Sound card recommendations

[Dragon]

I'd rather not have to spend more that 100 bucks, but do want something much better than the onboard I've been using.  Looked at a few on Tigerdirect and prices gererally go 20-30 bucks, then jump to 100-150.  Looking for something in betwen.

[BaldEagl]

I'd get one of these:

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

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102175

I've got an X-Fi Gamer Fataility Pro and it works/sounds great.

[Fulmar]

I'd recommend the X-FI Gamer for that price point.

Avoid the $20-30 cards, IMO, they're onboard sound quality that takes up a PCI slot.

[Dragon]

Looks good, thanks.

[Chalenge]

This card gives actual 24 bit performance (SB Audigy does not rendering in 16bit instead) uses a lot less CPU and is compatible across a wider range of systems and OSs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829127002

[Ghastly]

For AH, I'd suggest that he consider whether a better card is actually better than a card that's more mainstream ...

<S>

[Fulmar]

This card gives actual 24 bit performance (SB Audigy does not rendering in 16bit instead) uses a lot less CPU and is compatible across a wider range of systems and OSs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829127002

I see it only supports up to EAX 2.0.

[Chalenge]

Dolby and DTS technologies are well beyond EAX. I turn EAX off in Doom 3 and the environment is much more 'realistic' some would say more dynamic then X-Fi ever even thought about being.

Now that I am on Vista the X-Fi was dropping out every time more than one sound would play and stereo location was awful because you could not tell if the sound was in front or behind. Once I put the b-Enspirer in the system came alive much better then I ever knew was possible on even XP Pro.

[Skuzzy]

The problems you were having with Vista was/is related tothe Creative drivers.  Those same issues do not exist in Windows XP and Creative has better ASIO drivers than bluegears if you are into sound editing at all.

And EAX is a marketing ploy really.  I would not base a purchase decision on it.

I am probably going to look into the Xonar cards next go round though.  I need a hardware Dolby decoder in the sound card and Creative just does not seem to want to play with Dolby.

I would like to hear from anyone who is having good luck using sound editing software with sound card brands than Creative.  Gaming is not a factor in my editing system.

[Getback]

I have a xonar but have not tried any editing. It seems to be doing pretty good.

[Dragon]

I use Soundforge and Acid music to do audio creation and editing.  I do have Visturd on the 'puter I'm looking for the sound card for.  Wear headphones for audio times, the ack hates hearing the same snip of techno over and over, and AH of course, but the onboard doesn't give me good spacial info as to nmy tank location.  Motherboard is Asus P5NE-SLI or something.

[Chalenge]

You have the same one I have (MB). On XP I had really good luck with SB Live 5.1 (stereo location in AHII with even headphones was great) but it didnt work when I 'upgraded' to Vista. The drivers for SB cause issues in Vista like Skuzzy said and so I went with bluegears after reading the CPU load was like 3% (much higher with SB but the actual percentage I have forgotten). BaldEagl gave really good advice if your on XP but especially with 64bit Vista those cards are a pain! Performance was 'fair' with Vista 32 on the X-Fi Xtreme Audio and the XtremeGamer Fatality cards (being in the same price area as bluegears or higher) had lower satisfaction ratings and I was tired of Creative misleading me on their products so I went with bluegears. I also had a mysterious 'OS has stopped working' issue that also reported a need for a driver that Vista could never find or identify a device for (Vista 64) until I pulled the SB card.

The problem with Xonar was again CPU usage. The cheaper Xonar card also requires a floppy type power connection so be aware. The high end Xonar uses more CPU then bluegears and is above your stated price range (way above). Xonar also had an initial release of bad cards right at the time I was looking to buy.

[Skuzzy]

The bluegears card uses the latest C-Media chip, like a few others.  Not a bad chip, but many long term owners of bluegear cards have reported the cards simply die.  Seems they use or were using poor quality capacitors.  They could have changed it, but I have not seen anything to either confirm or deny that. That would be my only concern with them.

As far as Xonar goes, you always have to figure there will be growing pains whenever a company jumps into a new business.  The XP support seems to be pretty solid at the moment and the early issues they had with the cards have been resolved as well.  Not too worried about CPU overhead as the overhead is still lower than my Audigy 2 ZS card.

Seems to be a crap shoot, but the Xonar cards do have better sound quality than the C-Media based cards, at the moment.