I found this card on the Sam's Club website. Anyone know or can find out anything about it. I've thought it might be a cheap way to have a digital out on some of the machines I build.

http://www.samsclub.com/eclub/main_shoppin...fcfkjdgoodflg.0

First of all, all soundcards sound different!

My Concept:

Bad speakers with bad soundcard
Great speakers with great soundcards
Perfect speakers with perfect soundcards



Depemding on what quality of speakers you are using!

Edit: It's just that ez

It's a card based on the C-Media (http://www.cmedia.com.tw/) 8738 chipset (http://www.cmedia.com.tw/product/doc8738.htm). Analog front/rear/center out, mic in and line in on the sound card. The daughter board does the digital ins and outs.

I've got one, using it right now, very pleased with the sound quality and very light CPU usage.

The chipset isn't AC'97 (more to the point, it doesn't resample everything to 48khz).

I have the *same* package all the way down to the cable, it looks like, and mine was called a "Zoltrix Nightingale Pro 6" - it was $35 a year ago?

Drivers (http://www.cmedia.com.tw/download/OS_e-cmi8738_index.htm) for Windows (have tried both the WDM and the VxD on win98se), BeOS (tried on R5 Pro), Linux (I have only tried it on Mandrake so far) all have worked well for me. No issues whatsoever.

The Windows WDM drivers have more options than the VxD drivers. You can change the volume for each speaker, and you can do some lame reverb effects. I use the VxD drivers because the configuration is a little more concise and there is an option for independent bass output.

Of course, I guess that stuff doesn't really matter to you if you're only going to use the digital outs.

It's not a bad card/chipset at all. I'd recommend it to anybody for normal use.

However, if you're only looking for digital output, and don't need the six channels, I would pick up the two channel (~$15) or four channel (~$20 version of the card.

Steve,

Thanks for the slightly more indepth answer.

Maybe I might have to start using this. The price is right and i've heard that that chip is pretty decent.

According to what I've read, the analog output quality of CMI 8738 based soundcards in not on par with good soundcards such as the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, the SNR is not very good although frequency response seems to be quite good. However, I don't know how audible is the difference in practice.

Edit: ... but this has no importance if you are using just the digital outputs

I have both Zoltrix Nightingale Pro 6 and TBSC, and I must admit that the analog output quality of TBSC is much better than the Nightingale after testing on my Altec Lansing 221. The speaker is not high end, but it already gives a difference on analog output.

on a related note: my local store is selling a inno3d cmi-8738 soundcard for $22 cdn. Is this pretty much the same card you guys are talking about? Does it have
digital out, either optical or coaxial?
And it for sure doesn't resample audio?
Any sort of EAX support or similar 3d sound?
Sorry for all the questions, but I couldn't find any info by doing a google search.

I'd like to grab one of those m-audio revolutions to replace my sb live, but they aren't out yet afaik, and my god, $22 is cheap.

CMI 8378- based cards don't resample, but I've read that in some of them the digital in/out interface does not work. 3D sound, when available, is created from drivers, because the hardware doesn't support it.

I can say that the optical out of my Nightingale Pro 6 sucks compared to AOpen AW744 Pro. When I want to record MD, my MD cannot distinguish between digital silence and noise. This did not happen with YMF744. I think there is some problems with CMI8738. After all, it is an all-in-one cheap solution.

I think that CMI8738 supports 3D positional audio through the Sensaura engine. But I don't know if it is hardware-accelerated since it is just a HSP chip.

I've got the Chaintech card based on the CMI8738 - about to get rid of it due to issues with the optical SPDIF output. I am using the optical out to a very good digital preamp. SPDIF sound quality is good when it works, analog is passable for my computer speakers. If the drivers work for you - congratulations. If not, well it was only $20....

See: Audio Interruptus?