Sound Card Question

[aznpxdd91780]

So I currently have a TurtelBeach Santa Cruz as my soundcard and right now newegg has the Audigy2 ZS for 48 AR. I am thinking of jumping on this but I want to know how much of a difference it will make, if any.

Thanks in advance.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Depends on different factors.

I had a Santa Cruz back in the day and liked it a lot.

The creative cards are the best for taking most of the sound processing load of the CPU. If you're CPU bottlenecked in games it will make a bit of difference there.

Gaming the edge seems to go to the A2, but music I'm not sure about.

Before you upgrade your soundcard, are the other links in your system good? Good speakers/headphones? Pretty good source material?

You could get the best soundcard in the world but if the other components are crap, then the difference that a soundcard upgrade would make would be greatly reduced.

Cliffs: it depends

 

[aznpxdd91780]

Well, I have the Logitech X-530 for speakers and Sennheiser HD212 pro for headphones, if that helps.

So will it make a difference with that speakers and headphone?

Thanks.

 

[smthmlk]

Before, if you wanted to game, you went with Creative audigys; if you wanted the best music/etc reproduction from a soundcard, you went with others (m-audio, etc). There was no good inbetween card that did both great. Now we have the x-fi's from creative... they do the gaming part great, I'm sure... but what about music? Anyone with a multi-thousand dollar setup who's trained to hear the differences ever test one of the x-fi's against a m-audio or other pro-sumer card known for its quality? Talking flac/lossless abx sort of testing (if such a thing is possible with cards ;P).

Anyways, it boils down entirely to what you do most: gaming or music/video. If gaming, yeah, pick up a creative audigy. If music/video, pick up a different brand and do some research (not necessarily here, either, as most people here I believe are gamers primarily.. try hydrogenaudio). Good luck!

 

[aznpxdd91780]

Any soundcard that can do both gaming and music decently??

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

The X-Fi is really where it's at for both music and gaming, but the lowest I've seen it is $75 after rebate.

The A2 cards are good at both too. Some people reported a huge difference going from A2 to X-Fi and some regretted the move.

It's hard to say what kind of difference a TBSC to A2 move is going to make for you.

If you had anything less than the speakers you currently have, I wouldn't recommend spending that much on a new soundcard.

 

[aznpxdd91780]

bump