08-23-2004, 10:14 PM
What else is good besides SB? No one ever recommends anything else.
I hesitate to recommend sound cards I've never heard (which would basically be all of them except SB Audigy 2), especially when sound quality is so subjective. Creative is the cart that pulls the horse when it comes to sound engines in gaming, and they focus on loading their cards with features like hardware acceleration for games, surround sound support, DVD-A playback, etc. So what it boils down to is features vs. sound quality, determining what features you need and then seeing if something other than the Creative cards can offer them. M-Audio's "Revolution" card used to be a popular alternative to the Audigy... it still has surround sound support and basic, software-emulated EAX for gaming, and many claim it has better sound quality than the Audigy. For really good music sound quality, some people are going with semi-professional soundcards from RME or E-Mu. But these aren't a good choice for everybody, because most of them only have 2 channel output, there is no EAX support, and I think some of the RME cards don't even have proper support for DirectSound (meaning you wouldn't get sound from games at all). Also, most of these recording-oriented cards use RCA or 1/4" left and right jacks for output, which means you can't plug headphones or typical computer speakers directly into them.
The bottom line is, as I think I said in the last post, invest in decent quality speakers and/or headphones before you dump a bunch of money on a soundcard, because cheap speakers will make any card sound like crap. If you go with multichannel computer speakers and plan on gaming more than you listen to music, then the Audigy line is the best choice. If you decide to use your computer as a juke box, the Audigy line may not be the best choice, but all of the cards that reportedly have better sound fidelity have other drawbacks that need to be taken into consideration.
I hesitate to recommend sound cards I've never heard (which would basically be all of them except SB Audigy 2), especially when sound quality is so subjective. Creative is the cart that pulls the horse when it comes to sound engines in gaming, and they focus on loading their cards with features like hardware acceleration for games, surround sound support, DVD-A playback, etc. So what it boils down to is features vs. sound quality, determining what features you need and then seeing if something other than the Creative cards can offer them. M-Audio's "Revolution" card used to be a popular alternative to the Audigy... it still has surround sound support and basic, software-emulated EAX for gaming, and many claim it has better sound quality than the Audigy. For really good music sound quality, some people are going with semi-professional soundcards from RME or E-Mu. But these aren't a good choice for everybody, because most of them only have 2 channel output, there is no EAX support, and I think some of the RME cards don't even have proper support for DirectSound (meaning you wouldn't get sound from games at all). Also, most of these recording-oriented cards use RCA or 1/4" left and right jacks for output, which means you can't plug headphones or typical computer speakers directly into them.
The bottom line is, as I think I said in the last post, invest in decent quality speakers and/or headphones before you dump a bunch of money on a soundcard, because cheap speakers will make any card sound like crap. If you go with multichannel computer speakers and plan on gaming more than you listen to music, then the Audigy line is the best choice. If you decide to use your computer as a juke box, the Audigy line may not be the best choice, but all of the cards that reportedly have better sound fidelity have other drawbacks that need to be taken into consideration.