Good Sound Card

[lancethepants]

I've been unhappy with onboard sound of my motherboard for some time. I'm not an audiophile or anything, but I can appreciate good sound, and I think the onboard lacks. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't get as loud as I would want it to. I turn everything to max, and it's semi-accaptable, but I think I'm ready to move on.

I have an evga 750i ftw mobo, and currently all my expansion slots are filled or covered except for one vanilla pci slot. I think I'd like a card that offloads the sound processing off the cpu. It'd be nice too if it had spdif connectors. Any suggestion please.

thanks

edit: oh, I know that good cards may cost a bit, I be willing to throw $100 at it or somewhere in that range. I will go higher though.

[thephilosophizer]

The first thing that comes to mind is what are you using for speakers? The volume issue is an amplification issue, which is generally a matter for your speakers to deal with, unless you are using headphones; but even then the purpose of a sound card is generally not to serve as an amplifier.

[lancethepants]

I primarily use headphones. Don't really have a speaker system, though in the future I have planned to buy a 5.1 system setup when I can afford to shell some money at it. I want this card to be a good performer for a surround sound situation. I know there are some decent high end stereo sound card out there, but I guess I'll clarify I'd like a surround sound card. I've had better luck with other boards on headphone volume, but this one seems stop short.

[ShyguyXPC]

Asus's Xonar AV100/200 Chip/Series cards, they have PCI and PCIe versions in their line up.

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,Input Devices,Sound Cards,ASUS

Auzentech's X-fi cards (better than Creatives own cards), X-fi Prelude is PCI, Forte is a low profile PCIe card. also their C-Media chip based cards are good as well.

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,Input Devices,Sound Cards,Auzentech



HT Omega's Striker 7.1 (this is the one I currently use, runs fine in Windows 7 with no problems, using Coaxial SPDIF out and hooked to a 500W 5.1 Home Theater for my speakers) and Claro Cards are good too. most are PCI.

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,Input Devices,Sound Cards,HT Omega

bit cheaper cards that aren't bad too:

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,Input Devices,Sound Cards,Turtle Beach/Voyetra,Montego

(basically the same card as the TB cards above) Newegg.com - DIAMOND XtremeSound XS71DDL 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Sound Cards

[DoubleK]

Shy ftw!

"Sound" advice!

[bigBonehead]

Hello LTP.... You don't mention what OS yer running, but a great Audiophile card is the M-Audio Delta 2496

I use it with my home studio recording computer, and can highly recommend it for it's dynamic headroom, AD/DA converters, and rock solid performance.

[lancethepants]

Wow, first of all, thanks Shy for opening me up to all those different options available. I've looked on newegg before for sound cards, but hadn't been really exposed to all those you listed. I've heard of creative being a good company, and didn't know they had allowed others like Auzentech to use their x-fi chipset. I've read a lot of Creative's shotty drivers for Vista, and so that kind of pushed me away from them. I am now running Windows 7 RM (got it early from the MSDN) and so the card would need that compatibility. That M-Audio does look intriguing too for me because of the midi i/o also. Thanks for all the help guys, I'm gonna do a bit more research with what you've given me, and expect an update when I think I've made a decicion