Which sound card

[jgunning]

Have been looking at sound cards.

Toss up between these two.. What are your thoughts guys?

http://www.ddcomputer.com.au/prod-S..._High_Performance_PCIe_Gaming_Sound_Card.html

http://www.ddcomputer.com.au/prod-S..._Champion_PCIE_Sound_Card_with_I-O_Drive.html

Anyone had any experiences with these cards or recommend one over the other?


J

 

[hat]

Neither. If you're serious about audio quality, hold off on the sound cards and stick with onboard audio until you're ready to make the leap to buying yourself a home theater receiver and some speakers. Note this does not have to be an investment on the track of thousands. The best audio quality I ever had with my computer came from some old broken down receiver and speakers that I had to solder back together to get it to work, and the stuff I found wasn't even of any quality. It was some budget setup from what I estimate to be from around 20 years ago or so.

You can probably find a decent 5.1 receiver for $250 or so, and then you can probably find stereo speakers for less than $100. Then you can expand to 5.1 later, if you wish. If not, just get a stereo receiver and speakers in one shot, which may cost you only $250-$300.

Your motherboard has an optical audio out. This just absolutely destroyed your need for a sound card, if you're really serious about quality audio. Running that optical out to a receiver means your computer is doing zero audio processing. It's sending the digital signal straight to the receiver, letting the receiver's higher-than-any-soundcard quality audio processing handle the conversion to analog, then pumping it out to the higher-than-any-pc-speaker quality speakers.

 

[KingPing]

The Creative Sound Blaster Zx is newer and better, sound quality should be better than the Recon3D.

 

[jgunning]

Neither. If you're serious about audio quality, hold off on the sound cards and stick with onboard audio until you're ready to make the leap to buying yourself a home theater receiver and some speakers. Note this does not have to be an investment on the track of thousands. The best audio quality I ever had with my computer came from some old broken down receiver and speakers that I had to solder back together to get it to work, and the stuff I found wasn't even of any quality. It was some budget setup from what I estimate to be from around 20 years ago or so.

You can probably find a decent 5.1 receiver for $250 or so, and then you can probably find stereo speakers for less than $100. Then you can expand to 5.1 later, if you wish. If not, just get a stereo receiver and speakers in one shot, which may cost you only $250-$300.

Your motherboard has an optical audio out. This just absolutely destroyed your need for a sound card, if you're really serious about quality audio. Running that optical out to a receiver means your computer is doing zero audio processing. It's sending the digital signal straight to the receiver, letting the receiver's higher-than-any-soundcard quality audio processing handle the conversion to analog, then pumping it out to the higher-than-any-pc-speaker quality speakers.

Useful advice mate. I appreciate that. I had considered going receiver although that has a pretty big price tag.. =\

The Creative Sound Blaster Zx is newer and better, sound quality should be better than the Recon3D.

Thanks kingping! I think I was leaning that way as well.



So should I get a sound card, would I really notice a big difference than my current on board audio?

J

 

[rtwjunkie]

So should I get a sound card, would I really notice a big difference than my current on board audio?

I swear by sound cards: They amplify the sound, allowing you to pick up a lot of ambient sounds, and the fidelity of what you do hear is almost always better.

As to that Z, I'm curious too...been wanting to upgrade my own sound card to that.