Can anyone recommend a sound card?

[imported_Com80787]

Can anyone recommend a sound card that is decent other than a Creative one?

I am sick of creative issues. If it is not crackling sound, no drivers, drivers that half work, or BSODs it's something else. Now my sound randomly goes out for periods of up to an hour unless I reboot. I have just had it happen to me again and it is the last straw.

I am using Vista 64-bit. All I really need is good sound quality, Vista 64 support, and optical audio in playback support. With Vista it seems that EAX is going to go the way of the dino so I doubt that matters on a card anymore, but OpenAL support would be nice.

Is there any other card out there that is good and supports these things? Or does Creative own the market?

Thanks for any recommendations!

 

[Sinn707]

Check out Auzentech. I don't know about vista 64 support but in all other aspects it's one heck of an audio card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16829156001

 

[mrblotto]

Def check out Auzentech, or even Turtle Beach for that matter. I'm sick of my X-Fi's 'squeal of death' as well...............

 

[toughwimp11]

whats a good cheap sound card that supports vista. I'm just curious as to what i should get if the onboard sound on the mobo i plan to get (GB p35 ds3r) is bad.

 

[Modelworks]

Chaintech Av-710. About 30.00 shipped at newegg.
Just use the drivers off the viaarena site and you shouldn't have issues.
Used this card for years.
If you run it in the hi sample rate 2 speaker mode you can get 192khz audio through a very good wolfson dac on the card.

 

[Skott]

For me, second choice after Creative would be Turtle Beach.