Sound Card Reccomendations

I've been using the onboard audio of my computer for some time now and I think it's time to get a sound card in order to combat the demands of these power hog beasts of games coming out.

I've done some research and it seems that the Sound Blaster X-FI Xtreme Gamer is the best performance boost for the money.

Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer

Does anyone else have a reccomendation or information that they can add to what I've come to?

Thanks for the help ^^

P.S.
I have an old Audigy 2 ZS in my closet. But I don't think that would give me much of a performance boost, would it?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I don't think that Creative has worked any new (gaming-related) features into their sound cards since the bloody Sound Blaster Live. Add-in sound cards are pretty much useless nowadays, especially if you're running Vista, which apparently insists on doing all of its sound mixing in software. Add to that the fact that Creative Labs has quite possibly the worst QA and drivers in the entire computing industry, and it's hard to make a case for buying a new sound card unless your onboard sound blew up or something.

Granted, a new sound card will give you a boost in sound quality over integrated sound, but unless you have pretty good headphones or speakers, it's unlikely that you'll be able to tell the difference.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well if Vista's going to be doing it with the CPU either way then it defeats the purpose of getting a card for that purpose alone I suppose. I may get a fatal1ty one later for the directional hedphone support but that's going to be a time later next year when I have money.

Thanks Adol, you really did just save me $100 - $140. I appreciate that.

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I suppose I could be a bit clearer on Vista's sound support; games that use OpenAL should still support hardware acceleration. All of my other points still stand, though, and the majority of games use DirectSound/DS3D anyways. :\ Moreover, PCI X-Fi cards apparently have all sorts of trouble with Vista and newer motherboards. While there is a PCI-Express X-Fi variant...Creative apparently doesn't supply end-user support for it.

Dan (of Dan's Data infamy) sums up my views on Creative's cards better than I can, frankly.

Creative claims to be working on a driver that will wrap DirectSound calls to OpenAL ones, which will enable sound acceleration on Vista. It's not out yet, and, given the company's habit of releasing horrid drivers and breaking lofty promises, I would definitely wait and see.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Are there any other reliable companies with performance enhancing audio hardware for Vista?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Here's my question:

If you are running Vista, shouldn't you already have a very good performing system. Why would you have to worry about finding a sound card optimized for gaming.

The thing is that all of the popular cards like Sound Blaster probably sound like ass. And I'm only saying probably, because I haven't really heard anything by Creative other than my old Audigy 2. But popular opinion on the web is fueling my initial assumptions.

I couldn't recommend anything other than professional sound cards. I run an Audiophile 192, which obviously makes no sense for gaming, but I heard the Revolution 7.1 is pretty good, although your game might run a bit slower.

I wonder how Vista's ASIO support is...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Megalith Prime

Here's my question:

If you are running Vista, shouldn't you already have a very good performing system. Why would you have to worry about finding a sound card optimized for gaming.

The thing is that all of the popular cards like Sound Blaster probably sound like ass. And I'm only saying probably, because I haven't really heard anything by Creative other than my old Audigy 2. But popular opinion on the web is fueling my initial assumptions.

I couldn't recommend anything other than professional sound cards. I run an Audiophile 192, which obviously makes no sense for gaming, but I heard the Revolution 7.1 is pretty good, although your game might run a bit slower.

I wonder how Vista's ASIO support is...

As far as I've read, Vista completely rehauls how the OS deals with sound. Basically, instead of the sound card being able to be accessed directly through the drivers seperate of the OS, Vista itself must talk with the sound card. There used to be DirectSound, and now there isn't. Which basically makes having a sound card useless, because the CPU has to do the work anyway.

That being said, good motherboards these days have great on-board audio, and they have VERY little performance hit.

Vista ASIO support as far as I've heard sucks. But I don't really know TBH.

FELIPE NO

Yay, onboard audio has improved a ton since the days of the AWE32. Which, incidentally, was probably the best thing Creative Labs ever made (that goes in triplicate if you rate hardware by its size), but I digress. Geez, the chip on my ASUS P5K has 8 channel output, 96KHz output, DSP processing (probably done in software, mind you), and a noise floor that's pretty much inaudible. Hell, that's almost equal to the Gravis Ultrasound!

[sidetrack]I have no less than THREE AWE32 cards for some reason. Yes, they really are more than a foot long. Stupid new computers not having ISA slots, cos' I really wouldn't mind having a real FM synthesizer instead of DOSBox/Adplug's emulation.

[/sidetrack]

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Ok, I need some advice on a soundcard. I've currently got a MIDI input keyboard( M-Audio Keystation 49e) but when using Finale, I get slight (but very annoying) lagtime between the interval of which I press the keys and the sound emits from the speakers. This was using my onboard sound (Realtek ALC888). I borrowed my friends X-FI Fatality and noticed the lag went away.

So I'm looking for a soundcard that will allow MIDI input from my keyboard to the card for recording purposes that will eliminate the lag that I experience with my onboard sound. I'm looking at the M-Audio Audiophile 192, but is there other better solutions out there? I play games occasionally, and I've read that Creative cards were best for gaming (except for the horrid drivers), but I'm looking for other cards that can support my MIDI keyboard. Also to note, I'm using Klipsh Promedia 2.1 speakers.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Creative is a garbage company, you should never support them, especially considering the crackling problems that even their new cards often encounter, as well as terrible drivers.

Vista does not use hardware accelerated sound so it doesn't matter what card you use. I'd suggest a lower end audiophile-type card.
I hear m-audio is half decent, and there was another with decent reviews by some odd company that's hard to find, don't even remember the name now though. Think it was like $80.
Honestly, I'd just get anything NOT made by creative.

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People keep saying that creative sucks, but that appears to be as deep as the issue gets. Why do their cards suck? I've heard some people claim that the Signal to Noise ratio isn't that great, but if it's being used for game, it should suffice just fine. Most people use separate hardware for audio work. Also, if the creative cards are better for gaming (we're talking XP here), they can't really make that much of a difference can they? I mean, as far as a Core 2 Duo's concerned, decoding audio in-game is like slicing margarine with a chainsaw.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Creative was the king of the ISA soundcard world. Their PCI-solutions always had their problems because they used methods of data transfer that were very stressful on the PCI-bus. On few chipsets that even caused data corruption on the bus. I hoped that was only a problem with the Live!-Hardware, but the Audigy-Series showed the same behaviour. Maybe it is still like that?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

waaaiittt...

so the soundcard "problem" with vista is just the lack of performance boost right?

how about music quality?

I bought logitech z-5300e on black friday for cheap, but my laptop(vista) only has a 2 channel soundcard(High Definition Audio 2.0 .... some generic crap?). So i want to purchase a usb device that gives 6 channel support so i can plug all 3 of the speaker's plugs.

I'm split between usb soundcards and those usb 5.1 support devices....

So, in relevance to this thread, are USB soundcards anygood? and if so which ones?

How ya doing, buddy?

I can get Kernel Streaming to work in Vista, but I don't use it due to onboard audio only having 1 output channels (kernel streaming takes use of that, and I can't have other sound output for the time).

There's also OpenAL, a not-so-new open source hardware acceleration standard, similar to opengl. Creative is trying to emulate their old eax crap on vista using openAL. I'm not sure if OpenAL support is dependant on hardware or drivers, though.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by evilboris

I'm not sure if OpenAL support is dependant on hardware or drivers, though.

It is. OpenAL can use different backends, always providing some sort of fallback backend, implemented through an already existing sound API like WaveOut, DirectSound/DirectSound3D on windows, or ALSA/OSS/etc. on Linux.
The best however is if a native backend is used that talks directly to the hardware, so no overhead through API rerouting is generated. This is done by Creative on Windows. Vista doesn't allow that because of the famous DRM dongling.

How ya doing, buddy?