It will be used for only one aim - listening to music. But it must be quite qualitive...

Perhaps Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1 would suit you?

turtle beach santa cruz / video logic sonic fury (same card different name). no question the best quality/value for money card avaliable.

-J

TerraTec SoundSystem DMX 6fire LT
http://www.terratec.com/

Thanks a lot... really don`t know what is what amoung this cards
And what about Audiophile 2496?

Well, you said you wanted a cheap card, therefor I think none of us had any thoughts of cards more expensive than $100... But if you can afford M-Audio Audiophile 2496, then go for it...

I recommend the Jetway Artis 738S1, which is around $15.
It has 4-channel output, and digital output. Good bass and good treble.
Performs equal to Sound Blaster Live, IMHO.

Review : http://www.backshelf.net/default.asp?dir=r...=reviews/738S1/

if you record music and have windows XP... do NOT get this card. problems galore i have one. been using for months. finally returning it.

I ment a card not much then 200$...B)
Well first of all it will be used for listening. But maybe for recording too.

I was going to buy the LT. Can you tell us what kind of problems it's been causing you?

Maybe the operating system....

the problems are, a slight rumbling distortion is introduced occasionally, many of the DMA buffer sizes do not work right at all, digital clicks and occasional pops are introduced into every recording at random but very often (less then a few seconds apart).

And I don't think I don't know what I am dong when recording. I have been recording and producing on pc's for over 5 years. This is a problem I did not have until I bought my DMX 6fire (with I/o box) on any of my systems with the same equipment.

I have very high quality home recording equipment, a 2.53ghz P4 system, and Windows XP Pro (now updated to SP1).

Upon getting the DMX 6fire, it did not work, period. Windows did not recognize it as being there. That right there was reason enough to doubt it's compatibility with Windows XP. Upon downloading and installing the latest drivers, it recognized the card and all went fine. Sounded great playing back previously recorded stuff and CD's by other artists.

I then started a little recording session to see how it functioned as the a recording device. Immediately after recording the first track I heard the digital clicks introduced. I thought at first that maybe something in my room was causing interference. But no matter what I turned off and unplugged, the problem stayed. I then tried adjusting parameters in the control panel for the DMX 6fire. I worked with the various buffer sizes for days. Nothing worked. I tried adjusting every known parameter in the multitrack recorder I was using, nothing. I tried adjusting the mic levels, nothing. I even got so desperate that I downloaded a handful of other multitrack recorders including Sonar 2 and Nuendo. Problem stayed.

I finally contacted costumer support, and they could not fix the problem either. They basically said, that the DMX 6fire has known compatibility issues with Windows XP.

So, I'm going to get a refund and get a new soundcard.

Hey, but mabey you'll have better luck than me.

Get then the Audiophile 2496, although perceived quality when listening on normal conditions won't differ much (or not at all) from a Santa Cruz. Also, the Audiophile doesn't have multiclient capabilities on Win9x systems (playing different sounds from different programs at the same time), nor headphone output, mic input, or adjustable gain for the line input. On the other side it has full-working digital input, output, and midi interface, which the Santa Cruz lacks or don't work properly.

The main recommended sound cards on this forum are the Turtle Beach Tropez Plus / Video Logic Sonic Fury (same thing) and the M-Audio Audiophile 2496. Just so happen that Ars Technica God Box uses BOTH of this cards. Perhaps this should go into the forum FAQ...

Slightly better (and generally more expensive) than Audiophile are cards like Echo Mia, Waveterminal 2496 and similar semi-pro and pro cards. Terratec EWX 24/96 is similar to Audiophile in terms of performance, (maybe also driver issues?). For listening, in practice all those cards are as good as anything you can get. For home recording, any of the cards is probably more than enough, too.

Also, just note one bad thing about my Audiophile: when listening through the monitor mixer, there's always a delay of 1 sample between right and left channels, no matter the sampling frequency used. In my opinion, this has no audible consecuences, but can lead to problems in production tasks. This doesn't happen when bypassing the monitor mixer, but this way the soundcard is always at max. output level (no software control over the level).

Therefore I'm asking a dumb question, but since you don't mention it, I can't help asking : did you record the digital input, and if so, did you slave the card to its input ?
It's the most basic source of your problem, without switching the clock to "external" ("slave", or "SPDIF"), the recording will crackle all the time, because there is no AC97 resampling.

Edit : and did you record at the same sample rate than the source ?

I've got the Audiophile 2496 and it sounds good (compared to an old rotel 965 cd player). Just bought the Delta 410 since I wanted DVD multi channel sound. Both are recommended, but since I've not tried any of the other cards, i don't know if they are better/worse than the alternatives.
One good thing is that if you aren't happy having the DAC inside the PC, the audiophile's digital out is good and connecting to an external DAC should improve sound quality.
The volume control problem when bypassing the monitor mixer is a bit of a pain. Anyone know a way round this?

Thanks
- Audio Spyder

In Winamp, waveout properties, check "use alternate" setting for the volume. It will process the volume in Winamp instead of passing the volume to the device.

By the way, could somebody explain, why SB&Audigy are, say, very bad?

In practice they are not that bad. Apart from some Live users that report nasty background noises, I'd say (or guess) that most people would have quite a hard time trying to ABX them against a good card, even using good equipment. The problem is that Creative cards have problems that simply shouldn't be there, given their price and "status", and how are things today in sound card technology.

The Audigy did not provide 24/96 as advertised and marketted.
Creative has traditionally used their product models names to fool the inexperienced.. e.g. SB AWE32 (32 bit audio??) SB128 (wtf?!)

bad repson kurve

but is far is i have seen the audigy 2 has much improved the audio quality to a near fatl respons kruve with dvd audio
and near flat respons kurve with cd music (still it still resampels to 48khz)

toms test of audigy 2
http://www6.tomshardware.com/video/02q4/02...1106/index.html

toms test of audigy1 vs dmx6fire 24/96
http://www6.tomshardware.com/video/02q1/02...0115/index.html

If you already haven't bought a new card, I just ordered a the new Guillemot Hercules Fortissimo III from newegg for 43$ after shipping. I should have it sometime next week, so I'll tell you how it goes. It is a 7.1 card, with digital output and one input. Not really highend or anything, but it should be high quality and work for what you want it too do. Think of it like the GTXP's little brother without the breakout box.

I have not been recording through the digital input. I've been recording through the mic input.

But about the "switching to external clock"? Would that effect even the mic input? I didn't think it would as the mic input is analog.

I don't know. If you have any thoughts, lemme have em

Then I've said nothing

damn