Any sound card recommendations?

[Smike]

Hopefully I'll be going to Uni this September, and as I'm not planning to take my sound system with me, I was thinking of buying myself a good sound card for my PC, so I can listen to music on that.

At the moment I'm using the on-board sound card that comes with the motherboard.

I've got some spare (but quite good) speakers that I can convert for use with PC (they're currently just attached with bare wires).

Can anyone recommend a good brand, or a specific card?

I only need stereo sound, as I only have two speakers.

How much will I have to spend to get a noticeable difference in quality? If it's much more than £50 I probably won't bother.

Thanks

[Stimpson J. Cat]

You may want to go with an external sound card. I have the Creative Sound-Blaster Live USB. The nice thing is that then your digital to audio conversion is done outside of the computer. Less noise from the other electronics then.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009AHV8U/qid=1123622377/sr=8-2/ref=pd_ka_2/202-0159514-4690269

Dr. Stupid

[Darat]

Originally posted by Smike
Hopefully I'll be going to Uni this September, and as I'm not planning to take my sound system with me, I was thinking of buying myself a good sound card for my PC, so I can listen to music on that.

At the moment I'm using the on-board sound card that comes with the motherboard.

I've got some spare (but quite good) speakers that I can convert for use with PC (they're currently just attached with bare wires).

Can anyone recommend a good brand, or a specific card?

I only need stereo sound, as I only have two speakers.

How much will I have to spend to get a noticeable difference in quality? If it's much more than £50 I probably won't bother.

Thanks

What is the on board chipset?

[Rat]

You can pick up an Audigy 2 ZS quite cheaply now. That'll do you wonders if you're just using it for gaming and/or listening to music. Also if you want DVD audio. If you want to make music, you'll probably want something like a Terratec, and you'd want to be spending more like £100, so that's probably not your scene.

Cheers,
Rat.

[Thomas]

I agree with Stimpson because I have no experience Audigy :D

None the less, I think my experience with SB Live is worth to add, because I don't just use it for listening purposes, but also for composing music. And when I do that I often end up with up to 100 simultaneous instruments assisted by an equal number of overlapping effect tracks, each holding several effect filters. This is hard work for the poor soundcard, very hard work, but I have never had any problems with it so far. So I guess that's a pretty good commercial for SB Live, hur?

(I'm well aware that I would need to do less work to achieve the same rendering with a $1.000.000 production system, but I like to get my hands dirty. Besides, I don't have that kindda money.)

That should be enough commercial for SB Live for now.

[Vitnir]

I can throw in a flame of SB then, I have never been able to install my SB 5.1 digital PCI card properly, the setup just claims it cannot detect the card. I had to browse for the *.inf file on the CD and manually install it.
And unless you have picky taste you wont be able to tell the difference between the onboard soundcard and another cheap one.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Vitnir
I can throw in a flame of SB then, I have never been able to install my SB 5.1 digital PCI card properly, the setup just claims it cannot detect the card. I had to browse for the *.inf file on the CD and manually install it.
And unless you have picky taste you wont be able to tell the difference between the onboard soundcard and another cheap one.
Upgrade to win95? :p

[Smike]

I think I'd prefer an internal card, just to avoid having too much clutter.

If a card has (as the one that Stimpson linked to is) 5.1 surround sound output, presumably it will still produce stereo if neccesary?

[Vitnir]

I have been tempted but I dont think this 32-bit fad will last, I mean whats next? 64 bits? HAH!

[Vitnir]

Originally posted by Smike
I think I'd prefer an internal card, just to avoid having too much clutter.

If a card has (as the one that Stimpson linked to is) 5.1 surround sound output, presumably it will still produce stereo if neccesary?
Yes, and some combines the connectors so you can use one of them either as rear speaker OR microphone etc.

[Darat]

Originally posted by Smike
I think I'd prefer an internal card, just to avoid having too much clutter.

If a card has (as the one that Stimpson linked to is) 5.1 surround sound output, presumably it will still produce stereo if neccesary?

Yep, but really if you are just going to listen to say MP3s through your speakers then I doubt (unless your onboard is something from the arc) it will be worth you spending any money as you'll hear no difference.

[Smike]

Darat: The motherboard is this (http://www.ciao.co.uk/product.php/pName/Intel_Desktop_Board_D845EPT2/TabId/4/Pid/1,5215759,5215766,5215806/ProduktId/5409859/subTabId/1) one, and I think that I can percieve a lack of quality with the sound, especially when playing games, CD's or DVD's (less so when playing mp3's ;) ).

The cheapest place I've found for me to buy PC stuff is refreshcomputing, as they have a shop near me so I can ignore the P&P costs.

Here (http://www.refreshcomputers.com/default.asp?txtAction=selectcat3&txtId=Sound+Cards) is their sound card selection. Which one should I go for?

Thanks

[Darat]

Originally posted by Smike
Darat: The motherboard is this (http://www.ciao.co.uk/product.php/pName/Intel_Desktop_Board_D845EPT2/TabId/4/Pid/1,5215759,5215766,5215806/ProduktId/5409859/subTabId/1) one, and I think that I can percieve a lack of quality with the sound, especially when playing games, CD's or DVD's (less so when playing mp3's ;) ).

The cheapest place I've found for me to buy PC stuff is refreshcomputing, as they have a shop near me so I can ignore the P&P costs.

Here (http://www.refreshcomputers.com/default.asp?txtAction=selectcat3&txtId=Sound+Cards) is their sound card selection. Which one should I go for?

Thanks

With that motherboard I'm not surprised games or DVDs don't sound great, would have thought CDs would be OK.

From your choice I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the "Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 THX OEM" - that's under £50 including the VAT.

[Trifikas]

Just a note: Creative is putting out there successor to the audigy series, the "Sound Blaster X-FI". While probably starting out higher than what you're willing to spend, it should bump down the cost of all the current cards.

IGN.Com says release is August 22nd, take that as you will.

Trif

[Vitnir]

It wasnt totally clear what your setup was for me, if you plug in speakers or cheap PC-speakers you cant expect much. The soundboard can never produce enough juice to power speakers if you have any demands on quality. If you have a separate (old) amplifier the result will be a lot better if you connect the line-out from the soundboard to the amplifier.

[Rat]

It's not just the sound quality that's an issue, anyway. A better soundcard will do most of the sound processing itself, and reduce the load on the rest of the system. A cheaper card, or, worse, onboard sound, farms out a lot of the processing to the cpu, causing frame rate drops in aurally busy moments in games and so on.

Cheers,
Rat.

[a_unique_person]

Don't forget, only use the best speaker cable. This site has some products I can heartily recommend.

http://www.dhcones.com/otheracc.html

The cables will cost more than the rest of the computer, but your midrange will no longer be flatulent.

[jones172]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


The cables will cost more than the rest of the computer, but your midrange will no longer be flatulent.

From Tom: (Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering)

Sorry, but I must respectfully disagree with this analysis. The improvement from plain, ordinarly, speaker wires is negligible.

[a_unique_person]

Er, I was only joking. Sorry, I don't usually use smilies.

[geni]

Originally posted by jones172
From Tom: (Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering)

Sorry, but I must respectfully disagree with this analysis. The improvement from plain, ordinarly, speaker wires is negligible.

on this forum stupidly expensive speaker cables are a long standing joke.

[Smike]

Indeed, the ultra-tweeters on that page are mentioned in this week's commentary.