Audigy or Santa Cruz for a Half Life gamer?

[TripsAreF0rKids]

I sold my Phillips Acoustic Edge today because I was fed up with the poor EAX implementation in Day of Defeat (Half Life Mod). I need to be able to tell where my enemies are comeing from while playing. My Vortex 2 was great for this but sadly its Windows 2000 support is very poor. So now its crunch time... time for me to choose a soundcard. I have narrowed it down to the Audigy or the Santa Cruz. I am pretty well balanced between listening to music and gameing. I mainly want good 3d sound from my 2.1 speaker setup. How is the Audigys EAX support in Half life/Counterstrike/Day of Defeat? Same for the Santa Cruz. By the way I use Windows 2000 on an Intel 850 / RDRAM / P4 rig. Detailed specs are below.

Any suggestions would be helpful, thank you for your time.

 

[capodeloscapos]

I think Audigy has the most real experience for gaming, and Sta. Cruz is better for Music. If I were you, firstly I wouldn´t have bought an Intel System; and second: I would buy the Audigy, because of its Firewire ports and its Quality.

 

[Mem]

Both very good cards however I had to make the same decision as you for my WinXP, the SB Audigy will use less CPU processor usage during gaming so I would and did buy the SB Audigy,the main advantage of the Santa Cruz is very frequent driver updates and excellent drivers ,my Audigy drivers were simple enough to install and I did not have any driver problems so I`ve no complaints, all games work fine with it and the sound quality is excellent especially with decent speakers etc.

 

[Brian48]

Audigy, definitely. Although the 3d positioning was excellent with the Santa Cruz I had, there was issues with some sounds not being reproduced correctly. Most notably reverb when submerged under water and in some confined rooms. If the SC was your first really "high-end" sound card, you'd probably never notice it missing, but going from a SBLive, it's very easy to catch. The SC was a great card and I was happy with it when I had it, but admittedly there were a few games in which my old SBLive performed better, Half-Life being one of them. I think is more of an issue with the game itself rather than the sound card though. The sound engine was developed and tested extensively using EAX 1.0 and with SBLive's using LW 1.0.

 

[Amused]

Sorry, but I gotta go with the TB SC. Creative can take their buggy hardware and half baked drivers and stuff them where the sun don't shine.

(Can you tell I've had trouble with Creative Sound cards?)

Installing the TB is a no brainer, and it sounds great in HL, CS and TFC

 

[AA0]

I'd take a Santa Cruz too, the risk of getting that awful Creative bug in XP is too high for me, I like my cards not to crash my system...

 

[DN]

If you know what you are doing, go with the Audigy..

 

[nortexoid]

actually the santa cruz is a lot better in half-life than the audigy when using A3D vs. EAX

EAX is a piece of echoing ass....with my 2.1 setup using a santa cruz (i've also used a sb live and vortex 2), i can tell exactly where people are positioned - provided i'm using A3D.

if u mostly play half-life (or any mod), u'll definitely want to use A3D..u'll never go back once u get used to knowing the location of everyone by sound.

 

[Brian48]

** misread the post ***

 

[Strych9]

<< Sorry, but I gotta go with the TB SC. Creative can take their buggy hardware and half baked drivers and stuff them where the sun don't shine. >>

Amen to that.

 

[spartacuskzm]

And so the verdict is........
....no verdict.

I'd just like to thank you for pointing out to me why I get my A$$ spanked at DOD all the time. Since I'm always moving my rear speaker stands out of the way they could very well be on the wrong sides....time to mark the. Whatever you get - good luck.

 

[MasterHoss]

I vote for the Audigy as well.



<< If I were you, firstly I wouldn´t have bought an Intel System >>


capodeloscapos--the ironic thing is that his system kicks your system's ass. I don't see how telling him his system essentially sucks helps him decide what sound card to pick up.

 

[TripsAreF0rKids]

Ok I have decided on the Audigy. Why? Because sadly todays games are supporting EAX and EAX only, so for an avid gamer I think that the Audigy will be a good choice. Anythings an improvment over the horrible EAX I had with my Acoustic Edge. So now im off to order my Audigy, thanks for the responses.

And to defend my choice of Intel I will say this. I built this rig custom for very cheap and I am very happy with the performance and stability of my system under Windows 2000 SP2. I have had past issues with AMD/VIA systems and I dont want to go through that again. Even some of the non-VIA chipsets I've dealt with have had they're share of issues. I've been a longtime supporter of Intel and have been very pleased with what they have to offer, although AMD does seem to perform better clock to clock.

 

[Soccerman]

Because sadly todays games are supporting EAX and EAX only

errr... that may be true but you're probably talking about EAX 2.0 or worse. no games so far have any EAX Advanced HD which would give you a reason to go to the Audigy (cause it's the only card to support it).

interestingly enough, support for A3D (I think it's 1.0) and EAX 1.0 and 2.0 for TB Santa Cruz and other non-Creative cards is actually accomplished through DirectSound translations.

now for something even more interesting.. it seems to me that the API from Sensaura is more accurate at HRTF than the Audigy is. that is, fooling the brain into thinking that there's an object, say, behind you, but only with 2 speakers (which is what most 3D soundcards use to fool the ear, the 2 rear channels only help out by actually having some audio from a source physically behind you).

why is this interesting? well Sensaura's API is actually supported by the XBOX hardware, which alot of game developers are programming for obviously. they can use the typical DirectSound stuff (which includes up to EAX 2.0 or A3D 1.0 audio capabilities, probably even a bit more), or they can use the Sensaura API.

the Herc GTXP and TB Santa Cruz both use the same DSP chip and also both support the Sensaura API as well as DirectSound of course.

as for support for this API from Creative, they could I think program their card to support it as well, though you never know with Creative. they regained their stranglehold on the Audio card industry after killing Aureal through court expenses, so they may try to prevent support for Sensaura by not putting it on their cards.

to find out where I got some of this info, just go here.

 

[Zlash]

Audigy

 

[Soccerman]

just look here

I think when it comes to NEW games things could be very close between Audigy and Herc's GTXP + TB Santa Cruz (all based on the same chip).

as for all current games, nothing currently requires an Audigy. interestingly enough a couple of games can be set to A3D 2.0 which requires an Aureal card unless you use their A2D API which uses the CPU to take the place of a non-Aureal soundcard.

most games today use EAX 2.0 or DirectSound. with the XBOX I don't see EAX Advanced HD getting much steam.