Best Sound Card for Vista ?

[Sandan]

I currently run the Audigy SE card. It is doing OK but not as well as I want. I have 5.1 speakers and it is hard to hear the Rear speakers with this set up. It works perfectly in XP. Anyway, anyone have a sound card working well with 5.1 speakers?

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well I run a x-fi fatal1ty and the drivers are still beta's. When creative finally gets it together it should shine like it did in xp. I would tell you to decide what features you want in a card then look at the cards that have what you want and go from there. I've always had creative cards because they are the most compatible and have the best support.

 

[Navid]

Look on these forums before you buy a Creative sound card for Vista.
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board?board.id=Vista

 

[Shawn]

I'd say wait a while if you can. The drivers will get better and you probably won't even need to replace your card.

 

[Sandan]

Shawn, your probably right about drivers improving. My impatient nature is having an impact on my willingness to wait. Also, I have 2 older systems for my kids which I could upgrade. Soooo...I still would like to buy an upgraded sound card...Any other suggestions.

 

[Sandan]

Navid, I am looking at your link and it is informative. thank you.

 

[SKoprowski]

You're going to laugh and I'm sure their will be people who disagree- but the best sound for Vista right now is any Realtek codec that's usually intergrated on the mb/ Realtek is about the only company that releases drivers on a monthly basis for all operating systems. If you're mb has a Realtek chip I'd use that in Vista until the driver situation clears up.

 

[Pirotech]

Originally posted by: SKoprowski
You're going to laugh and I'm sure their will be people who disagree- but the best sound for Vista right now is any Realtek codec that's usually intergrated on the mb/ Realtek is about the only company that releases drivers on a monthly basis for all operating systems. If you're mb has a Realtek chip I'd use that in Vista until the driver situation clears up.

yeah you are right, i'm currently using Realtek inbuilt sound card, so nowaday it's the best one, coz there are no any problems with driver support.

 

[Swampthing]

there might not be any driver issues with the realtek integrated solution, but if the audio sounds like crap who really cares if the drivers are any good or not? Every test of those integrated solutions i've seen have shown that the audio is noticeably worse than a X-FI.

I'm running vista with my X-fi with zero issues. Do i have some missing features? Yup, nothing i can't live without for another couple weeks. Getting full surround sound back in games is super easy as well, and to be honest in some cases i'd swear things sound better than they did before. The only thing i really miss right now is a subwoofer crossover control.

 

[Tipsy Turtle]

My integrated Realtek HD Audio sounds like anything but crap. Sounds pretty good actually. I have an M-Audio card in another system that I use as part of my setup for transferring old LP's to CD, VHS tapes to DVD, etc, etc, etc....and the Realtek sounds every bit as good as the M-Audio. Only difference is the volume levels are slightly lower on the Realtek. No big deal really.

And yes I have a good speaker setup on both systems.

Anyway, I am running Vista on both machines and have yet to have any issues with either sound solution.

 

[imported_Septimus]

I have an Audigy 4 Pro and it sucks for Vista. An X-fi would be marginally better because I'd have the ALchemy beta, but honestly, unless you need all the connectors of the external box (as I do for synthesizers) then I'd stick with a software sound solution like RealTek and not spend any money on an external sound card until Creative pulls their head out of the sand and delivers a product that not only works with Vista, but provides an advantage over a software solution.

 

[imported_Septimus]

Sorry for the double post, dunno what's going on.