I love my Aureal SQ2500 and use WinMe but will go to XP in the near future, will I have a problem?

[Wynner3]

Hi, I have had an Aureal SQ2500 soundcard in my main computer for the past 2 years. I love that card and have said that I wouldn't give it up for anything. But, I noticed that there is a forum where someone has a problem with XP and their SQ1500, will I have that same problem? My card works great and I have never had any problems with it at all. Plus the dos games (duke nukem, doom, wolfenstein) come in great. I will eventually get rid of the dos games and stick with WinXP stuff. In my other computers, I have had a SB Live's, Live Value's, and now Audigy's. I always had problems with my Live cards with DOS and Windows.

Anyway, will I have some driver issues with my soundcard and WinXP forcing me to upgrade to another soundcard? If so, are there any good cards at decent prices that compete with Creative's SB Audigy Cards and have XP compatible drivers? Oh and my main computer has 4 speakers. Thank you, I hope.

 

[stevewm]

Aureal went out of business before they had a chance to finish their Win2k driver. A beta version is available on www.vortexofsound.com and it does support all the cards functions however it ONLY installs on Win2k, NOT XP.

XP comes with a Aureal driver, however its limited. It only supports the MIDI functions on the card and the front out port. You won't be able to use the rear out. (hence have 4 speakers)

 

[Dead3ye]

I do know that W2K has native drivers for the Aureal Vortex 2 chip. But, you will not have any of the A3D features when playing games. XP I would think will be the same situation. Since there will be no more driver updates for this card, you would be better off getting a supported sound card.

I had the Diamond MX300 (same thing as you have) and had to dump it because I went to W2K. I loved it in Win98 and hated to give it up.

 

[crapito]

I had an Aureal SQ2500 too, which I loved and only upgraded from when I upgraded my OS to WinXP Pro from Win98SE. I would not recommend using your SQ2500 with WinXP cause you'll likely have lots of little annoying problems. I upgraded my SQ2500 to a Philips Acoustic Edge and couldn't be happier. as good as the SQ2500 was, the AE has a lot more features, including the amazing ability to play any 2 channel source, like Winamp's MP3s, in 5.1 channels, which make the ~$60 upgrade well worth it (not to mention that WinXP is superior to Win98SE in basically every way...).