hi every 1 ive been doin abit of reaserchin on some audio gear recently. ive finally decided on these 2 things >> 1 - turtle beach hpx headset 2 - edifier s530 2.1 speakers setup ok now im runnin onboard ...... for some reason i really wanna say plastic fantastic lol anyway my question is which sound card would suit this setup the most. ive also looked into a few cards but havent completely decided yet. not in order or preference 1 - asus xonar essence stx 2 - auzentech forte 7.1 i can get both of these cards in australia 3 - ht omega claro halo or xt i be listenin to music, watchin movies and gamin. an advance thanks to all. i be very interested in knowin what u think and other recommendations would be great. ^.^
+1 the creative cards are great, dispell any myths about them being poop. i think their products still suffer from build quality issues, but their sound cards dont. Get a creative X-fi, but dont buy one with additional hardware gubbins, just the x-fi fatal1ty or something without the 5.25 inch expansion bay as its pretty useless. I switched from a terratec for my current pci x-fi probably 4 yrs ago now and it great...for gaming especially its fantastic. As azreal mentioned...http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-058-CL&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat= or the pci version if you can find it, although if you mobo supprts pci E then get the afformentioned creative x fi titanium
Asus Xonar or HT Omega. The Omega is an "old" card now - the Asus is built off the same CMedia chipset though and it's still a very good card. I much prefer them over Creative still. In fact: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/03/09/HT_Omega_Claro/1 2 year old review!
Creative's hardware may be good, I don't think anyone doubts that it's decent enough, but the software support is famously crap.
I have the X-FI titanium champ with the breakout box and i wish i had gone with the Asus Xonar. Creative has a real problem releasing drivers to keep the hardware up to date with new OSs. They even fired one of their own software developers to stop him from releasing drivers that would have let many owners keep their X-Fi cards post XP. I like the Front I/O box for ease of use mind you and the Asus doesn't have one, this was what made the decision for the Champion.
I have an original X-Fi music card, non of this low profile PCB of later cards. However i didn't really notice that much of an improvement over AC'97 onboard audio... Might just go digital with a quality external DAC and amp! lol!
I was planning on getting the x-fi titanium but it was on back order, so went with an xonar D1 and love it... it has the EAX emulation, and I usually game with music on, so it overpowers any directional sound, but when I don't have music on, I notice the difference in sound quality. My old headset was crap, bit better with a soundcard, but with quality speakers and headset, you really notice the difference between onboard, and quality. With the xonar, I love how its easy to switch between 5.1 and headphones for when I'm gaming, lots of different effects which I don't actually use, and out of the box without any adjustments its great, the only thing I had to do was increase the bass a bit through the sound cards control panel, but I just love excess bass... I just like not having to mess with multiple settings to make things sound the way they should, my old soundcard I had to adjust like everything to get it to how I liked it (it was a creative audigy ZS or something along those lines)
Bindi, there are quite a few Asus Xonars now: http://www.scan.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=asus+xonar Is there much difference? Like, between the low-profile £70 one and the uber-beefy £110 fan-cooled thing?
I got one of the first DX's in the UK and I wouldn't change it for a single second. Easily better than the Creative stuffs.
I'd say which sound card you should get heavily depends on the OS you're planning to use it with. To put it bluntly, if you're using Vista and later then you might as well just use on-board sound, since Microsoft has removed dedicated audio hardware support (as of Vista "DirectX" actually means Direct3D, because all other components are gone). Of course some DACs may result in better analog output, but if you output digital audio then there's (sadly) really nothing to be gained from using a dedicated sound card. As for ASUS' support for EAX4/5 it doesn't actually exist. The ASUS drivers pretend to support it to any application asking for it but all you get is a bad approximation of the "real thing". It's a shame really.
The Xonars give great sound for their price, just beware that the PCI versions are prone to glitchy drivers and the PCI-E versions don't play nicely with some chipsets.
I have the HT Omega Claro and it is an INCREDIBLE card. Sound is very clear and crisp. Also the drivers are almost 0 bloat. only a small app for changing the sound settings. None of the creative bloat crapware.
hater. you only get bloatware when you get one of the underpowered cards like the SoundBlaster, and Creative has been really good with their products ever since their firmware issue... They're way better now.
