Hi guys!

I'm trying to figure out what is the best card for 5.1 Speakers...

It has to be somewhere below $200.

I have the 5.1 Klipsch ProMedia and I have some troubles with the Live 5.1. You know... Creative & Via and 48khz resampling...

Anyway, I'd look for anything that has great sound quality (I'd buy a M-Audio 24/96 but it has only 1 stereo out).

Thanks

Well, the Terratec DMX 6fire would be a great choice. Non-resampling, 24 bit / 96 KHz capability... but it costs more than 200 bucks. The second best choice IMO is the Hercules Game Theater XP (around $150). I own one myself, and i must say, it's the best AC97 card i heard so far, a LOT better than the SB Live. It resamples to 48 KHz, but you won't find a good non-resampling 5.1 card below $200.

Is there a card out there that combines the best of non-resampling with AC97 compatibility?

Even if that requires turning resampling on/off via some sort of control panel, that's fine. But it would be nice if, say, DVD software would output at the native rate, while system sounds are resampled simultaneously.

No, AC97 requires 48 KHz resampling.

See http://developer.intel.com/ial/home/sp/doc.htm , Audio Codec '97 Component Specification: "...indicates fixed 48 KHz sampling rate operation".

Yes, I'm aware of that---what I'm asking is if there is a card which provides AC97 compatibility, but which also provides a way for programs to conveniently bypass that requirement. Or, a card which lets me turn off the 48kHz upsampling manually and suffer the consequences.

You're asking for the impossible, i think. The clocking is fixed to 48 KHz in hardware. Sample rate conversion is done seperately, because everything that passes the codec is 48 KHz, the only supported sample rate, by definition. No matter what you do on driver- or software-side, it will always be forced to 48 KHz in the end.

Well, that is unless you can solder a different crystal clock on the board...

Terratec DMX 6fire sounds mmm...

Anything about the M-Audio Delta 410?

I'm not looking for "traditional 5.1 out (rear/front/sub), just for GREAT sound quality and the Delta 410 looks like it can be hacked to do that (3 stereo outs, if I'm not mistaken...)

Any other opinion??

Thanks guys!

:reading:

I think you're wrong about AC97 requiring fixed 48KHz operation. What it really says is:

AC'97 1.x compliant indicates fixed 48K sampling rate operation (non-extended feature set)
AC'97 2.1 compliant indicates extended audio feature set (optional variable rate , multichannel, etc.)
AC'97 2.2 compliant indicates extended audio, enhanced riser audio support, and optional S/PDIF

So, therefore, cards that don't resample everything to 48KHz can definitely be compatible with AC97 2.x, however, apparently few manufacturers bother to implement that. I can't see how hard it is to put a 21.168 (yes, I bothered to calculate that)MHz crystal on the card, though, and decimate to support both 44.1KHz and 48KHz base rates.

Read the paper again, you'll see that even with 44.1 KHz sample rate, everything is resampled to 48 KHz. Example AC-Link: "... in passing a 44.1 KHz stream across, for every 480 audio output frames that are sent across, 441 of them must contain valid sample data". Simply put, there is no sample rate operation possible other than 48 KHz. For everything else, the codec must do sample rate conversion.

I still say this doesn't preclude the card itself supporting different rates. The fact that the sound card does the sample rate conversion suggests that it could just as easily not do so (in a non-AC97 compatible mode).

I have both cards in question:

Hercules Gametheater XP (on Win98SE box)

and

Terratec DMX 6fire (on WinXP pro box)

Of these two I'd only run Hercules on a W98 box - the Terratec drivers are broken under W98.

Hercules also has better features in its driver set and is much better for gaming (much smaller hit in terms of cpu usage).

The Terratec card however has better sound quality (haven't tried under ABX) although I wouldn't call it as big as the jump from SBLive to Hercules Gametheater XP.

Terratec's drivers work on XP, but leave quite a lot to be desired in terms of functionality. Remember that they are 1.0 level drivers at this point.

As summary I'd say that both cards are better than Creative offerings on W98 and on XP Terratec DMX 6fire takes the cup, unless you are a really have hc-gamer.

Then again, if you're a hc gamer, maybe a Creative card is still the best choice.

cheers,
Halcyon

PS On my gaming/audio combinatory rig I have nForce 420D (with DD throughput to my DD receiver) for games and Terratec DMX for better sound quality. Two sound outputs and it works.

OK, so I failed the test at a fundamental level. It seems AC-97 is stuck with that single clock running at a bad frequency for 44.1KHz sample rates. It also seems to say you can do other sampling rates, but you have to send frames at the 48KHz "SYNC" frequency and mark some frames as invalid. It's confusing.

Further confusing things is the section about S/PDIF, where it says you _can_ tell it to output data at a 44.1KHz "bit-exact" rate.

So, I guess if you want decent audio out of AC-97, you have to get one with S/PDIF outputs.

Checkout the Creative Labs Extigy. External USB, with the capability to do both analog and optical 5.1 output. I've seen it for about $135 on pricewatch.com. Creative is billing it as having excellent sound quality, and it even comes with a remote. Perfect if you're looking to output 5.1 from DVD's.

Might I also suggest looking into a PROMEDIA DD-5.1 processor. $170 direct from Klipsch designed as a front-end for the Promedia 5.1. All you need is a digital output in which case you could look at an SB Live! or Audigy too and just use the digital output.

Promedia DD5.1

PROMEDIA DD-5.1 processor is the way to go. Thanks!!! Now I need a cheapo good SPDIF-out card...

The SB Live! Value in a retail version does this.