Getting a present got my Mom for Mothers day, need suggestions on sound cards

[coolred]

She has a crappy old IBM aptiva, which is pretty slow and has onboard everything, but for the most part it suits her needs. But I told her oen day that with my sound card(a Hercules GTXP) I can hear several differant sounds at once. For instance listening to an MP3 and hearing the incoming message sound from an IM. Well her onboard sound is not capabe of this and she wants a sound card that can. She doesn't need anything fancy, basically anything si better then what she has, so as long as it can play more then one sound at once it should be fine. Nowadays I am pretty sure just about every sound card can handle that so what would be my best bet? SB Live Value, maybe? Any other suggestions

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

If you really loved your mom you'd get her a TB Santa Cruz

After leaving Creative Labs sound products, I've never had a reason to look back. Your mom doesn't wanna mess with driver problems and conflicts.. I guess I'd recommend playing it safe and going for the Santa Cruz. It can be had at pretty decent prices and has some real nice EQ software and stuff included.. good for music.

 

[coolred]

I neglected to mention she is currently using a set of Altec Lansing ATP3's, so a multi channel card is not needed, but is prolly still the better way to go just in case. I forgot about the creative driver problems, I am not to familar with the TB Santa Cruz, but I checked inot it and it seems to go for arounf 50-70 bucks. While thats not to expensive I am just wondering if she will use all of its capabilites to justify spedning that much. I will consider it, but are there any other suggestions.

How about the phillips cards, are they any good?

 

[nightowl]

The Philips cards are good too. You may want to check out some of the cards from Hercules also. They have some nice cards and they are not as expensive, but they do not have all of the extra features of a SB Live, Santa Cruz or the 5.1 Philips card.

 

[coolred]

Like I said, I don't need a ton of options that she will never use. Basically she wants to be able to listen to music and still hear when someone sends her a message on yahoo or ICQ while she is on the internet. Her crappy onboard sound apparently won't do this. She doesn't play sound intensive games, she only has a set of 2.1 speakers. So i don't need anything too fancy

 

[dexvx]

sound Blaster Live series are now really really cheap...

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

You could take a look at an older Fortissimo card, maybe.. those things are sub $20, I think.

 

[coolred]

I'm not worried to much about the price, I just don't feel the need to spend extra money for extra things she will not use.

 

[Grendel99]

Fortissmo II, TB Santa Cruz, and Phillips Accoustic Edge are all great cards. I'm currently running the TBSC. I think it's gonna be hard to find a good card now that doesn't have all the options etc. Just find the cheapest one out of the ones mentioned here and get it.

 

[nortexoid]

hercules Muse or fortissimo is a good bet...the santa cruz is too, but a little pricey i'd think...

the AOpen AW840 is another good low-cost 4-channel card...

and then there's c-media ones as well...i'd probably go w/ the aw840 (or 850 for 6-channel) or fortissimo.

 

[fatbaby]

well if it was my mom, i would get her only the best

Audigy + A pair of these at minimum!

 

[coolred]

Yeah right fatbaby, she doesn't need anything even close to that. She says she absolutely loves the ATP 3's I got her, so I doubt she even needs the audigy, let alone those speakers.

 

[Dufusyte]

If you love your mom, you will get her a vortex2 chipset!

This will be especially useful when she plays CS, so she can hear the enemies sneaking up behind her. Do you want your mom to get shot in the back??

 

[BD231]

sound Blaster Live series are now really really cheap...

Live 5.1 from newegg, cant beat the price.

 

[coolred]

No counterstrike, no games that would even come close to pushing the power of todays cards. She is into games like tetris and whatever, and she doesn't have a 5.1 or 4.1 set of speakers, she is on a set of 2.1's. I will prolly just end up getting a SB Live, Philips card, or maybe the Santa Cruz

 

[holdencommodore]

A card with a C-media 8738 chip may be a good alternative, but I can't remenber if it can process more than one stream at a time.

Cheers

 

[coolred]

How decent is the Philips Rhythmic edge? It seems to me that it should be good enough to play music and play an incoming message sound at the same time and it's only 30.00 bucks at bestbuy. It's not like I am trying to go cheap on my mom, but I just don't think it is worth it to pay extra for extra software or features that she won't use. I mean if i get a cheaper card, then I plan to spend more money to upgrade her memory to. So if the Rythmic edge is good, then i will get that and some memory, if you all say it's crap then maybe i will get one of the more expensive cards.

 

[holdencommodore]

Depends if it is the Philips PSC702 or PSC703. The PSC702 Rythmic Edge is based on the older ThunderBird 128 DSP, and has practically no Win2K/ Win XP support, it's fine for Win9X though. The Rythmic Edge PSC703 has the newer ThunderBird Avenger DSP (as used on the Philips Acoustic Edge), and has excellent drivers and sound.

Cheers

 

[Gunbuster]

<<crappy old IBM aptiva>>

How old, the black media console model tends to self destruct if you look at it wrong, the even older white ones with a mwave combo modem\sound are also quite evil and may go koo koo if you remove it

 

[coolred]

koo koo, thats not good, I was kinda afraid of that. It's one of the old white ones. I can't remember exactly how old it is, but it only has 48MB of memory and I think only a 300-350Mhz processor.

 

[duragezic]

The C-media 8738 can do more than one stream at a time. When I first got it (onboard on my KK266), it didn't and I was like wtf this thing sucks but I upgraded the drivers and it does so either they weren't installed properly first or the older drivers just uh couldn't do it.

 

[coolred]

Anyone have any other info about disabling the onboard sound on the aptiva?

 

[RanDum72]

Get the Fortissimo II. They are $32 over at Newegg and they sound better with music and MP3's compared to any other card in its price range. They also have low CPU usage so it doesn't suck a lot of juice off older PC's.

 

[Nocturnal]

audigy ex, or the platinum.

sorry, im a creative fan.

 

[Shalmanese]

I dont know how readily availible these are in the US but if you can get an Abit AU-10 Sound card, it comes with a nice fancy remote control which may be really useful to your mum. It should be round the $30 mark.