Best sub-$75 sound card?

[hurrikaane]

In the title!

 

[Adul]

turtle beach santa cruz

hercules forissimo 7.1

 

[Corporate Thug]

audigy 2 OEM, or retail if u still can find it at best buy

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Adul
turtle beach santa cruz

hercules forissimo 7.1

how about the VIA envy

 

[yellowperil]

I second the Audigy 2 OEM. I'm not crazy about Creative's drivers but it seems to be the best bet.

 

[Yourself]

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

 

[XBoxLPU]

hercules Game Theater XP 7.1

 

[dejacky]

I've owned and used the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Audio card and it has been the best PCI sound card I've ever used because it sounds fantastic and integrated into the system flawlessly with no bugs and performance was very gratifying!

 

[peang]

soundstorm

 

[newbiepcuser]

Audigy 2 oem. I got mine at a computer swapmeet for $67 out the door. Well worth the money spent.

 

[cessna152]

Originally posted by: Adul
turtle beach santa cruz

hercules forissimo 7.1

I have both. I won't touch Creative after what my friend went thru with drivers...

 

[josedawg]

Originally posted by: peang
soundstorm

Has there been a date set for the soundstorm add-on card, as well as pricing?

 

[mrgoblin]

nope

 

[Ionizer86]

Keep in mind that if you're patient, you'll frequently be able to get the Santa Cruz for $36 (Price match Compusa's $40 to Circuit City), and very rarely, you'll be able to get it under $10 (if both Compusa or some other store has a ~$40 price and Circuit City is doing a rebate on the card). I haven't used an A2 or Fortissimo 3, but I like my Santa Cruz better than my Soundstorm.

 

[helpme]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
hercules Game Theater XP 7.1

 

[Bad Dude]

It all depends on your system.
If you got a good motherboard and Intel P4 then Audigy 2 is the best. If you can get your hands on the hacked ZS drivers, then you are OK. Otherwise the original drivers from the A2 CD came up in the control panel as the Audigy for some reason. Or maybe just me.

If you got AMD systems then go with the Santa Cruz. It almost flawless in drivers and great on music sound.

I got a one week old Audigy retail for $75 shipped or $74 if you want to go sub $75.
Please check here.
The card is great for me. No problem with drivers. Nothing is perfect in this world.

 

[RagingGuardian]

I picked up an Audigy2 retail at BB for $54 and it's the best soundcard I've ever had.

 

[SuPrEIVIE]

Originally posted by: RagingGuardian
I picked up an Audigy2 retail at BB for $54 and it's the best soundcard I've ever had.

Raging, how did u get the audigy2 at BB? i can only find the platinum one on there website,but no regular audigy2

 

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: Bad_Dude
It all depends on your system.
If you got a good motherboard and Intel P4 then Audigy 2 is the best. If you can get your hands on the hacked ZS drivers, then you are OK. Otherwise the original drivers from the A2 CD came up in the control panel as the Audigy for some reason. Or maybe just me.

If you got AMD systems then go with the Santa Cruz. It almost flawless in drivers and great on music sound.

I got a one week old Audigy retail for $75 shipped or $74 if you want to go sub $75.
Please check here.
The card is great for me. No problem with drivers. Nothing is perfect in this world.

That's absolute nonsense. The A2 works perfectly fine with AMD based systems. The last 40 or so AMD boxes I've put together have had no major issues with any Creative product so long as the rest of the system was healthy.

hurrikaane,

Just what exactly do you intend to use this card for? Do you mostly game, listen to .mp3's, record/edit music, movies, all of the above, etc.? Speaking as someone who has owned just about EVERY consumer level sound card released in the last 5 or so years, there is no perfect, end-all solution.

For the price range you've specified (and these are cards I've actually owned or currently use),

Audigy2 = on par with Santa Cruz for music playback (better if tweaked), absolute best for gaming. Excellent driver support despite what all the anti-Creative zealots will tell you.

Audigy series = Almost as good as A2 for gaming, but driver support is no where near as good. It's here that Creative got it's bad driver rap. Music playback is average at best.

Acoustic Edge = Very good gaming card, but high CPU overhead and some of the newer titles may be a bit buggy. Excellent music/DVD playback. Drivers support has all but disappeared.

Santa Cruz = Excellent music and .mp3 playback. DVD playback is OK depending on player. Gaming is OK, but EAX support is no where near as good as the Creative line. Drivers are solid, but not completely flawless as some would have you believe (especially if you're a gamer).

Fortimisso III = Despite having a "lower-end" chip as the Santa Cruz (CS4624 vs CS4630), music playback is almost as good. DVD is about the same, but gaming is slightly better. More than likely due to better driver implementation. I would recommend the older Fortissimo II, but I hated that idiotic "spider" cable that kept working it's way loose.

Honable mention:

Revo 7.1 = (If you can find it on sale for below $75) Better than the A2 for music, but has very high CPU overhead for games. Even more so than the Acoustic Edge. This wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately, the games don't sound any better than the Fortissomo III overall (some titles sound better/some sound worse).

Herc GTXP = (Also if you can find it on sale). Consider this setup over the Fortissimo ONLY if you want the break out box. As over a year ago, Hercules started using the same CS4624 DSP to standardize the product line and lower costs. Essentially, they're both the same card now. The older ones carry the CS4630 DSP (same as Santa Cruz).

I'm not going to bother mentioning anything in the SBLive series since that's so darn old.

 

[dmw16]

SB audigy2

 

[dejacky]

Santa Cruz = Excellent music and .mp3 playback. DVD playback is OK depending on player. Gaming is OK, but EAX support is no where near as good as the Creative line. Drivers are solid, but not completely flawless as some would have you believe (especially if you're a gamer).

I slightly disagree. I think the sound quailty on this card is better than the audigy considerig it has better signal/noise ratio specs and distributes audio more evenly across its channels. It was actually great on games for me and the EAX features IMHO are overrated and don't really add that much to the gamein the first place. I know audigy has higher sample rates, etc, but overall I think this card gives you more "bang for your buck."

but I like my Santa Cruz better than my Soundstorm.

So do I! The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz can also playback 24bit audio files if I remember correctly. Another thing I like about it is that when you shut your computer down your speakers don't go "POP!" like they do with the Nvidia Soundstorm in my Shuttle SN45G...perhaps this would not occur if I used SPDIF instead of Analog outputs. hope this helps..

 

[Bad Dude]

Originally posted by: Brian48

Originally posted by: Bad_Dude
It all depends on your system.
If you got a good motherboard and Intel P4 then Audigy 2 is the best. If you can get your hands on the hacked ZS drivers, then you are OK. Otherwise the original drivers from the A2 CD came up in the control panel as the Audigy for some reason. Or maybe just me.

If you got AMD systems then go with the Santa Cruz. It almost flawless in drivers and great on music sound.

I got a one week old Audigy retail for $75 shipped or $74 if you want to go sub $75.
Please check here.
The card is great for me. No problem with drivers. Nothing is perfect in this world.

That's absolute nonsense. The A2 works perfectly fine with AMD based systems. The last 40 or so AMD boxes I've put together have had no major issues with any Creative product so long as the rest of the system was healthy.

hurrikaane,

Just what exactly do you intend to use this card for? Do you mostly game, listen to .mp3's, record/edit music, movies, all of the above, etc.? Speaking as someone who has owned just about EVERY consumer level sound card released in the last 5 or so years, there is no perfect, end-all solution.

For the price range you've specified (and these are cards I've actually owned or currently use),

Audigy2 = on par with Santa Cruz for music playback (better if tweaked), absolute best for gaming. Excellent driver support despite what all the anti-Creative zealots will tell you.

Audigy series = Almost as good as A2 for gaming, but driver support is no where near as good. It's here that Creative got it's bad driver rap. Music playback is average at best.

Acoustic Edge = Very good gaming card, but high CPU overhead and some of the newer titles may be a bit buggy. Excellent music/DVD playback. Drivers support has all but disappeared.

Santa Cruz = Excellent music and .mp3 playback. DVD playback is OK depending on player. Gaming is OK, but EAX support is no where near as good as the Creative line. Drivers are solid, but not completely flawless as some would have you believe (especially if you're a gamer).

Fortimisso III = Despite having a "lower-end" chip as the Santa Cruz (CS4624 vs CS4630), music playback is almost as good. DVD is about the same, but gaming is slightly better. More than likely due to better driver implementation. I would recommend the older Fortissimo II, but I hated that idiotic "spider" cable that kept working it's way loose.

Honable mention:

Revo 7.1 = (If you can find it on sale for below $75) Better than the A2 for music, but has very high CPU overhead for games. Even more so than the Acoustic Edge. This wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately, the games don't sound any better than the Fortissomo III overall (some titles sound better/some sound worse).

Herc GTXP = (Also if you can find it on sale). Consider this setup over the Fortissimo ONLY if you want the break out box. As over a year ago, Hercules started using the same CS4624 DSP to standardize the product line and lower costs. Essentially, they're both the same card now. The older ones carry the CS4630 DSP (same as Santa Cruz).

I'm not going to bother mentioning anything in the SBLive series since that's so darn old.

Sorry if I have misinformed anyone but I was trying to say that SB2 is less likely to have problems with Intel than AMD. This is from my experience in the past years. But every system is different.