I've been using my Live! 5.1 for several years, but just acquired an Audigy SE (very low end of the series). I've heard good and bad about each of them, and I'm looking for advice from someone more knowledgeable in the area.

I use sound almost exclusively for music, with my Grado SR60s plugged directly into the soundcard (Not ideal, I know), but from time to time, I hook up my crappy 2.1 speakers on the weekends.

I'm not really familiar with sound card technical specifications enough to be able to compare them, and properly ABX testing between two soundcards is impossible (at least with my available hardware, since I'd always know which card I was listening to)



Audigy SE: http://www.soundblaster.com/products/produ...14257&nav=1

Live 5.1: http://us.creative.com/products/product.as...lSpecifications




Any thoughts, comments, advice, suggestions, etc are much appreciated.

Depending on what you have hooked up to them, you could probably ditch both for onboard sound.

If you're using analog output, the Audigy may have a (very) slight advantage in terms of quality while onboard would be likely to stink out loud. For digital output, neither Soundblaster has an advantage, and if (and only if) it is possible to change the S/PDIF sampling rate, they have that advantage over onboard. Some onboard adapters also have issues with S/PDIF passthrough, e.g. from DVDs.

Neither card offers anything worthwhile in terms of hardware acceleration, but the most recent drivers are still very, very old. That's an advantage for most onboard sound, especially Realtek, that tends to have decent driver support.

Generally speaking, nothing from the bottom of a Creative generation's list is vastly superior to onboard, especially if you're using digital output. If you need features, keep the Audigy.