Best audio card in your opinion

[Skuzzy]

Turtle Beach used to build a good card.  They stopped designing cards a few years ago and only offer repackaged sound chips, from other companies, on a card.

M-Audio boards have lousy, to abysmal, DirectX Sound (DirectSound) support, so they suck for gaming.  They do provide the best quality of sound for other standard Windows stuff (ASIO, WAV, ....).

The Creative Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS lines are probably the best, most stable sound cards Creative has ever shipped.  The X-Fi line is coming along.

Not a big fan of Creative Labs, but they are the only sound card company left on the market actually making sound cards which can actually provide a better game experience through lower CPU usage, and better quality of sound.

Just avoid using them with VIA chipset motherboards.  Or, at least, the older VIA chipset motherboards as VIA really had some compatibility issues.

[Masherbrum]

I'm pegged at 85FPS

I use onboard.

Old PC dropped vox with a SB Audigy.   I'll refrain from installing the card.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Just avoid using them with VIA chipset motherboards.  Or, at least, the older VIA chipset motherboards as VIA really had some compatibility issues.

As a follow-up to this comment...

My new motherboard has a VIA chipset. However, I don't seem to have any problems running my Audigy1 at all. It might be that these problems are gone, with the newer chips.

[Skuzzy]

Originally posted by Masherbrum
I'm pegged at 85FPS

I use onboard.

Old PC dropped vox with a SB Audigy.   I'll refrain from installing the card.

Dropped VOX can be a deluge of things.  Onboard sound chips will always use far more CPU cycles than a good quality add-on sound card will.  It is the nature of the beast.

I have never dropped VOX on my Audigy 2 nor Audigy 2 ZS cards.

My first guess when someone has a sound card issue goes to the interrupts.  If a sound card shares an interrupt with another medium to high data usage device, there is a very good chance sound will be erratic and VOX will probably be lost as well.

The big trick with any add-in sound card is to make sure it has its own dedicated physical interrupt channel.
---

Krusty, good to know.  Maybe they (VIA) finally did fix the issues.

[FireOf59]

Just built a new PC and ended up sending the soundcard back. Audio and game was good w/o.

Didnt think of the on board as hogging CPU resources.

Any idea how much that can slow down fps?  (just a rough guess?)

I stay around 60-75 now so no problems but hey; if sound card makes it even smoother...

[Simaril]

Found thread on audio card search...and have a little something to add.

I've used onboard with a new motherboard, and had no noticeable performance hits. However, I've had long time problems with VOX in TA and in other arenas.

I was just talking with Hammer, who also recently built a computer. He said that he ran into odd little dropped sound problems in a variety of arenas and settings. He couldnt track them down, but tried sticking an old card in to see what happened -- and all sound problems disappeared. As he said, "Problem was solved but never identified."

I'm planning to get a card and see if it resolves my difficulties....I'll keep you posted.

[FireOf59]

Thanks Simaril.

Love the Quote by the way; I HATE whiners.

Look fwd to hearing what you found out.

[Jazz1]

This is a great card for home theater; a lousy card for AH because of lousy drivers and lousy tech support (they haven't answered my questions).  With AH I have tried both direct input mic and usb mic.  The volume is low on both.  The usb cuts out frequently both send and receive.  The direct input causes the engine noise to double for the first few seconds of the transmission and also has the cutout problems.  They have a beta set of drivers, but when I installed them they didn't show up as being installed - still waiting for tech support to answer.  It's a beautiful card to look at, with it's gold connections; maybe I'll by a picture frame and put the fricking thing on the wall where it belongs. Don't buy it, at least until they fix the drivers.

[FOGOLD]

Audigys are fine but I have had isues with blue screening in certain games (dragonshard and all Tony Hawk's games). Reducing the sound acceleration usually fixes it, especially Tony Hawk's games.

[Jazz1]

Gave up on the audigy and decided not to install it in my new system: core2 E6600/evga 680i SLI mobo/evga 8800GTX video.  Using the onboard sound w/logitech usb desktop mic seem to work real well (extreme power seems to make up for any deficiencies of an onboard audio system)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I bought a Terratec card for my new gaming box. At least they advertised 100% directx support, time will tell.

I expect to get the parts in 1-2 days.

[Jazz1]

Originally posted by Jazz1
Gave up on the audigy...


Oops, I meant I gave up on the Auzentech X-Plosion DTS card in the above post...

(audigy is the soundblaster series that most people are using with good results in AH).

But I'm keeping it in a drawer, just in case they get around to fixing the drivers.  I just sent them a ticket with a copy of my negative post. Maybe that with light a fire under them...

[MOIL]

Get the X-Fi and be done with it. Superb gaming sound!!!!

[Jazz1]

I'm using the onboard sound on my new "black box" (evga Nvidia NForce 680i SLI mobo) and it works great with AH, so I won't be installing a sound card and using up a pci slot (that evga 8800 video card take up a lot of room)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The $40 terratec that I bought sounds better than any Creative I've heard and works 100% fine with all my games. Optical in/out, 5.1 sound and superior sound quality.