I suggest u the asus xonar in pci-e version.

I preferred dbPower Amp with Flac plug in and accurip. EAC was such a pain to work with I gave up when I found a better option. Definitely FLAC is way better than MP3 for a good audio system.

If that Shuttle is already bought...I guess USB is the option. To me audio is the #1 priority,really.so a PCI slot is a must..especially for a media PC.
I'm not current on USB soundcards but tend to trust those who do a good PCI card

Telstar · Post by **Telstar** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 1:40 am

ronrem wrote: I preferred dbPower Amp with Flac plug in and accurip. EAC was such a pain to work with I gave up when I found a better option. Definitely FLAC is way better than MP3 for a good audio system.

If that Shuttle is already bought...I guess USB is the option. To me audio is the #1 priority,really.so a PCI slot is a must..especially for a media PC.
I'm not current on USB soundcards but tend to trust those who do a good PCI card

Can you give me some link or it's easy to google it?

There are many good usb soundcards, all depends on his budget. I can think of EMU. The advantage is to have the DAC out of the PC, which could trasmit some noise (well that's true for non silent pcs anyway

).

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:02 am

djkest wrote:Okay, so we can clarify here, since you guys are wondering about usage.
Media PC: this is the one in question...

Then you can directly skip Creative gaming cards.
Ideal situation would be having card which can AC3 or DTS encode played sounds (of downloaded movies) so you would need to have only one cable to reciever and digital transfer would make DAC quality of card non-concern.

Gaming PC: SB Audigy 2 ZS, which based on what I've heard here is probably fine for that. Speakers used on this are some Klipsch Pro-Media 2.1s I've had for about 5 years now. I like these speakers for the money, and for gaming. I'm not really sold on 5.1 computer gaming, it would require a special room to accomplish this.

Yep, already good placing of speakers would be demanding and then there's acoustics of room itself.
Considering that good headphones and good surround simulation might often enable better sound in games than just sticking cheap 5.1 speaker set into room where gaming PC happens to be.

kittle wrote:I had a turtle beach card. upgraded from an old soundblaster card that died. The sound quality difference was amazing, but I quickly found that gaming performance was very bad. Whenever i turned on '3d sound' my framerate dropped by 50%
Since I do gaming qutie a bit and zero recording, i eventually upgraded to a sb audigy 2 card. sound quality dropped but gameing performance is now very nice.

That Turtle must have had even less hardware than C-Media Oxygen based cards have...
You might want to go for X-Fi card, in reviews it's audio quality is considered easily as best of Creative's gaming cards. Also Auzentech's X-Fi based card might be good option because they're going to add AC3 and DTS encoding support to it which would remove need for "analog pipes" to reciever.

skeeder · Post by **skeeder** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:00 pm

Believe it or not I registered because of this thread.

Obviously you spend a little more than the average person on audio and that is fantastic which makes us best friends.

I currently run the following setup.
Yamaha RX-V659 -> B&W601 S3
I'm using a AV710 by Chaintech (the 7.1 you mentioned)

I would highly take a look at the ESI Juli@. Its the card I've been seriously debating replacing mine with. as long as your not worrying about surround or DTS or anything else. (people should have dedicated players for that sort of thing anyways) I've been told its quality and DAC is the best on the market. Its price $249. Its harder to find...but I've never seen a bad review.

Thanks for giving me an excuse to finally register.

jfeldt · Post by **jfeldt** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 5:04 pm

smilingcrow wrote:Both output using an optical connection to the same amplifier input using the same cable so there were no other variables introduced. I can only put the difference down to jitter!

That would be one explanation, and it is a good one, but I think at least as likely of one is that different Operating systems and different sound card drivers process the audio differently. For example, if one is using windows, unless you bypass the kernel mixer and use ASIO drivers, you are getting resampled output through your digital outs. Different cards also have different drivers, which may use different resampling algorithms.

mcoleg · Post by **mcoleg** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:01 pm

yah, Juli@ looks like a tempting piece of hardware... every now and then i almost pull the trigger on it and the only thing that stops me is that i have too much hardware around as is

btw, i hear positive noises about Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 recently... seems very few ppl have it yet though.

there's also Onkyo SE-200PCI, which looks like it would have a nice, clean sound, what with all the caps...

on usb side, there's E-MU 0202/0404 USB, CORDA MOVE and HeadRoom's dac's... some other usb pieces like M-AUDIO, Turtle Beach, and even some cheap $10-15 no-name sticks can sound pretty good.

Klaatu · Post by **Klaatu** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:15 am

I'm not sure if I fit in here, but I have a Klipsch iFi speaker system, and a Creative X-fi soundcard. I had an M-Audio Revolution 5.1, but noticed I was taking about a 25% framerate hit under games, so I went with an Audigy 2 and eventually to the X-Fi. The M-Audio did give me slightly better sound quality (although I didn't perceive it as significant, or worth the framerate hit).
The Klipsches seemed like the best out of box PC type speakers I could get, and the X-Fi seems to do a decent job, even under Vista. Does anyone have any suggestions as far as direction as to where I should go from here?

Sound card quandry

Sound card quandry

Re: Sound card quandry