Looking for a new sound card?

[adamhamilton]

I'm looking for a new sound card - what do you recommend (not too pricey though)?


My current setup is:

ABIT BH6 rev 1.0 (LN BIOS)
128Mb SDRAM
Celeron 300A @ 112 x 4.5 (504MHz)
G400-MAX
Adaptic SCSI (PCI)
3COM 10base-T card (ISA)

[Echo|Fox]

A Sound Blaster live, without a doubt. I picked up a Live value a while back, and it was one of my better purchases.
It comes in many flavors, but since you want cheap, you should try and find an SB Live! Value yourself, as they usually only cost about $79 canadian ($55 US? or less?) for the OEM version. About $160 canadian ($120 US?) will get you a retail boxed SB Live X-Gamer or MP3+. These are virtually identical to the Live value, except they have a digital SPDIF out if you want to output your audio using that.
The difference between the X-Gamer and the MP3+ is the software bundle. The X-Gamer has a good selection of full version games, and the MP3+ has MP3 encoding and ripping software (and not hardware accelerated MP3 encoding, as the rumor goes).
A _lot_ more ($300 canadian .. maybe $200 US) gets the new Live Platinum, which has the LiveDrive which fits in a 5 1/4" drivebay, and gives you all of our inputs and outputs, volume control, etc, on the front of your case. Very cool, but i'd never spend that much $$ on a soundcard.

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P3-450@558mhz@2.1v, ABit BE6, 128megs 7.3125ns PC133 SDRAM, SB Live! Value, G400 32meg Dualhead (@120%), Acer ALN-201 PCI 10bT NIC, 6.5gig Seagate Medalist Pro 7200rpm, 13gig Quantum Fireball CR, Yamaha 4416e Burner, Pioneer 10x DVD-ROM, Panasonic e70 17" Monitor

[adamhamilton]

I thought the SB live had compatability problems with ABIT MB/G400s ?

[HedsSpaz]

The SBLive seems to have compatability problems with just about every board
That doesn't stop it from being a damn good card though
Most of the time you can get it to behave by forcing the IRQ in the BIOS. So be afraid that it won't work in your system. Anyway, I too would heartily recomend the Live Value. I got mine back in June for 45$ US plus shipping. Definately worth it.

HedsSpaz

[adamhamilton]

How does it perform in old DOS based games?

How many IRQs does it use (can I stick it on 5 like my SB32 is now)?

What I/O connectors does it have?

Thanks,

[HedsSpaz]

Ooohhhh, you had to mention dos games. Um, well, it has this fun little driver the creates a device that tells the system there is this thing called "SB16 Emulation". And basically it sucks. I've gotten the music to work in most of my dos games, but the fx don't tend to work to great. You can force the card onto whatever IRQ you like, however, because of the SB16 Emu it does eat 2 IRQ's.

It's got the standard Midi/Gameport. Mic in, Front speakers out, Rear Speakers out, and Aux in I think. On the inside it's got CDROM analog, SPDIF, AUX, and another one that I can't remember.

So, if you want you're dos games to work( course I haven't checked it since I installed Liveware 3.0) you may want to consider something else, say a PCI Awe 64 or a PCI512, or an MX300. But if you can live without some of your dos games and want really kick ass windows sound then the SBLive is the way to go.
(One more caveat, if you run linux, there are some very early beta drivers that Creative doesn't support and they refuse to hand out specs so that somebody else can make drivers.)

Hope that helps

HedsSpaz

[adamhamilton]

Thanks for the info.

Actually Linux IS something that I use, so the card has to work there also!

What's this MX300?

[HedsSpaz]

The Diamond Monster MX300. It uses Aureal's Vortex2 Chip. Its the only 3d surround sound card competing with the SBLive. Unfortunately it does not have official support for Linux either.

I just checked www.opensound.com and apparently they are slowly coming along with support for both the MX300 and the SBLive. In case you don't know what opensound is they make 3rd party sound drivers for unix and linux based systems. If you don't mind paying a little extra for drivers then you will eventually be able to use either of these cards under Linux. However, if you don't feel like doing that then you should probably go with a SB PCI128 or an Awe64.

Myself, I'm going to keep hoping that eventually Creative will release some real drivers for the SBLive. They do have beta drivers if you want to take a look. http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux

HedsSpaz

[Frank]

SBLIVE for sure.

Abit BX6v2
PII333@560
256MB RAM
TX 12GB Quantum
SMC NIC
Viking 56K
CL V2 12MB SLI
G400 DH 32MB
and SB LIVE

All live happily under one roof.

[Mark F]

Nothing against the SB Lives, but I'm had very good results with my AUREAL based cards. First a VORTEX (MX200) and then a VORTEX2 (MX300), my only complaint is the poor turnover of drivers by DIAMOND (and people complain about MATROX's driver scheduel). There are new cards with AUREAL's VORTEX2 chip, an advanced version by AUREAL, and they have to write the drivers themselves, should be cool!

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD



[This message has been edited by Mark F (edited 29 October 1999).]

[Zwisch]

I would stay clear of the Diamond MX300... since Aureal dropped their support to Diamond... newest drivers for this card are from last febuary... this is crap!!

You should get a real Vortex2 card, Aureal starting making their own boards and they work like a charm.. even better than the MX300 since the high Vortex 2 has SPDIF out build in and increadible sound when using only 2 speakers!!!


*** Motub, what are you talking about.. waiting for the MX400???? haven't you read the specs?? The MX400 will not have an Aureal chip with Vortex engine... it will be powered by an ESS chipset... which are amoungs the WORST chips for sound and worst also for compatibility.... One thing for sure is that will NEVER get an MX400 even if they pay me! Furthermore, we can clearly see the direction that DIamond is taking... If you are not an S3 fan, simply stay clear of this name!!! (the have bad support and never update their drivers...) every company is droping them! (3dfx, Nvidia, Aureal...) what's left of them???

Z

[This message has been edited by Zwisch (edited 30 October 1999).]

[motub]

Also, you can just go to Aureal's site and get their drivers for Vortex 2 based cards... the drivers are newer and the utilities are better as well...

I'm in the MX300 camp (waiting for the MX400)...

But this is just a war of opinions and affections... what do you actually expect to use your PC sound system <u>for</u>?

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Holly

What? System specs? Oh, yes, right...well, at the moment, it's: Soyo 5EMA, K6-2 333, 256MB PC100 SDRAM, Maxtor 7GB HDD, LS-120, Promise Ultra33 EIDE controller, Diamond Monster Sound MX300, HP 8100i CD-RW, Hi-Val (Nakamichi) 16X 5-disk CD changer, Win98 +SR1...oh yeah, and a Millennium G200 8MB SGRAM.



[This message has been edited by motub (edited 30 October 1999).]

[motub]

Musta missed that, Zwisch, thanks!!! I think I just saw a pre-announcement announcement which may not have had specs at all... and I've been so charmed by the MX300 (if not Diamond's support) that I just made an assumption... ... a rare miss...

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Holly

[Zwisch]

It's realy sick isn't it... Diamond are using the same name, MX400, to get more sales out of the new shitty product... They must not have high expectation from their new products to do such a thing... In the same way their next video card will be a Viper!!! (from the good line of nVidia products) but powered by an S3 chip... they are realy sick puppys...

Just glad to see that you will not fall for it

[Mark F]

Just saw the new AUREAL card, and have to say from visual inspection I like my MX300 better. The MX300 has gold contacts and harware, the AUREAL are not gold and have plastic hardware. The AUREAL board is also much smaller (this leads me to think heat will be more contained, and how will it respond to an OC'ed environment), maybe it's just more compact but...? Also the cost of an MX300 and MX25 (SPDIF) is about the same as an AUREAL 2500, but the AUREAL has the SPDIF onboard (ie. one card, one slot), and I like that.
I used to be impressed with DIAMOND and their products, but can't say I like the direction they are moveing in since the merger with S3. S3's best time with support and drivers is about the same as MATROX worst (around the time of the G200 and the company "shake-up". Bad days for MATROX, but a consistent patern for S3. It doesn't bode well for DIAMOND (but then consumers tend to have a short memory, and those who forget the past are bound to relive it).

But back to the original question:

Both SB LIVE and AUREAL products sound great. The AUREAL based products have not had the incompatability or hardware conflict problems that the SB's have had. There are also more games available takeing advantage of A3D than EAX.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD