Once again need help finding a suitable sound card.

[ebeattie]

Well, sound cards definitely dont have the fighting market that video cards do.

Short and sweet, I cat make up my mind about what sound card to get. I would like this sound card to have two things:

1. MUST be fully OpenAl (Vista) capable for gaming and music playback. The majority of cards that I have found are either for gaming with no digital output of any kind, or fully functional audio playback via digital output but also with slower gaming performance. The worst part about researching this stuff is that NONE of the DTS/Dolby digital cards (Bluegears, Auzuntech) seem to support OpenAL.....

2. Needs to have an digital optical out! Id like to fully take advantage of my new speaker system (Z-5500), and while the 3 cables connecting my PC to my speakers offers good reproduction, I have to believe that digital optical with give me absolutely phenomenal results! But as stated before, most if not all the sound cards that have digital out dont seem to have OpenAL (vista) support.

I hopefully am VERY wrong about this as Ihave seem many nice cards likethe Bluegears card. Only thing holding me back is lack of hardware acceleration and no OpenAL support (from what I can tell).

Any help/knowledge that you may be able to help me with would be awesome. All things considered, its about time my poor SB Live! (from 2000!) Value card get some retirement!

 

[oynaz]

As far as I know, there are no sound cards with full Vista support yet.

 

[jameswhite1979]

Does the digital out put need to 5.1? DD etc?

 

[ebeattie]

Id like the support to be at least 5.1 . I doubt that Id ever try to go with a full 7.1 setup.

Well, if Oynaz is correct, Ill just hold off getting a new sound card then. Just wish they would hurry up and get on out the door!

 

[Muse]

I've had a Hercules Game Theater XP since at least 2001. It's 5.1, and they have since released 6.1 and 7.1 versions with their own drivers. It has optical and coaxial digital output from the breakout box. The connectivity options are superb compared to most soundcards. The Vista drivers haven't been released yet but I checked the other day and the site said "soon."

 

[bigsnyder]

The X-Fi cards are fully OpenAL compatible. If you don't want to fool with the drive bay box,
then this device should do the trick for optical ports. Watch out for the "XtremeAudio"
variant of the card. It is supposedly the crippled version.

C Snyder

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I'd say don't bother with the digital connection on your z-5500s with a computer as source. It has to end up analog in the end, and a soundcard like an X-Fi is going to do a better job giving you analog output than the z-5500 control pod.

 

[ebeattie]

I see. well thank you for all your help guys! I finally understand what I need to look for. I guess the XtremeGamer has my name on it then.

Thanks a bunch to all those who replied!

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I'd say don't bother with the digital connection on your z-5500s with a computer as source. It has to end up analog in the end, and a soundcard like an X-Fi is going to do a better job giving you analog output than the z-5500 control pod.

I have the Z-5500's and an audigy2zs, and I cannot tell a difference between the analong connections and the optical connection. I personally just use the 3 analog plugs for computer audio, and leave the optical plug for any other device I use with the speakers (soon to be an HTPC when I get it all set up).