Good Sound Card For Win2K

[owensdj]

Could someone recommend a good business sound card for a Windows 2000 Pro machine? It needs to have super stable Win2K drivers and work with a VIA chipset motherboard(VIA Apollo Pro 133A). Like many other people, I've started to have problems with my sound using a Diamond MX300 sound card with a VIA chipset motherboard and Win2K, and it looks like I'll be needing something different. Thanks for any advice you can give me.

 

[jj1492]

Can't go wrong with the Sound Blaster Live Value.

 

[Shmorq]

People seem to like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz alot. It seems to be the next favorite since the Live! is kind of outdated now...

 

[overnewbie]

I am dual-booting 98se/w2kpro. I am using the aureal 2500 sound card and I have no problem in either OS. This is on the Abit KT7A-RAID. What I did was not load the drivers for the HPT 370 IDE controller until after w2k pro installed the drivers for the sound card..I have w2kpro.sp1. After everything was installed loaded the drivers for the HPT...works great.

 

[xyyz]

I have the santa cruz... I never had problems under win2k. The SB cards are probably the most reliable though... you can pick up the live platnium for about $80 if you look around.

If you are going to do the Santa Cruz solution... you might as well spend an extra $50 and get the new Hercules card that uses the same chip as the Santa Cruz... the Hercules producty has ALOT more features... including something similar to the live drive...

The Santa Cruz is a good card... but they haven't come out with any new drivers since november of last year. :/

 

[steelnewfie]

I agree, most of the SoundBlaster line (Awe64, live, x-gamer, etc...) all seem to work pretty good with Win2K...They are industry standard after all... I had an Awe64 that worked great...Many on this forum have the live, 5.1, but that's a little overkill for a business application...though I guess it depends on what you'll be doing with it... Stick with a soundblaster, you'll be ok...

 

[Tseng]

For less than $20, you can get Ensoniq AudioPCI. Win2K has built-in driver for it or you can use the updated driver from Creative Labs. Stable yet dirt cheap.

 

[mitaiwan82]

i think you'd be fine w/ the SB live

 

[owensdj]

Sounds like the SB Live Value is the best choice for me, since I don't need the extra features of the more expensive Santa Cruz card. Does the SB Live Value work OK with the IRQ sharing of a ACPI Win2K system?

 

[StanFL]

>>>>Does the SB Live Value work OK with the IRQ sharing of a ACPI Win2K system?<<<<

It works flawlessly on mine w/ACPI. I've never had a sound hiccup, ever.