ESS Maestro - Sound Quality?

[freeway]

I have been reading several posts about soundcards, and I am beginning to wonder if I am missing something with my card. I have a $10 card based on the 128 ESS Maestro chip. It is pci and supports 4 speakers. No one I know has a new soundcard, so I have nothing to compare the card to. If I get a new card, will I notice a difference with my MP3s? I have 4 Yamaha speakers and a sub. I run windows2000 and use hibernation a lot, so drivers are a concern. Does anyone have any experience with the Maestro chip and can tell me how it compares to some of the newer cards? What would give my sound more punch: a new soundcard or another 4 speakers and another subwoofer which would give me 8 speakers and 2 subs? TIA

 

[Gstanfor]

I have a Diamond Sonic Impact S100 soundcard which is based on the ESS Allegro chipset (very closely related to the Maestro chipset - they are in the same driver family).

A lot of the early ESS chips were absolutely dreadful in terms of sound quality, but the S100 is truly amazing in how good it sounds, plus it supports A3D 1.0, EAX, Sensaura and DirectSound.

The key to getting the best out of your soundcard is to ignore whatever drivers it shipped with (Diamonds drivers were shocking and I was almost ready to give up on ESS again after hearing the card driven by them) and go the ESS Reference Drivers page and download the correct drivers from there. The ESxxxxx id number in the left column will be printed on the chip. Use it as a guide to driver selection.

Regards

Greg

 

[PowerJoe]

You're not missing anything. I think consumer-level "high-end" cards (SBLive!, Philips AcousticEgde) are overrated. Even using high-quality headphones, I can't hear any quality loss from my 0$ on-board C-Media 8738.

-PJ