Hi.

First of all, I'm quite new to digital sound. I have a crappy motherboard integrated sound chip which I want to replace in favor of better sound quality and features.

I'm looking for a card that's capable of playing back 24/96 sound which would be DVDA in my case. Do you even need a sound card that supports it or is a software player like WinDVD with the DVDA addon enough? I don't have any DVDA discs or WinDVD either at the moment but it seems interesting. The second thing that's quite important is game compatibility ie. EAX and other 3D audio standards.

Third, Linux support would be nice since I'm going to start using it sooner or later. I don't know much about it either so I don't know if Linux compatibility is a problem with sound cards at all.

Right now, Audigy 2 (the basic model) has caught my eye as it has 24/96, is advertised as "the only card that supports DVDA" (is that true or do I simply remember wrong?) and has EAX support. But then, I hear complaints about the sound quality of Audigy cards and also bad things about Creative forcing customers with Audigy 1 to upgrade simply by discontinuing driver support.

The other option would be a Terratec card, or...? Anything with the features I mentioned and an affordable price (<100€/$) will do. Audigy 2 costs 70-80€ where I live.

I'd be happy for any hints.


edit: I forgot to mention that I also need 5.1 support. Hmm, am I too demanding?

Creative Labs is the only company who bundles a DVD-A player with their sound card and the only company I know of offhand who has paid for the licenses and implemented a DVD-A player in software on the PC.
If you need DVD-A playback your choices are limited. I'd say relatively few people actually use the DVD-A capabilities of their computer however, because ripping is going to be limited to a capture of the analog output, and folks with DVD-A collections probably have standalone hifi systems anyway.

Game "compatibility" isn't an issue with most cards because hw/sw DirectSound, Miles 2D, RAD etc., is extremely common in games, and nearly all onboard CODECs and sound cards can support EAX 1 in software. An Audigy 2 card will give you support for EAX HD, which no other manufacturers card will do. Using EAX HD could concievably result in more CPU usage than a software solution using a much more limited 3D sound API.
Games that are CPU limited already will of course benefit just as much from a CPU upgrade regardless of the sound solution

3D sound API support in Linux is going to be questionable with all cards in all but the most Linux-friendly games (UT series?). 2D support should be good on a basic level with most Creative cards, but I'm afraid I don't have firsthand knowledge there.

Thanks for the reply.

The 3D sound formats are common indeed but my integrated, for example, doesn't seem to handle any of them properly. The sounds are always messed up if I use hardware 3D sound: they either have a stupid echo effect all the time, play at weird volume levels, the sounds crackle and so on. That's why I thought some other cards might have problems, too.

As for the DVDA issue, I don't have a standalone DVDA player as you might guess. I listen to music only on my computer and I need a new sound card anyway so why not solve both problems now. I'm still confused about one thing. You said Creative includes the DVDA software with their cards. Does that mean Audigy is the way to go or can I get any card with 24/96 and use 3rd party DVDA software?

You can use also WinDVD5 as DVDA-Player, but only with Audigy2.

You'd probably be better of with one of Audigy 2 ZS cards as opposed to an Audigy 2. For DVD playback, you get the added dts and dts-es and neo:6 decoders for one. And there's the support for 7.1 speaker systems. Though I guess for DVD-A playback and if you aren't plannet to do much movie watching or recording on your computer, the Audigy 2 or 2 ZS would be more or less equal. Both support 24/96 in 7.1 mode and 24/192 in stereo.

You could also look at the M-Audio Revolution 7.1. That supports 24/96 in 7.1 and 24/192 in stereo as well. It doesn't carry the DVD-A symbol, though, but I'm not sure if that matters.