sound upgrade- from Audigy

[a111087]

I have Audigy LS and I wonder if I'm missing out on sound quality.
I have a choice of 2 cards:
Rocketfish X-Fi

HT Omega Striker

Don't pay attention to extra ports or price. All I want is MUSIC in highest quality possible.
I ask, because I listen to my current card and its hard to complain about sound quality, it seems pretty high, especially compared to on-board sound. So, will there be a noticable difference and which card will give the best sound?

 

[ste2425]

my fiend if you are truly into sound quality and music as whole, never mind production you need this, it is amazing.

http://www.alesis.com/multimix8usb

 

[Mussels]

I have Audigy LS and I wonder if I'm missing out on sound quality.
I have a choice of 2 cards:
Rocketfish X-Fi

HT Omega Striker

Don't pay attention to extra ports or price. All I want is MUSIC in highest quality possible.
I ask, because I listen to my current card and its hard to complain about sound quality, it seems pretty high, especially compared to on-board sound. So, will there be a noticable difference and which card will give the best sound?

answer a few questions first.


What do you use for sound, analogue or digital? would you use digital if you had a choice?

What speakers/headphones are you using?

Do you require bass/treble control, EAX, or real time digital encoding?

Would you prefer a PCI or PCI-E based card?


as for the two you linked, i can honestly say the HT omega striker is better. that rocketfish card is just a generic cheapy that uses creative software to appear better (which you can get working on most realtek onboard with modded drivers) while the HT omega is actually the same chipset/design as the auzentech i use (and sounds awesome, although its software equaliser is a bit poor if you need bass boosting)

 

[a111087]

my fiend if you are truly into sound quality and music as whole, never mind production you need this, it is amazing.

http://www.alesis.com/multimix8usb

lol, what is that? i think its too much for me, i just want to listen to music as it is, without any effects and such. thanks thou

answer a few questions first.

What do you use for sound, analogue or digital? would you use digital if you had a choice?

What speakers/headphones are you using?

Do you require bass/treble control, EAX, or real time digital encoding?

Would you prefer a PCI or PCI-E based card?

I use headphones 99% of the time (because its nosy in my house and if i will use speakers, i will not be able to hear things clearly), they have regular analog connector. digital would be nice, but i don't know how would you go about doing digital in headphones

I use philips shs5200 headphones. My speakers are old AND cheap pare of Labtec speakers we picked up at best buy for ~$20 a few years ago; they are really basic, but i don't use them that often anyway.

I don't really need anything special, like bass/tremble control, EAX, or anything else. I just want to hear good music.

PCI would be better, but i can go for express as well.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Read this first (a bit out of date): http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov04/articles/pcmusician.htm

Then look here for some ideas of what is available today: http://www.musiconmypc.co.uk/pci-soundcards-c-55.html or http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/article/223-sound-card-selector-in-beta-testing-.html or http://www.buildorbuy.org/soundcards.html

This is not a full list by any means, but it is something to get you started.

Any PCI soundcard that is designed for a PC being used as an Audio Workstation, will be significantly superior to any gaming/consumer sound card.

However, you weakest point needs to be fixed first: get a better speaker setup. Best thing is to buy a second hand amplifier and attach THAT to your soundcard, with a decent pair of speakers or desktop monitors to the amp.

I use an old Cyrus One attached to a paid of Canton CD10's. They are small. The sound is phenominal.

 

[a111087]

What if i want to keep listening to headphones? do i still need amplifier?
i would like to keep it as simple as possible

 

[lemonadesoda]

Yes, you would still need an amplifier. (Most amplifiers have a headphones OUT socket)

If you dont want to use an external amplifier... then you need to use an inbuilt amplifier on the soundcard. Then you need to stop looking at the high-quality Pro Audio stuff and go BACK to consumer audio soundcards.

In which case your Audigy is probably as good as they get for retail-consumer. Yes, there are better soundcards, in fact both of the ones you suggested are probably better than the Audigy, but for in-built headphone support you will always be making a serious compromise... and I'm not sure it's worth the investment buying one of those to replace something you already have. If you were building from scratch, then yes, choose these over the Audigy. But replace it? Not worth it IMO. Use the money to buy yourself a pair of better headphones.

Depending on your budget:

Sennheiser PX100, HD 25-1, HD 238

 

[a111087]

Audigy supports only sample Rate of 96 KHz (max) and 100 SNR. I can see that its below what Striker has, but i just don't know what noticeable difference it makes.

As far as new headphones, my current headphones are looking sturdy enough to last another year or two

 

[lemonadesoda]

You are not going to hear any difference with a higher sample rate output if the source data itself isnt a higher sample rate... and any music from a CD or an MP3 file will not be better than 96kHz.

A SNR of 100 is way above what the inbuild headphone amplifier i outputting. That 100SNR is on the line OUT. The headphone out will be way lower than that.

As far as dynamic range is concerned... or distortion... you havednt discussed that.

Your headphones are nice, but they are very budget headphones.

I believe my sound advice is falling on deaf ears. LOL

 

[a111087]

You are not going to hear any difference with a higher sample rate output if the source data itself isnt a higher sample rate... and any music from a CD or an MP3 file will not be better than 96kHz.

A SNR of 100 is way above what the inbuild headphone amplifier i outputting. That 100SNR is on the line OUT. The headphone out will be way lower than that.

As far as dynamic range is concerned... or distortion... you havednt discussed that.

Your headphones are nice, but they are very budget headphones.

I believe my sound advice is falling on deaf ears. LOL

agree about sample rate
don't know about SNR, but i will believe you

Ok, so you want me to buy AMP and use it between sound card and headphones? Your sound advise isn't going to be unnoticed, I'm just suspicious of everything, lately

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Buy an asus xonar,and use the rear output for the amp,and plug the headphones into the front panel socket,the xonard has a FP connector on it,which is a nice addition.

 

[ste2425]

ave to say i have heard very good reviews of the asus xonar and was recomended it myself before my multimix

 

[a111087]

lol, i just got my brother to let me listen to his Creative x-fi gamer sound card and omg...
the sound on his card was so BAD
i really couldn't believe he was listening to that all this time. apparently he likes the 3d affect that you can turn on in drivers, but turning it off didn't make much difference.
lol, i'm not buying x-fi sound card for sure

@tigger
yes, i heard xonar is pretty good

I'm also looking at Grado SR80. seems like there are a lot of audiophiles that like them very much, and they are under 100$. not the most comfy, but the sound is where it's at

 

[MN12BIRD]

I think that Rocketfish X-fi is just an old Audigy SE with an X-Fi sticker on top of the processor!

First off Rocketfish is just a Best Buy brand and second that looks just like the cheap OEM X-Fi cards witch are actually just rebadged Audigy SE's with a few tweaks and is no better than what you already have. Its certainly not using an actual X-fi chipset like an Xtreme Gamer or Fatality or something like that. No Crystalizer hardware, true DTS/DD decoding or EAX 5.0 hardware acceleration. Just an old Audigy SE with a new sticker!

I think its really sad that Creative did this. Calling the cheap OEM cards X-fi when they really aren't at all.

But if you want to actually upgrade go with a Zonar or like an Auzentech X-Fi or something. I would think the HT Omega cards would also be quite good for sound quality.

 

[Mussels]

lol, what is that? i think its too much for me, i just want to listen to music as it is, without any effects and such. thanks thou




I use headphones 99% of the time (because its nosy in my house and if i will use speakers, i will not be able to hear things clearly), they have regular analog connector. digital would be nice, but i don't know how would you go about doing digital in headphones

I use philips shs5200 headphones. My speakers are old AND cheap pare of Labtec speakers we picked up at best buy for ~$20 a few years ago; they are really basic, but i don't use them that often anyway.

I don't really need anything special, like bass/tremble control, EAX, or anything else. I just want to hear good music.

PCI would be better, but i can go for express as well.

with headphones like that, you wont hear a difference upgrading. stick with what you got, and save the money for new headphones instead

 

[KainXS]

I haven't had those headphones but I can tell you that even with cheap CX300's you can tell the difference between an X-fi card and a Xonar but that could be the case.

Also

instead of buying that waste of money rocketfish you would be better off buying an old audigy se for like 5 bucks off ebay and modding it to x-fi xtreme audio since you don't have audio equiptment befitting the need of an real x-fi card or xonar

ht omega might = wasted money with such headphones.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

lol, i just got my brother to let me listen to his Creative x-fi gamer sound card and omg...
the sound on his card was so BAD

XFi's usually sound pretty good. Usually = when theyve got decent working drivers & are playing nice with Vista/win7 - so it might be the card dying or bad drivers.

the Xonar D2x gets my vote.