Best Sound Card?

[Moose311]

I just bought the Klipsch Promedia 4.1 THX Certified 5 piece sound system, and I was thinking about the VOYETRA TURTLE BEACH SANTA CRUZ sound card. I just wanted to know what people thought was the best sond card! If you have any thoughts i would love to hear them!
thanks

 

[Mem]

Santa Cruz,Phillips AE,SB Audigy,Hercules Game Theate XP ,take your pick all good sound cards,Santa Cruz has excellent drivers and great allrounder,while the Audigy is a very good gaming card,it might come down to features,price and what you will use the sound card mainly for.

 

[dexvx]

If you want really high quality, you might want to consider a Terratec DMX6

Be warned, they are fairly expensive and rare to find and perform only decently on games.

 

[Brian48]

I have both the Audigy and Santa Cruz. The SC sound much better playing .mp3's/music and it's pretty good in games as well. The Audigy, while adequate for music, doesn't really outshines the SC until you get into gaming. As a gaming card, the Audigy is a much better choice, especially if you have a multi-speaker setup. I'd say it's a toss up. Depends on what is more important to you.

 

[MrBond]

I love my santa cruz. It's especially nice with my headphones, because I plug them into the versajack, then swithc the output to that jack only when I want to listen to music without waking the house. If the klipsch speakers have a headphone jack (I'm guessing they do) that's kind of a moot point). Still, the VersaJack is a really nice feature and it gets a lot of use on my system

 

[TheWart]

have heard great things about the turtle beach. i have the Promedia 4.1s and the Phillips Acoustic Edge and i think that it is the best computer sound ever. i have another rig with the Logitech z560s and the Acoustic Edge that is also sweet. the best feature for me are the stable drivers and the "tone control" feature that removes the need for software based equalizers in each third party program. excellent 3d sound as well.

 

[limsandy]

Santa Cruz is a very good sound card...... but if you dont mind spending another $30, get the Hercules GTXP. I am currently having Logitech Z-560 connected to GTXP. I am planning to make 6.1 set up with the sound card.

 

[Jgtdragon]

All good cards, but Audigy comes with a firewire port.

 

[bluemax]

^^ Which will sit there totally unused unless you go and get some kind of FireWire device like a new digital camera.

 

[moocat]

I actually use the firewire port on my Audigy. There, I've said it...and I feel better for having said it. I use my firewire port!

I like my Audigy but I use it primarily for gaming. My home stereo is for music. I'm not very hip

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I just upgraded my midiland speakers and sb live value to z560s and the santa cruz and I couldn't be happier, the sc is great for my music and it's been great for gaming too.

 

[CatintheHeat]

I would say the firewire port is only good if the user already has firewire equipment. I'm betting within the next year, USB 2.0 will be the standard. It has a faster transfer rate than firewire.

 

[Jeff H]

I'm on my first TBSC and while it sounds fine, I don't notice any significant improvement over an SBLive card. FYI speakers are Klipsch ProMedia 2.1. I do have a question for you TBSC guys - how do you keep the equalizer enabled in the Santa Cruz Control Panel? I find it rather annoying to have to go into the SC Control Panel each time I fire up Winamp, just to enable the EQ.