I was hoping for some feedback about good quality sound cards for computers.
At the moment, I’m using “Creative Live”, which has been ok, but I’m thinking about getting something a little better. Basically, I use my computer for my music playback, as well as the occasional dvd. I’ve also toyed with the idea of making my own music (though this won’t necessarily be a factor in choosing a new sound card).
Does anyone have some experience with cards such as the Creative Audigy?
I recently went through something similiar. I got fed up with the persistent hiss on my built-in sound card as well as occasional flaky behavior such as slight sputtering when the computer was under heavy load.
I did a lot of research and talked to some heavy gamer friends and bought an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 card. I have been very happy with it. The hiss is gone, even when I crank the volume all the way up, and it has been pretty solid performance wise. M-Audio is a German digital audio company that has been working in the pro and semi-pro world for a while. The Revolution 7.1 has gotten some of the best reviews out there.
Now I’ve been thinking about upgrading my speakers (I have an Altec Lansing 5.1 cube speaker set now and the cubes just don’t have much oomph)…
Their board is built on the Via Envy 24HT. Since Via is a Taiwanese company, you’ll probably find something based on this chipset here. However, ratings and performance of different brands will not be the same as the analog hardware can be different. I bought my board in the US and it cost about US$95. Since you asked about Creative, their Audigy Gamer board is based on this chipset and has gotten decent reviews.
As long as you don’t have an AC’97 chip built into your motherboard (nforce onboard audio is more than acceptable), almost any other sound solution will care of your needs respectably. If you want to record live music then you need something more advanced. If you want to play DJ or mess with techno looping programs a Live can be made to work well enough but something nicer would be recommended. An Audigy is not really worth the upgrade, since other companies are making better solutions at reasonable prices.
I agree with bobdobba that your current setup is fine for listening to music, playing DVDs and even playing about a little with sampling etc. If the latter is of the ‘hobbyist’ nature then the bundled software with some versions of the Live! card is OK to start with. I got Cubasis and SoundForge with mine and had a lot of fun before I gave that computer to my Dad.
A more expensive card might well have the same processor chip on it; what you’d pay extra for would be better analogue-digital & digital-analogue convertors, perhaps better shielding (against interference from all the other stuff crammed into the computer) and higher quality circuitry, and probably a wider range of built-in inputs and outputs such as optical digital and the like. You’d want that kind of stuff if you wanted to make semi-professional computer music or if you were a real audiophile. But then a real audiophile would get a dedicated external DVD player and have a very expensive stereo system to put it all through as well.
It’s a case of diminishing returns. If you have a decent midrange card you’re getting 90% of what a top-range one, several times the price, would do for you.
Thanks for the advice. I’m reluctant to fork out for the high cost of the Audigy if it’s not ilkely to make a huge difference to the sound performance. Maybe I should make do with what I have…
Would a good speaker setup be a better solution? I’m using a Cambridge Audio 2 speaker + subwoofer setup, but I think I’ve maxed them out once too often. I’d consider getting a surround sound setup with subwoofer as a replacement; they’re as cheap as chips at GuangHua Computer Market.
[quote=“The Big Babou”]Would a good speaker setup be a better solution? I’m using a Cambridge Audio 2 speaker + subwoofer setup, but I think I’ve maxed them out once too often. I’d consider getting a surround sound setup with subwoofer as a replacement; they’re as cheap as chips at GuangHua Computer Market.[/quote]I don’t think a cheap surround sound system would make any difference. A pricier one would.
I’m a bit wary of speaker systems designed specifically for use with computers. I feel firstly that the quality of the components and circuitry is not generally very good, and secondly that they’re often designed with gamers, rather than faithful music reproduction, in mind. This means that they may have characteristics such as pronounced bass but rather nasty midrange.
What I’m doing at the moment is putting my sound card’s stereo audio out into the aux. in of an Aiwa stereo system, with the two speakers spaced about one and a half metres apart. It’s far from ideal, but the fact that the Aiwa is designed for music listening means it sounds OK. The speakers are much bigger than computer speakers, which I think makes a difference.
That Aiwa system and many other stereo systems have the facility for surround sound: I don’t often watch DVDs or play games so I don’t bother with it.
yah… i always try and stay away from pc speakers too … just run the the sound card into my amp… and bang… for speaker placement… think of an equalateral triangle… each speaker is a vertex, with yourself as the third vertex… thats how you should position speakers…
m-audio is the way, the truth and the light when it comes to sound cards…
audigy cards in any guise are great for gaming, but shite for anything else due to latency issues… alternatively you could step it up a notch and laugh off crappy internal sound cards altogether for something external and oh so trick…
if there was anything you ever wanted to know about pro, semi-pro and beginner PC-audio this is the site to find your answers on… i’m built my home studio almost entirely from info and tips from this site… very highly recommended, just be prepared to wish you weren’t in taiwan when you see the prices and range of equipment they link to…
as far as entry level, but still good enough speakers go you’d hard pressed to fault these… creative.com/products/produc … rodid=9306 that’s if you’ve got a 7.1 compatible card and NT$5500 to spare…
Another place to find good souncards (found the E-MU 1212M there) and other more pro oriented equipment: shop.midimall.com.tw/
All the mainboard integrated solutions sound pretty poor as far as listening to the music goes but should be more than enough for playing games, esp. if mainboard chipset supports audio DSP acceleration (Nvidio NForce).
Of course if you do not use headphones or listen to the music using the cheap PC speakers good card will probably not make much of a difference.
By the way, recently someone told me it doesn’t make much difference if you will only be watching DVDs and listening to MP3s whether you use the onboard AC97 sound or have a kickass sound card. They told me that the sound card just takes the load off the CPU, but if you are not multi-tasking then the CPU can take care of things. Does that sound right? I use the PC in the living room with optical cable out to my amplifier then I have a 6 speaker setup.
This is right about offloading the CPU as far as playing games with 3D sound effects and, in case of some cards, DVD playback goes.
MP3 playback all is pretty much done by CPU (decoding the stream)
For most of the people the real issue should be the quality of the analog output from the card. The difference can be heard on even cheap headphones and better speakers and it matters more when listening to music. What makes this difference is the quality of the codec or DAC (a chip converting digital data to analog signal) used on the card and the design of the card itself (to minimize noise, interference from other parts of computer etc)
The onboard AC97 sound is usually using cheap, lower quality codecs/DAC’s and is close to other components so the noise is higher.
For example my ancient SoundBlaster Live! sounds better than onboard sound from my 1 year old motherboard (Realtek AC97 codec)
I think Analog Devices AC97 codecs are better.
If you use digital output from the card then the analog conversion quality is determined by the quality of the amplifier (usually pretty good)
There are differences on the digital side too (like for example most of the Creative sound cards converting audio to 48kHz sampling rate for playback) The sampling rate for MP3 and CD is 44.1kHz. Every conversion results in some loss of quality.
[quote=“pb”]The onboard AC97 sound is usually using cheap, lower quality codecs/DAC’s and is close to other components so the noise is higher.
For example my ancient SoundBlaster Live! sounds better than onboard sound from my 1 year old motherboard (Realtek AC97 codec)
I think Analog Devices AC97 codecs are better.
If you use digital output from the card then the analog conversion quality is determined by the quality of the amplifier (usually pretty good)
There are differences on the digital side too (like for example most of the Creative sound cards converting audio to 48kHz sampling rate for playback) The sampling rate for MP3 and CD is 44.1kHz. Every conversion results in some loss of quality.[/quote]
I think I use the onboard Realtek AC97. Is a Codec a software rendering program? I use the motherboard’s Optical Out port into my Amplifier. Does that qualify as digital and determined by the amplifier as you say above?
However, should I use a sound card in the PC I use to encode CDs into MP3 files but not in the one I use to play back DVDs as on that one I use Optical cables out to my amplifier?
“Codec” is a technical jargon for either a software library or chip performing task of (en)coding and decoding usually audio or video. This coding, decoding can mean many things really.
For example Media Player uses MPEG-1 codec to playback (render) VCD movies. There is a bunch of codecs installed by default in Windows. To see them in Win2000 go to Settings->Control Panel. Click on Sounds and Multimedia - Hardware tab - Scroll down to Video Codecs. Click Properties. Again Properties. This will show a list of installed software codecs.
The codec I was referring to is the chip on your motherboard which plays back analog or digital audio signal.
Optical Out is a digital audio signal so you are using your amplifier (actually I think it should be called “receiver”?) to convert to analog. The quality should be OK.
MP3 encoding is done by CPU. You do not need soundcard for it because it is possible to directly read (rip) the audio data from CD in your CD-ROM drive. Unless your CDROM uses digital link to soundcard you will get two conversions (CD: digital-> analog, soundcard: A->D) and poor sound.
ExactAudioCopy (exactaudiocopy.de/) gives the best rip quality.