Best Price:Performance Sound Card?

[MajinCry]

After using a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro for seven years, it's time to upgrade. The damn thing randomly freezes the whole computer when I launch Studio One, which is due to Creative's driver throwing a fit whenever the GPU driver is uninstalled then reinstalled. The only way to fix it is to reinstall windows from scratch, which I've done several times already.

So rather than continuing to reinstall Windows whenever the audio driver decides it doesn't want to play nice, I figure it's time for a new sound card.

In terms of features, it ought to have:

Optical Out
Microphone In
An equivalent to Creative's Crystalizer (makes audio sound much better through voodoo)
Windows 7 x64 support
(Optional) AlChemy equivalent, an OpenAL wrapper for DirectSound games.

I paid £80 for this sound card, and back in the day, it was the best sound card you could get in terms of bang for your buck. It has all the bells and whistles, along with a good signal:noise ratio. It was a good buy, except for Creative's driver being so god damn easy to break.

So what's the current price-performance king?

 

[shortylickens]

Onboard.

Failing that, I used to like Turtle Beach. I dont even know if they make cards anymore.

 

[shortylickens]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00456UM12/ref=dp_olp_used_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=used

I think you dont really want bang for your buck. I think you want quality superior to the motherboard, and frankly that wont be cheap these days. So many motherboards have excellent audio now.

 

[JackMDS]

May be that can give you perspective.

https://pcgamingbuilds.com/best-gaming-sound-cards

 

[whm1974]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00456UM12/ref=dp_olp_used_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=used

I think you dont really want bang for your buck. I think you want quality superior to the motherboard, and frankly that wont be cheap these days. So many motherboards have excellent audio now.

Given how good motherboard sound has become, aren't sound cards that provide better audio and offer more features are at least ~$100 if not higher?

 

[MajinCry]

I should mention that I'm looking to do not just gaming, but audio production as well. Not as a job or anything, just as a hobby, so I'll need something relatively modern that has a good ASIO driver.

 

[postmortemIA]

Just get Sound Blaster Z if you care about sound quality and ASIO support ... don't try to save buck or two, you'll regret it in a long run

 

[OlyAR15]

If you are using optical out, then the soundcard isn't really going to matter, since you will be outputting a digital signal.