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Advice on a MEGA CHEAP sound card..

E

Electronics4Life

Member
 
I've tried some of the c-media 8738 cards. Their sound quality really isn't up to par if you're demanding of your music. The bass level seems way too high and the sound gets distorted pretty easily. Among the card i've used: santa cruz, acoustic edge, aureal montego, ensoniq audiopci, sb live. Suprisingly the SB live is the best sounding card with the best range i've heard so far..... except i have VIA crackling problems with it, so I have to use the santa cruz now.

 
The SB PCI128 got higher audio quality scores than most SB Live cards. 😉 Not that I'm a CL suporter, but it's cheap and good.
 
Crystal based sound cards have always been good sounding to me. The current TBSC and Guillemot use Crystal.
.bh.
 
If you want a cheap card, you may want to try used. Maybe you have friends that have extra sound cards? Or maybe there is a used computer stuff store in you town?
 
I'll cast my vote for the C-Media based cards. Let's support a smaller manufacturer that puts out a good product.

I personally use the Chaintech AV512 in a lot of builds and it works well. In my experience, all decent sound cards yield the same sound quality, provided your volume levels are reasonable (i.e. low enough for a single room) and your speakers aren't high end audiophile stuff. Those are the typical limitations for most people's audio setups, and in that environment the CMEDIA 8738 is more than adequate.

I wonder what a blindfolded subjective sound quality survery would reveal in a comparison of cheap and expensive sound cards. I think people could tell the difference (i.e. warmer, punchier) but might not be able to decide which one sounded "better".

Modus
 
The C-media cards are great for the price, especially considering it uses Sensaura 3D. I find it perfectly acceptable with mp3's too.
The new 6.39 WDM drivers support C-media's new Xear 3D headphone technology. It's quite a interesting feature, but requires special "open eared" headphones. There's a white paper of this technology on cmedia's web site.

Cheers
 
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