Gaming sound card

[toyota]

Sounds like you either need to get your ears syringed (to clear out the wax), or you need better quality/more efficient headphones. :whiste:

You may also want to read the thread - EAX is dying (if not already dead), and has been for awhile. There may be a case for gamers to hold onto an existing sound card, but buying one now? Not so much.

yeah so my ears magically hear better with the soundcard? with onboard I was usually at 100% volume for games where with the sound card I am at 50-60%. and again explosions and gunfire are much louder and crisp with the sound card. and no I would not have bought the sound card just for eax.

 

[viivo]

Are your headphones connected directly to the sound card? Might be it has a better amplified output than the onboard, which would account for what you are saying.

 

[thedosbox]

yeah so my ears magically her better with the soundcard? with onboard I was usually at 100% volume for games where with the sound card I am at 50-60%. and again explosions and gunfire are much louder and crisp with the sound card.

A volume difference by that type of margin points to misconfigured settings. But hey, its your rig :whiste:

and no I would not have bought the sound card just for eax.

The claim was that sound cards were useful for gaming purposes. If you bought a sound card for recording music, fair enough - just realise there are better choices than Creative for that.

 

[toyota]

Are your headphones connected directly to the sound card? Might be it has a better amplified output than the onboard, which would account for what you are saying.

yeah headphones are directly connected to the sound card. there is too much interference to use the front jacks in this case.

 

[toyota]

A volume difference by that type of margin points to misconfigured settings. But hey, its your rig :whiste:



The claim was that sound cards were useful for gaming purposes. If you bought a sound card for recording music, fair enough - just realise there are better choices than Creative for that.

I know how to setup the audio but I am telling you that it would not get as loud as I wanted with onboard. and I did buy it for gaming but eax was not my main concern.

 

[VashHT]

I know how to setup the audio but I am telling you that it would not get as loud as I wanted with onboard. and I did buy it for gaming but eax was not my main concern.

I'm with other people, louder != better, you can use digital setting to crank up the volume if you want, buying a soundcard just to get louder noise is a waste of money.

 

[toyota]

I'm with other people, louder != better, you can use digital setting to crank up the volume if you want, buying a soundcard just to get louder noise is a waste of money.

look I went back and forth with the soundcard and onboard audio for weeks and the difference was huge. I even went back and played some older games that used EAX and the difference was obvious. I am a big boy and I make my own decisions and to me the soundcard blows away my onboard audio so it was worth it.

 

[Maximilian]

Maybe his onboard was semi-busted or the drivers were funky, ive had weird problems with onboard audio many years ago.

 

[Ben90]

I thought any highend headphones needed to have an amp with them anyways. My headset uses USB power and I can use them as speakers when watching movies with other people. May not be the bassiest sound in the world, but better than most laptop speakers. Make sure to put a cloth under them though as the subs can rattle on the table. Onboard sound of course.

 

[VashHT]

I thought any highend headphones needed to have an amp with them anyways. My headset uses USB power and I can use them as speakers when watching movies with other people. May not be the bassiest sound in the world, but better than most laptop speakers. Make sure to put a cloth under them though as the subs can rattle on the table. Onboard sound of course.

Yeah a lot of high end headphones are high impedance, there are some sound cards out there designed for it but in general I think sound cards are designed for self powered speakers so they're pretty low power I would think. I know my soundcard is rated only up to 32 ohms impedance, I bet they could have put jumpers on it so you could change that (they do on one of their newer cards) but I think most audiophiles tend to go for separate analog headphone amps anyway.

 

[s44]

if you game with a 5.1 receiver, dolby digital live / dts interactive is a must.

Not since it's been rendered obsolete by HDMI audio.

 

[Via]

Soundcard > onboard audio

I'm in the (probably) rare situation to be able to judge directly:

Just bought a Windows 98 PC off of ebay to play my older games that don't work right anymore; I have it sitting on my PC desk right now next to my current PC.

It had pretty bad onboard sound, so I pulled a SB Live! value card out of an old PC carcass and installed it.

I'm using the same speakers for my currrent PC and the Win98 one, and the sound coming from the old SB card beats the quality of my current (circa 2008) Realtek onboard audio by a large margin.

I've played the same game on both PCs back to back to be sure, and there's no doubt about it.

I have another old SB LIve! lying around somewhere: I'll probably install it in my current PC.

 

[thedosbox]

Soundcard > onboard audio

I'm in the (probably) rare situation to be able to judge directly:

Just bought a Windows 98 PC off of ebay to play my older games that don't work right anymore; I have it sitting on my PC desk right now next to my current PC.

That's actually a good reason to have a soundcard. The headaches of running Windows 98 aren't worth it to me though

I'm using the same speakers for my currrent PC and the Win98 one, and the sound coming from the old SB card beats the quality of my current (circa 2008) Realtek onboard audio by a large margin.

I've played the same game on both PCs back to back to be sure, and there's no doubt about it.

In games that use EAX? It's no surprise the SB Live does better - Realtek have never had particularly good EAX support. C-Media generally do better, though they're still limited to EAX 1&2. There's also the issue of older soundcards having higher output levels (this was in the days before line-level became standard), thus fooling buyers into the "louder = better" trap.

 

[Sureshot324]

I really hope someone comes out with a non propriety software solution that can do what EAX did. It was really cool in games that supported it properly like the original Half Life. I don't like propriety stuff so I'm kind of glad EAX is dying, but someone needs to pick up where Creative left off.