A friend of mine is looking to buy a soundcard; his requirements are that it be reasonably cheap, whilst still being of a high quality - I understand that it's best to go for a card which doesn't resample when using the analog-in? An optical I/O would be an advantage. We're in the UK here, so availability in this coutry is obviously essential.

Thanks...

maybe you'll something thats cheap enough at m-audio. www.m-audio.net
terratec is a good manufactor too i think.

creative is too expensive for it features. so i don't recommend buying a creative card. (they are not HIGH quality anyway)

i second that - creative el'ripoffo

OK, so Creative aren't value for money, that's been taken on board.

Could you tell me what features I need to look out for which indicate that the card has been designed with audio quality in mind, and not just gimmicky knobs and buttons? I mentioned resampling up there, am I correct in thinking that if it can be avoided, then it's a step in the right direction?

Thanks again.

the M-audio sonique sounds like a good choice for you...

its a USB soundcard that outputs optical... sounds great (sorry, i don't have any tests or anything to show you), has a low SNR (97db)... and it costs like $50 (i got mine on pricewatch for around that)

just one thing, it doesn't have any input for recording... its only output (digital and analog... but i've never used the analog so i can't tell you anything about that)...



EDIT: oh, and it doesn't resample.

To continue with the praising of the Search function, i will mention that there have been many sound card suggestion threads here at HA, in which you can find a lot of really useful information. "Praise the Search! ."

although new soundcards come out frequently, making some of those threads outdated...

But not outdated enough to use the search function.

And practically, there have been no real new major contenders released since M-Audio's Revo AFAIK (which has come up in numerous sound card threads). Most of the cards being discussed are the same that have been discussed for the past 6 months. They don't come out that frequently.

fair enough...

people that ask for suggestions about what kind of soundcard to buy are frequently vague. people need to specify what they will use it for. if you plan on gaming til the end of the world, than stick to the lastest incarnation from Creative Labs. now if you want something that is good for gaming and listening to some decent quality music and i'd recommand one of the newer cards from Hercules. finally, if listening to music is your biggest task but you occasionally game then i'd suggest the revolution 7.1 from m-audio.

just remember to evaluate your needs/wants before running out and buying the soundcard that everyone seems to be raving about.

Hercules Fortissimo 3. Cheap and good, I replaced my Santa Cruz with one.

Thanks for the recommendation Daneel.

I didn't use the search function because I wanted a concise answer to my dilemma. Maybe I should have been a little more specific but as I mentioned, I am asking for a friend; I thought maybe you would have understood. I can never understand why people bother to post "use the search function", if you feel a thread has wasted your time then just click out of it, don't waste more of your time by posting to it. It's not like I was spreading mis-information or trolling.

Anyway as I said, I should have been more specific. The following is what my mate says he would be using it for, primarily:

Recording audio through the analog in for his video captures
Recording analog audio from radio broadcasts
Recording optically to his MD
Listening to music through the analog out

Any advice appreciated. I'm not going to use the search function for the above because I'm sure someone will be kind enough to give me a more personal reply, I know I would for someone else if I read their post and had the appropriate knowledge.

Cheers...

There's a possibility that you won't get many answers, because many regulars here such as me are a little bit tired of answering always same things to questions like yours.

How about a Sticky with recommended sound cards?

Did anyone say you're trolling/wasting our time/whatever?
Instead of just ignoring your post i made a suggestion, for your benefit (!) Because i've seen many useful sound card suggestion threads here. I didn't even imagine that what i or Dibrom wrote could upset you.
You can not use the search function, no one forced you to, just suggested, and it will be your loss as well as everyone else's.

I recommend for you ESI Waveterminal 192X or 192L
192X 2ch-24/192 ADC , 6ch-24/192 DAC
192L 2ch-24/96 ADC , 6ch-24/192DAC

more info at: http://esi-pro.com/esi-pro/eng/

I own version 192X under Win XP SP1 and resulting.........maximal Audiophile performance vs medium-good price.
Not recomended for Games is average,for HDR or playning audio related materials is super.

If you look at the first page of the Audio Hardware threads, you will notice quite a few threads discussing commonly used soundcards and/or suggestions for replacement. Just reading through those threads might have helped you finding the answer to your question.

dev0

You can still be more specific; a price range would be nice. "Reasonably cheap" is rather vague. For me, mentioned cards such as ESI WT are definitely not in the "medium-price range".

Anyway, recording to MD can be done properly with some pretty cheap cards like a CMI-based one (I can never remember the type numbers, but there's a very recent thread about it). Since radio-broadcasts are often 13bit quality or so, that's no reason to get a good card either.
Listening to music could be a reason to spend more though. This is a very vague requirement.

So, specify: price range, and casual or high-fidelity listening requirements.

Note that the WT192L is far inferior to the WT192X. See http://forum.rightmark.org/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000092.html and http://forum.rightmark.org/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000146.html for tests.
As to the WT192X: it isn't a practical card for home use since inputs aren't consumer-level. Personally I wouldn't mind too much, but ofcourse it isn't convenient.

(This was discussed in some thread before, so I'm somewhat repeating myself here, but who cares, I'm not tired of me yet )

Don't worry, neither you nor Dibrom have upset me.

I was just rather taken aback to check my thread after posting a genuine, nicely-worded question to see that a few people had basically posted "ugh, use the search function".

But anyway, no harm done, and in any case, I've got plenty of answers to my question. Maybe I might consider using the search function first next time

Thanks all...

Hm... interesting. I wonder if those who say Creative sux, etc or that it doesn't offer much for the price actually used the card, like the most recent Audigy 2 or its Platinum reincarnation?

I use Foobar2000 and Winamp as my players and resample to 48000Hz/24bit in this configuration it has been shown that the card perfoms as excellent as any highest end sound card. Btw, I'm sure that most people with M-Audio Revolution are also resampling to higher resolution waveform, though it may not be very nessesary. However, even without resamping in soft and using not so perfect native resampling of the Audigy2, I believe one would have a hard time telling the difference on something other than some sample sine signals in 19Khz range. Which most don't hear anyway. Now as audio quality topic is closed, lets switch to gaming.

No other card comes close to surround sound effects in games (remember Vortex2 is dead, so let's forget it). This summer EAX4.0 is coming which will be supported exclusively on Audigy 2, I suppose it would improve 3D sound in EAX4.0 optimized games even more. Also contrasting with all Sensaura solutions, processor for EAX effects is in Hardware not in drivers Not that I care a lot since the only game I play is Quake 3 Arean mod True Combat is not optimized for any 3D stuff at all (A3D is dead!).

I guess that Audigy2 owners are still the only people that can listen to Audio DVD disks on their computers (but only in Windows) - and quality is fantastic.

WDM drivers are quite good currently, I didn't have a single issue with them yet (Except that I hate skins). They offer some nice features there, especially for those with 5.1 systems.

No, I'm not saying that Audigy2 is perfect all around: one such thing is still very limited support for Linux and no official drivers for Linux at all (though I read somewhere that something is coming soon, and there is a chance of having even EAX in Linux).

M-Audio revolution is a nice card from the specs and from what people are writing, but at the time I selected to buy A2Platinum, I was attracted by high quality Phone audio output @ front panel of my system, so I no longer need to get under the table and insert my headphones. And the closest similar product from Terratec costs much more than Audigy 2 Platinum.

Ok, I'll bite the bullet


Why are you so sure of that? Anyway, to resample with a non-resampling good quality card (such as the Revo) has no sense, since these cards internally already oversample. Even if you do resample, the DAC still performs its internal oversampling, evey modern (and not so modern) DACs do. Don't mix "traditional" resampling with oversampling, oversampling is a much simpler process used to relax DAC analog filter requirements, but has same effect.



Well, I'm not sure if the Audigy2 with updated drivers resamples, or in case it does, if it really does a bad job. I'd like to see some measurements, since I've read varying opinions.

For games, no doubt Creative cards are the best. But just for good sound quality, Audigy2 Platinum is too expensive for what it is. Audigy 2 is cheaper, but the Revolution is probably better in this respect, and similar in price or cheaper. All Creative cards previous to Audigy2 are no doubt worse quality.



That is the only real advantage it has.



Well, one thing I still have doubts about is if the Revo has headphone-capable outputs. If it has, with just putting an extension cable to it will do fine.

The A2 still resamples (to 48, 96 or 192 kHz) with the latest driver. I don't know why anyone thinks different.

Well, <sigh> since there seems to be some debate about Creative cards v. other cards (ie. the M-Audio Revolution), I guess I'll join the fray.

First of all, I haven't used the Audigy 2, but back in the day (when Creative was really the only choice in affordable home computer soundcards), I was a big fan. Unfortunately, the last Creative soundcard that I've used was of the Live! line, which, although sounding good at the time (I had to be in my early-mid teens then, so don't even comment on that), never stood up to the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz that I got after it. Ah...the Santa Cruz. I had many a fun time with that card. I like it, although when I found out that I could resample through software in Winamp, I did.

Now, I own an M-Audio Revo, and couldn't be happier. Sometimes I still resample, sometimes I don't, but I can't hear any real difference, and I save quite a few CPU cycles by not resampling, so I generally don't. I can drive headphones with the Revo, but I highly recommend pumping it through an amp if you want the best quality.

Truthfully, I can find very few advantages to owning a Creative soundcard now. If I'm correct, the Revo does EAX 2 (which never really blew me away--I always though A3D was very good, but, as stated, it is very much defunct), and, I would think, has the physical capabilities to play DVD-A. All I need now is a software player....

As for a front panel, I worry about my computer just having way too much interference for a front panel to be worth the trouble, and just plan on running my computer digitally to a pre-amp and from there to amps and speakers, or to a dedicated headphone amp and then headphones.

Actually, for a while, I had been considering getting a USB-based soundcard like the Sonica Theatre or the like. I just didn't want to end up removing my sound every time I had to pack up my computer (I'm still in university, thus I need some amount of portability and ease-of-setup).

On the whole, I would think that if anyone did get a Creative card, it'd have to be the Audigy 2, since the faults of its predecessors seem to be very much accepted by the community in general. Otherwise, I'm always for suggesting the Revo as a general computer audio card, or even the Santa Cruz. I've used my Revo for everything but optical out (since it doesn't have one, but it does have a coaxial sp/dif, so I'm quite satiated) and am saving up for a good pre-amp/amp system.

Two remarks on this:

iirc, Creative's front panels are connected through a digital line.

as said before, there are much cheaper solutions for connecting digitally. Edit: cheaper than a Revo, that is.

Not exactly interesting, but here is a brand newreview of M-Audio Revolution. Not a good quality review, but nice to see screenshots of the drivers... I really like them in fact, I wish Creative laid off all their driver developers and created something that looks not like a toy and doesn't load in 50 seconds taking 50Mb of memory. A good example is the ATI that when changed team of developers finally created very high quality drivers. (Too afraid to try KX drivers yet, though will one day)

SoundTrack Audio DSP24 Value

I have that soundcard and it works now very well...
B)

HardSID

I recommend Creative Sound Blaster PCI 128..

I have used a Game Theatre XP for something like two-three years now - My front case door (Antec 1030) closes and I must have an external rack to work with. I refuse to touch anything from creative. It has been rock solid for me and caused very few problems and 0 BSODs with drivers or whatever else.

I would go for an old santa cruz (cheap ,HQ) or an Audigy 2 (but resammples) or a "cheap" terratec (150USD/€)

I have the famous Santa Cruz (Videologic's Sonic Fury in Europe) and I've had no problems with it whatsoever.

Check out www.pure-digital.com (former Videologic)
they've got an intresting card replacing Sonic Fury... B)