I do game a little, but primarily my machine is used for music. I'm unhappy with the sound quality of the on-board sound of the A7N8X-E Deluxe.
Which should I choose?
Which should I choose?
Originally posted by: brigden
I do game a little, but primarily my machine is used for music. I'm unhappy with the sound quality of the on-board sound of the A7N8X-E Deluxe.
Which should I choose?
What do you dislike about the onboard sound.
Originally posted by: Gurck
Problem with the audigy 2 is it resamples everything you put through it. Get the M-audio or, as another poster mentioned, the Chaintech. Problem with the chaintech is only one DAC is any good, so its quality is limited to 2.0 channels. Also a pain to set up.
Originally posted by: ChicagoPCGuy
Originally posted by: Gurck
Problem with the audigy 2 is it resamples everything you put through it. Get the M-audio or, as another poster mentioned, the Chaintech. Problem with the chaintech is only one DAC is any good, so its quality is limited to 2.0 channels. Also a pain to set up.
Quite correct. The Creative cards have always resampled everything from 44.1 Khz to 48 Khz, which is NOT good for music. There is no way around it.
I have also used every single consumer level sound card, and I can say for absolute certain that the Audigy2's drivers are much less stable. The most stable drivers I have ever come across were the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, but unfortunately the card is dated and production is ceasing on them (if not already ceased). The TB Santa Cruz still annihilates the latest Audigy in music, and it is five years old.
Originally posted by: Brian48
Originally posted by: ChicagoPCGuy
Originally posted by: Gurck
Problem with the audigy 2 is it resamples everything you put through it. Get the M-audio or, as another poster mentioned, the Chaintech. Problem with the chaintech is only one DAC is any good, so its quality is limited to 2.0 channels. Also a pain to set up.
Quite correct. The Creative cards have always resampled everything from 44.1 Khz to 48 Khz, which is NOT good for music. There is no way around it.
I have also used every single consumer level sound card, and I can say for absolute certain that the Audigy2's drivers are much less stable. The most stable drivers I have ever come across were the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, but unfortunately the card is dated and production is ceasing on them (if not already ceased). The TB Santa Cruz still annihilates the latest Audigy in music, and it is five years old.
I'd have to disagree here. I've had both a TBSC and A2 ZS running side by side at one time (still have one in one of my backups). By default, I'd say both are relatively equal. When tweaked, the A2 definately sound better. The TBSC also resamples, and yes, the TBSC was desupported almost two years. It's long since cease production. In terms of gaming, it is not as stable as its' lesser CS4624 counterparts like the Fortissimo series. I still have a F3 in the closet just in case the TBSC finally blows out.
Originally posted by: ChicagoPCGuy
I will check on the TBSC resampling. As for sound quality, that can be affected by the base hardware as well, especially in the case of what chipset you pick. I was using VIA platforms, where the TBSC always worked great, and the Audigy2 caused issues (well, probably issues from both sides in this case, and I am not referring to the old 686B South Bridge issue, but K8T800 chipsets with 8237 South Bridges). I never had trouble with the TBSC in games, so I am not sure what you are referring to here. I do agree the Fort II and III were good cards, and not necessarily lesser, either. Too bad Hercules does not make them anymore. The Fort IV, which I cannot find anywhere, uses the Envy24 chip, incidentally. Tom's Hardware did a review on one a few months back, but I have no idea how they got it and where one would buy one.
Originally posted by: Brian48
Originally posted by: ChicagoPCGuy
I will check on the TBSC resampling. As for sound quality, that can be affected by the base hardware as well, especially in the case of what chipset you pick. I was using VIA platforms, where the TBSC always worked great, and the Audigy2 caused issues (well, probably issues from both sides in this case, and I am not referring to the old 686B South Bridge issue, but K8T800 chipsets with 8237 South Bridges). I never had trouble with the TBSC in games, so I am not sure what you are referring to here. I do agree the Fort II and III were good cards, and not necessarily lesser, either. Too bad Hercules does not make them anymore. The Fort IV, which I cannot find anywhere, uses the Envy24 chip, incidentally. Tom's Hardware did a review on one a few months back, but I have no idea how they got it and where one would buy one.
The base hardware would not effect sound quality unless there was some sort of electro-static noise effecting the card. In this case, it would effect any sound card, not just Creative's. Base hardware, may have an issue with stability however.
The problems I've referring to with the TBSC is horrendous EAX support, lack of true 5.1 support (despite what the readme.txt for the last set of non-WHQL drivers say), woefully out-dated sensaura build, and a terribly weak reverb engine. One can argue that you can do without EAX since 1.0/2.0 is nothing to write home about, but EAX 3.0/4.0 is a different story. Although the TBSC may work great with VIA base motherboards, it does not work great with nForce2 based boards. Anyone here having experience the annoying "gameport" issue will this card will know what I'm talking about.
The Fortissimo series and later Herc GTXP's used the CS4624, which is step down from the CS4630 used by the TBSC and earlier 5.1 Herc GTXPs (had one of those too). Despite being a "cheaper" chipset, the CS4624 has always been more flexible driver wise and hence, supported multi-speaker setups much more better than the TBSC. Unfortunately, the CS4624 has also been desupported and no one produces these cards any more.
The Herc F4 is essentially an identical clone to the Revo 5.1 and Philips PSC724 Ultimate Edge (Envy24GT). These cards are the middle ground between full fledge Envy24HT cards like the Revo 7.1 and low-end budget Envy24HT-S cards like the Chaintech and TB Catalina, which by the way, ALSO resamples unless you're using the digital out.
Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I think it's something around 10% CPU usage taken up for sound processing depending on the program and such. If you're playing a game that's GPU limited it's not going to make much difference I'd think.