Hi,

I'm in the process of buying a new soundcard. First thing is, is the m-audio a lot better than my current digifire 7.1, in terms of sound quality(music)?

Which of these is the best:

Audigy 2 ZS, M-audio Revolution 7.1, or M-audio sonica theater?

I know all three now support true 24bit/ 192khz playback. But which is better in terms of sound quality?

Also is the sonica theater a lot worse than revo 7.1? I'm thinking of getting the sonica since then it can be used with laptop too.

Thanks to all for reading/replying

These numbers are not so much relevant. What is the point of having a 15.1 soundcard with 48bit/256kHz support if it sounds worse than a decent stereo 16 bit soundcard with a pair of real speakers? If you care about quality, get a real stereo system. You'd be much better off with your money considering a nice speaker costs around ~$250 at least.

thanks for the input. By real stereo system do you mean pre-amp/amp/cd-player? That cost a lot more than the sound card though. I'm planning to use the soundcard with my good headphone so.

Ok I don't know too much about headphones but the number of channels are not the thing you should care about still. A more material question is PCI or USB (here). I think the resolution and frequency is very important. But there're usually better DACs with lower resolution/frequency. M-Audio and Terratec are good. Avoid Creative. Their stuff is overpriced and mediocre.

You should probably still have a headphone amp. A lot of soundcard line-outs and headphone jacks are shit.

edit:

Check out Headroom's Total Airhead.

Or Gado's RA1.

Or many others.

What makes you say that? I know most HA users hate Creative, but i think their products have some quality, supporting almost every standard (EAX, THX, 7.1 surround, Dolby Digital Decoding, etc).
Can you tell the difference between a M-Audio card and its Creative rival? Why is Creative mediocre for music-listening, and M-Audio Revolution recommended?

I'm not saying Creative is better than M-Audio or Terratec or whatever, because i really don't know. You seem to know.

Please enlighten me

Edit: Btw, what about Creative speaker systems? They're very expensive, what can i expect from them? Any better (and cheaper) alternatives?

Thanks for the reply regarding headphone-amp. Those look good but cost more than my HD-580

Guess have to save up more money for those. Then again I think I should save up and buy decent amp/pre-amp. Ahh the trip to bankruptcy begins

My Revo headphone out drives my HD580 at good levels. But maybe people who like mind-blowing levels would think of it as being somewhat limited.

Edit: I forgot, the Revo is the best quality of the 3, although quite likely the Audigy can put higher output levels.

And, leaving placebo effect apart, unless your digifire has audible noises or something like that, I don't think a Revo or anything you buy will make an astounding difference when listening to music. But I can't say for sure, since I don't own one or have read a detailed analysys of it. However, similar cards from Hercules or specially Turtle Beach (whose Santa Cruz I know well) are quite good quality.

Heh just caved in and ordered a revo 7.1 from JandR. Well at least the digifire will always be of use with winxp where my old live value won't even work