Hi

First of all i'm not too well up on soundcards in fact I know very little. But I want to buy a new computer (building myself) and I want a nice soundcard for it.

Heres what I think I need

1) Digital outputs, optical or coax I don't mind here as long as i can hook it upto my digital amp i don't mind.

2) Must sound excellent.

3) be able to play music on all speakers not just 2 (i have 5 nice big speakers and it seems a shame not to use them all).

4) Dolby digital encoding would be nice however if it can play sound through all speaker via the spdif then dolby digital isn't essential.

5) EAX etc... is a bonus but its not essential I don't have it at the moment with my soundstorm and I wasn't impressed with it on my audigy 1 when i had one of those.

6) I was thinking about an audigy 2 + the KX drivers but I don't know if it satisfies my needs cause it doesn't seem to tell you what they enable you to do over the creative drivers, all i know it that there better and don't contain the creative crap.

Thats my list I'm just very confused as you can never tell exactly the options you'll have to play with and I buy a card. Analogue isn't very important to me, if that only way to do what I want is to use analogue however thats also fine i'll just have to buy a load more cables

Thanks in advance.

EDIT [forgot to meantion my budget is uptp £150 assuming its worth it of course] and I appear to have posted in the wrong forum can someone move it please I didn'r notice the audio hardware forum at the bottom :S

Stay away from Audigy's or any other Creative labs cards. They are great for gaming but not the best for audio quality. If you want top notch sound, look for something else.

Here are a few good cards to look at

Turtle Beach Montego - http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcards/mtgoddl/

Turtle Beach Catalina - http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/s...cards/catalina/

M-Audio Revolution 7.1 - http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolution71-main.html

M-Audio Revolution 5.1 - http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolution51-main.html

im confused. U want digital out to go into a digital amp ... then 5 spkr? What spk set are u using?

PErsonally i had an Audigy 2 ZS, connected a set of Logitech Z-2300. (2.1 i know) but then i also tested them w/my Digital out Z-5600 (5.1) that i have setup in my living room. they work fine ...

however i still bought a Revo 7.1 and honestly i think that it sounds better than my Audigy 2 ZS. i havent played w/the Revo & my z-5600 yet tho ... i will try that later

Whats there to be confused about? I have 5 speakers attached to my amp. Its a Sony STR-DB780 amp mines black. As for speakers i'm using hi-fi speakers a nice set of technics ones.

I'd prefer to use digial output for cabling reasons, so it would be nice if when i play a CD in my comp i get sound from all 5 speakers even 4 would do as panning to the centre is dodgy on my soundstorm so i don't use it.

I'm a big music lover but I know little about soundcards these days :S been a while since i've bought one last time was an audigy before the soundstorm.

Many soundcards can output bitperfect DD and DTS digital streams (like Chaintechs AV710, $25). Listening to a stereo source will only output 2 channels digitally, though, unless your amp has a setting for 5 channel stereo, in which case it will spread the sound to all the speakers. IIRC, there are a few soundcards which can encode whatever goes through the card to a DD signal (like your soundstorm), but im not sure of others.

Soundcards these days are all about tradeoffs.

There are cards that can do Dolby encoding on arbitrary input, so you can use a digital connection to your amp for games. But they are all based on C-Media chips, not the best for sound quality. They do 3d audio, but not as good as Creative cards. Honestly I think they're a snare and a delusion. Digital connections are cool and all, but I think the lossy DD compression means you're not gaining anything over shielded analog.
Cards: BlueGears HDA Digital X-Mystique, Turtle Beach Montego DDL

Then there are the Envy cards. Great sound repoduction, lousy game performance. But the fact is that most games these days don't fully use the cpu anyways, so doing 3d in software doesn't actually hurt much of the time.
Cards: Chaintech AV710, Maudio, Audiotrack

Finally, Creative Labs. They've pretty much corrected the sound quality issues like always resampling. The good part is the games, and right now you can get a good deal on an Audigy2 because of the new XFi. The bad is that you have to put up with Creative BS and you feel like you're supporting the devil.
I think if you plan to use the KX drivers, you might as well get an Envy card. It comes out to about the same thing, and you save some money.

Yeah its a shame you can't buy a card thats just plain good. Nevermind. I've read a boat load of reviews and I think its gonna be the M-Audio 7.1 or the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1, just one more quick question whats the difference between the revo 7.1 and the 5.1? other than the number of speakers

Some people use a two sound card setup with the Crative Audigy 2 and Chaintech AV-710. This would work well considering the superior EAX capabilities of the Audigy, and the bit-perfect output of the AV-710. The Chaintech card is also pretty cheap so it wont be a costly solution. Too bad it's hard to find around here (Australia) however.

That's the only difference.

Yes I like that idea as audigy 2 ZS's are £30 which is very cheap, however I think its gonna be a pain to switching over cables all the time.

If the only difference between the revo 5.1 and 7.1 then I may as well get a 5.1 as my amp doesn't do 7.1 so I can save myself a few quid.