Hey there, i purchased my new z5500ds a week ago and i love them , they crank realll hard but im using onboard sound REALTEK HD AUDIO 5.1 I wanna go digital output i want the best for these speakers. What soundcard does everyone suggest ? i heard a wisetale somewhere if you crank the speakers and have a shitty soundcard you could damage the speakers is this true? i have on volume+boost 11 ...everyday.... cheers.
get something from the x-fi line up. I dont think that anyone has anything bad to say about it. I plan on getting one soon to replace my years old soundblaster audigy.
Dude Creative is the best go with X-FI cards they are good, One of my friends use it, Also I use Audigy 2 Platiuman and I'm happy with it and I don't think that I need to change it, It works with my HI-FI very well also work with my sony headphones with no problems. Good luck.
Ok, first of all.. You have these things at boost 11 all the time? WHY? Secondly, I'm running mine from my onboard sound via optical and they do crackle at boost 11, and much more at boost 22. Although the sound quality is fine, much better than via analogue (no whine). To be honest, they'd crackle at boost 11 with any sound card... Using digital or analogue. But running at boost 11 all day will kill them pretty quick. God knows why you're running them that high though. Oh and a crap sound card won't kill your speakers.
The EMU-0404 is a great card for the price. The digital output stage is so amazing, it doesn't matter what DAC you have, your speakers will never do it justice. If I had to pick, I would get the emu, I never found soundcards to make any major differences in anything but sound quality.
You'll need at least an Auzentech X-Plosion if you're using optical because you'll only get stereo sound out (Unless you use the DD or DTS passthrough, but thats only for movies). You need a sound card that supports Dolby Digital Live to get 5.1 out of digital, and to be completely honest, all the sound cards out at the moment that support DDL are better imo than any of the creative cards. Oh, and creative driver support is a joke.
Wow. Having them on Boost 11 all the time is insane. I usually have mine on like 3/4 full at most in my small room, sometimes lower when my pc goes nuts n kicks it out a lot louder than usual. Do you like have your speakers in one room n listen in another or something? or around the house? If i have them on boost 11 in my room for 1 day i'd prolly go deaf. Actually on topic, i have no idea about soundcards.
Stereo yes, but the logitechs will do 6 channel channel stereo similar to Neo6. I never found surround sound to really ever work anyways, so I stick with what's simpler. The EMU series was bought out buy creative, but creative doesn't interfere with production, so the drivers are fine.
Can you please explain how "6 Channel Stereo" works? Because stereo and 6 channel don't go together, you can't have 6 channel stereo. Stereo is 2 channels, where as 6 channel is.. 6 channels. Surround sound is amazing, especially when we're talking DD or DTS. Ever watched the pod race from Star Wars Episode One in full surround sound with the speakers cranked? It blows your socks off. And just stick 'creative driver support' into google and have a gander at the results, creative have possibly the WORST driver support ever, brilliant hardware, awful software. Although, when it works properly, it works well. It sort of bugs me, that you've bought possibly one of the best 5.1 sets out there, and yet you're using stereo? You might as well burn that center speaker then.
I'm using an X-Fi extreme music with my logi's and tbh they sound immense. The drivers fail at life, so look up youp pax if you get one.
6 channel stereo works with music. It, in a sense upscales and mixes the two channels, then outputs them to the appropriate speaker. It's basically like having two stereo's, with the addition of a center channel mixing the left and right with slight dBL increases and decreases. Of course this wouldn't work with media already encoded into more than 2 channels. Uh, I don't own the Logitechs, and I don't use surround sound. Those Logitechs are far from the best. Surround Sound is obnoxious to me. Having to get the right room treatments setup, calibrating the channels. My biggest annoyance is the fact that almost nothing comes out of the rear channels, and that the center channel is generally the loudest channel, handleing diaglog and effects. It just seems like a waste when half the time, almost nothing is coming out of the mains. I know creative has poor driver support. You must not have read what I said. EMU used to be it's own company, making it's own cards and drivers. Creative bought them. They bought the name and licensing. Creative takes no part in the production of the products or the drivers. If you are going for sound quality alone, and don't care about true surround sound, then go for the EMU or M-audio's 2496. If you want to keep it simpler, then go for an X-fi. The lack of driver support is more often than not, blown out of proportion.
That is not stereo Stereo is 2 channels, the second you upscale, mix and add channels, it ceases to be stereo
