I'm upgrading my PC's sound shtuff, both the card and the speakers. I know I'm going to find some Promedia 2.1's and I was wondering if I should go with the audigy or the Santa Cruz. I know there have been many debates about this before, but I heard somewhere that Klipsch recommends the Santa Cruz, is this true?
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Audigy or Santa Cruz with Klipsch 2.1's?
- Thread starter PizzaDude
- Start date
MasterHoss
Platinum Member
No, Klipsch does not recommend any sound card over another. If anything, they'd recommend you buying the Klipsch ProMedia DD-5.1 "receiver" for any of the ProMedia speakers .... but they don't even do that.
It's a matter of taste. If you don't want to deal with possible bugs and problems, stay away from the Audigy and go with the Santa Cruz as its drivers are, arguably, the most stable out of any sound card driver. Personally, I use the Audigy Platinum with a set of ProMedia 5.1 and a set of ProMedia 4.1 connected to it and have no real problems.
It's a matter of taste. If you don't want to deal with possible bugs and problems, stay away from the Audigy and go with the Santa Cruz as its drivers are, arguably, the most stable out of any sound card driver. Personally, I use the Audigy Platinum with a set of ProMedia 5.1 and a set of ProMedia 4.1 connected to it and have no real problems.
Insane3D, how are they more advanced, other than the fact that they support QMSS? The TBSC has 20bit/48KHz DACs while the Philips only have regular 16bit/48KHz DACs. The Audigy is capable of 24bit/96KHz S/PDIF output(although analog output is still limited to 16bit/48KHz) and have all the fancy schmancy EAX stuff, so how is the Philips more advanced? Please explain?
IMHO, i don't think you need any of those cards.. Just get a decent one... Its not like you are gonna have to decode DTS or Dolby Digital... ;-) Get Soundblaster live or something... But if you really need a card, i recommend the Santa Cruz...
Turtle Beach is about 30% cheaper and almost equally matches the capabilities of the Sound Blater Audigy..
check out amazon.com and see what the reviews say about turtle Beach or vice versa... you have to admit, for the price you are paying, it is a good deal.. about $70.00... 🙂
Think Humbly My Friend..
Turtle Beach is about 30% cheaper and almost equally matches the capabilities of the Sound Blater Audigy..
check out amazon.com and see what the reviews say about turtle Beach or vice versa... you have to admit, for the price you are paying, it is a good deal.. about $70.00... 🙂
Think Humbly My Friend..
First of all, you just shrug QMSS aside like it's no big deal. The simple fact that QMSS can output any stereo source into 6 distinct channels is something that no other consumer level card, i.e. Audigy, Live, SC can do. In that aspect alone, the Tbird Avenger DSP is more advanced than the Crystal DSP used in the SC, or the Audigy.
The AE uses 18bit/48khz DACs. It has both the Sigmatel STAC9708T and STAC9721T. The DSP however could have used a much higher quality DAC had Philips chosen to do so. This little quote from the Digit Life review explains that..
"Unfortunately, even the most advanced model, Acoustic Edge, do not support chip's capability to use Inter-IC (I2S) audio bus. With it, you could have connected a 6-channel 24-bit/96kHz Philips UDA1328T DAC"
First of all, the AE, SE, and RE all have 24bit/48khz SPDI/F output. I'll defer to the same Digit-Life review of the AE again..
"The S/PDIF interface supports 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz sampling frequencies, though the bit capacity can reach only 24 bits. S/PDIF-out supports an AC3 digital stream carrying data, thus, providing output of a DolbyDigital5.1/DTS coded signal onto the receiver. The S/PDIF-ins operate due to the Philips TDA1315H receiver/transmitter which has a TTL-level and highly sensitive inputs. Because of the specific input and output it's better to turn off the power when connecting external digital devices. "
Sure, the Audigy has the new EAX HD crap, but how many games are out that use it since it is something only a Audigy owner can use? I would take QMSS over EAX 1.0 or 2.0 most of the time anyway.
Also, a little snippet from the IGN review of the Seismic Edge...
"For those curious, the 96 hardware-accelerated 3D streams is 50% more than the 64 offered by the nForce MCP-D and three times the 32 of the Live! and Audigy series."
So, to me at least, it appears that the Thunderbird Avenger based soundcards from Philips are more advanced. 🙂 I have used all of these cards we are talking about, and it's the reason I have all Philips cards at home. 🙂
Also, don't get me wrong, I still think the Audigy and SC are great cards, but the Philips is just better IMHO...and cheaper in most cases. 🙂
Philips AE @ Digit-Life
Seismic Edge @ IGN.com
🙂
Right...ok, well I wasn't trying to put the Philips cards down. I'm sure the Thunderbird DSP is a very capable one. QMSS is an interesting option if you have 5.1 speakers, but as he said, he was going to get the Promedia 2.1's, which was why I didn't pay much attention to it, and neither would he. I didn't say it wasn't important, nor did I just shrug it off, I just didn't focus on it due to his situation.
As for the DSP capabilities, if it doesn't get used, you can't really use it as a factor as the final product, which is the soundcard, is we're going to get. Its just like the Audigy. It has a 24bit/96KHz DAC, but it never gets used as the input signal is never in that format. Its just there for marketing purposes.
Another point, I haven't seen any performance figures of the Audigy EMU DSP, the Crystal and the Philips Thunderbird. Do you have any? In any case, I believe that almost any decent DSP would have more than enough power for Pc usage, since most of the time you don't do DD/DTS encoding/decoding within the PC but externally.
As for the DSP capabilities, if it doesn't get used, you can't really use it as a factor as the final product, which is the soundcard, is we're going to get. Its just like the Audigy. It has a 24bit/96KHz DAC, but it never gets used as the input signal is never in that format. Its just there for marketing purposes.
Another point, I haven't seen any performance figures of the Audigy EMU DSP, the Crystal and the Philips Thunderbird. Do you have any? In any case, I believe that almost any decent DSP would have more than enough power for Pc usage, since most of the time you don't do DD/DTS encoding/decoding within the PC but externally.
No problem, I like all of these cards, but the Philips cards just aren?t known to many people, and it's a shame. As far as detailed DSP tests, the best I've seen are in that Digit-Life article I linked to. They have detailed results on several different tests, and I think they compare it to the Audigy in a few of them. Read carefully through the review, and look for the "detailed tests" links.
Another nice thing I noticed is that Philips latest drivers have dropped the CPU usage almost down to nothing...even beating the Audigy in most cases.
I will admit I'm a strong supporter of the Philips cards, but I consider them excellent cards that not very many people know about. 🙂
Another nice thing I noticed is that Philips latest drivers have dropped the CPU usage almost down to nothing...even beating the Audigy in most cases.
I will admit I'm a strong supporter of the Philips cards, but I consider them excellent cards that not very many people know about. 🙂
Cool, for the price the Philips AE is a great card. If it weren't so expensive around here(~$100USD converted) I'd have jumped on it. I was actually deciding between this and the Santa Cruz before I got the Santa Cruz due to price considerations. Neither of these cards were available in my country at the time, so I asked a friend in the USA to order the Santa Cruz and mail it back to me. On its way to me, I went to the local computer hardware haven to check things out, and then came across a shop that just got new stock of the Philips AE, and I almost slapped my forehead. Oh well...either card would've done it for me, but I don't have a 5.1 system either, I'm using 4 speakers connected to the A/B output of my vintage Technics power amp, so effectively its still stereo, just with 4 speakers rather than 2.
Dolemite76
Member
Santa Cruz... Promedia 5.1... hasn't disappointed me yet... bought a sound blaster live mp3... had some trouble with it... exchanged it for a Santa Cruz bout a year ago and no troubles since...
good choice with the Santa Cruz... PhiLLips is great too, but you're gonna love the SC... SC, for the price, it really isn't bad... Don't worry, Phillips isn't better than SC IMHO.. From the reviews i've read on Phillips, it has some hardware gliches that still haven't been refined yet.
l8te
l8te
You might want to refrain from speaking about cards you haven?t used and going solely by reviews. I can find a couple reviews too that mention glitches with the Philips cards...of course they are over 2 years old. I have used all of the cards we are discussing, and the Philips is tops IMO. However, the SC is an excellent card, and it would be my second choice over the Audigy. 🙂
Mem
Lifer
All good choices but for music the Philips AE/SE gets my vote,the sound quality is excellent,gaming wise I would(I did) go with the Audigy,I keep hearing about drivers suck etc,but have yet to have a problem with my 10 month old Audigy even in my VIA board,also as a hardcore gamer it does get a good workout with lots of my games.
For the price the Philips AE/SE is very hard to beat and would be my first choice on price etc , if I did not want a pure gaming card(Audigy in my case),Santa Cruz is another good card but like some people have said you do have other choices that are just as good,in the end it`s down to your ears but any of the cards mentioned are good choices.
Remember the perfect sound card is what you`re happy with 😉.
🙂
For the price the Philips AE/SE is very hard to beat and would be my first choice on price etc , if I did not want a pure gaming card(Audigy in my case),Santa Cruz is another good card but like some people have said you do have other choices that are just as good,in the end it`s down to your ears but any of the cards mentioned are good choices.
Remember the perfect sound card is what you`re happy with 😉.
🙂
Funyuns101
Platinum Member
wow how many times has this same debate been done?
everyone basically praises the santa cruz for it's price and quality
the audigy is a good card for gaming but has its share of problems with drivers, but once you get past that it works just fine
if you want to save like $20-30 go with the TB. unless you're a crazy gamer that needs EAX
if not then the TB is probably better for the normal music listener
i don't know if you missed it but there was a sale for the TB somewhere for $46...
good luck deciding
everyone basically praises the santa cruz for it's price and quality
the audigy is a good card for gaming but has its share of problems with drivers, but once you get past that it works just fine
if you want to save like $20-30 go with the TB. unless you're a crazy gamer that needs EAX
if not then the TB is probably better for the normal music listener
i don't know if you missed it but there was a sale for the TB somewhere for $46...
good luck deciding
For plain ol' stereo playback, here's what the guys at 3D Sound Surge have to say,
Santa Cruz:
"Looking at the cards specifications we see that it uses 18 bit A/D converters (provides 4x better resolution than 16 bit converters), 20 bit D/A converters and, uses high quality hardware sample rate conversion to the cards internal 48 kHz sample rate in the 90+ dB Dynamic Range. It has a 10 band equalizer allow you to boost or reduce all digital sources and one analog source by +/- 10 dB at 20 Hz, 75 Hz, 135 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, 2 kHz, 4 kHz, 8 kHz and 15 kHz. The card also offers customizable "sound fields" that can be applied to music and sound effects with exception of 3D positioned sound effects in games and Dolby Digital tracks in DVD movies, at least if you use PowerDVD 3.0 or WinDVD 2.2.
When we look at the basic stereo playback using this card the quality is excellent. The difference in digital to analog sound quality (what most people are using most of the time) in all the second (+) generation cards is negligible. However, if we had to put one on the top right now it would probably be the Santa Cruz / Sonic Fury perhaps just a hair ahead of the SB Live line, but by ears alone its really too close to say for sure. Later this fall we will be doing much more detailed quality performance tests and we will update the review at that time."
Acoustic Edge:
The difference in sound quality in all the second-generation cards when used with typical multimedia speakers is in most cases negligible. In case of the Acoustic Edge we have found high frequency roll-off to be a bit behind the Sonic Fury/Santa Cruz but on par or better than most other PCI cards including the Live 5.1 cards. The difference compared to the Santa Cruz is small enough that it shouldn?t be noticeable on your typical multimedia speaker system signal to noise ratio and high-end will be more limited than the sound card. Even if you have a speaker system with good high frequency response (e.g. Klipsch? ProMedia, VideoLogic?s Sirocco Crossfire) we don't think you will notice the slight difference in high frequency roll off as it does not come until after 18 kHz. While the sonic range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz, many people can?t hear high frequency sounds very well. According to some experts, a more reasonable hearing range for most adults is 30 Hz to 16 kHz. Even younger people with good high frequency hearing won?t always pick up frequencies beyond 18 kHz. On higher end equipment it's possible that some may notice the difference in s/n ratio but again, it's not a night and day difference between the different cards.
NeoMadHatter
Platinum Member
seriously, go with the santa cruz. it's just better in my opinion. and driver support will play a huge part in future computing for you.
While I respect 3D Soundsurge, that AE review is almost two years old. The sound differences they mentioned are not only subjective, but do not take into account the new drivers, and the revised PCB layout of the newer Seismic and Rythmic Edge cards. I can just counter that with a couple of forum members here who recently switched to the Acoustic Edge and stated the following in regards to their "real world" use...
Bovinicus:
bdog231:
The Philips Acoustic Edge Is Great!
My point is sound is always subjective, and can be affected by so many factors like speaker type, speaker placement, listening enviroment, etc. For every person that thinks the SC sounds better there will be someone who thinks the reverse. Both cards are excellent, but the Philips, in my experience. is a better value and a better card. 🙂
The driver support for the Philips has been excellent as well. Their have been several updates and they have all been stable and high performing. In fact, in recent tests, the Philips cards had the lowest CPU usage of any of the popular gaming cards.
Also, ID was using Philips cards in their machines when displaying Doom III. A quote from Xian of ID Software..
Link
🙂
Exactly, that's why I beg to disagree with your claim that the Philips are more advanced than the others. No offense but until one can show any hard evidence(e.g. "credible" objective measurements), pertaining to which consumer-grade, AC'97-compliant sound card is technologically more advanced, one cannot be certain.
Actually, if we are talking stereo sound quality only, it will be a subjective thing all the time. I am aware of no tests that can show which has " the best" stereo sound since different ears like different things.. As for some very detailed sound tests on the Philips, please check into the Digit Life Review I linked above. As far as the card being more advanced, I believe the specs speak for themselves. The DSP is more powerful than even the Nforce and Audigy with 3D Streams, and it is the only card that can output any stereo source into six discrete channels. No other consumer level card in it's class can boast that...simple fact. Those two technical facts alone are enough basis alone, IMO, to label the Philips cards "technically" more advanced.
Edit:
From the Digit Life Review:
🙂
Well, there are several ways to see which one's more advanced. You can compare software and hardware features, software being stuff like ability to do QMSS, EAX, A3D, equalization, support for mp3 decoding or other signal transformations, hardware features like various I/O and connector types. This one's gonna be a toss up since they all support different things.
You can also compare performance, i.e. the clockspeed of the DSP, or the MIPS/MFLOPS rating of it. However, since all 3 are using different DSP architectures, it might not be comparable.
Another way is to compare performance in the fidelity aspect, i.e. take low level measurements of the I/O signals, stuff like a frequency response graph, THD at full/half power over the entire frequency range, THD at 1KHz, SNR, etc...AFAIK nobody's done this on the Audigy and Philips AE, but the TBSC has been measured and rated pretty favorably over at pcavtech.com
You can also compare performance, i.e. the clockspeed of the DSP, or the MIPS/MFLOPS rating of it. However, since all 3 are using different DSP architectures, it might not be comparable.
Another way is to compare performance in the fidelity aspect, i.e. take low level measurements of the I/O signals, stuff like a frequency response graph, THD at full/half power over the entire frequency range, THD at 1KHz, SNR, etc...AFAIK nobody's done this on the Audigy and Philips AE, but the TBSC has been measured and rated pretty favorably over at pcavtech.com
apart from this fussy mess above...i own a santa cruz and absolutely love it...sound quality is superb and the drivers are rock solid and feature-full...nice layout as well.
either way, i'm sure the AE or SC are both excellent choices...i'd stay away from the audigy if not only because of creative as a company...but of course u could add grossly bloated and awful drivers/driver support...
either way, i'm sure the AE or SC are both excellent choices...i'd stay away from the audigy if not only because of creative as a company...but of course u could add grossly bloated and awful drivers/driver support...
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