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need help selecting a sound card

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Originally posted by: redice
There are a bunch of XtremeMusic on eBay going for around 60-70 new...would it be safe to go this route?
Click to expand...


If they are in the retail box and the seller has an excellent rating, then yes its a viable option. Not sure I'd want to buy an OEM off of a ebay seller though. Or a used card. That would make me a bit leary. I'm a little bit leary of ebay sellers to begin with though.
 
Avoid all creative cards if you plan to use vista. Creative drivers and support are horrible especially in vista. Go to creative vista forums and read if you want to know more. Make sure that whatever card you consider has vista support in place before you buy.
 
i guess that for vista we'll need to buy a sondigo or a ht omega, even though they dont have eax 5 they have better sound quality in general.
 
Since this thread has some activity: many of us don't have dedicated HTPCs. We (I?) would however like to output my audio and video from my PC to a hypothetical TV. On-board cards normally offer optical out for this. X-FIs tend not to in the lower-end models. Does that make the X-FI a deal-breaker when it comes to using your PC to play HD content on your TV?
 
Get either of the cards I mentioned from auzentech and they both have optical and coaxial outputs on the card.
they also do dolby digital live and dts encoding in hardware, so you can feed game or music output straight to a dts or dd reciever.
 
EAX no longer works in vista so it's a non issue. Hell creative can't even get our mic working again in vista but realtek doesn't have any problems with it. When I tried reinstalling my x-fi after creative released the new drivers and software it sounded horrible. I immediately removed it, ran driver cleaner and then re-enabled the realtek hd onboard sound. I'm hoping that with xaudio-2 just around the corner that a new batch of sound cards will appear that do work in vista and I mean all features are available.
 
The only place on the web (other than ebay) I can find an Auzentech X-Plosion is their website and its listed at 99.95+shipping retail. I'd rather not spend that much but if this is a great card and work awesome with Vista and has DTS etc so probably dont need to upgrade it for a few years is it a good buy?

After this post I just read that the Sondigo Inferno is even better...

edit 2: did some more reading, the sondigo inferno uses a newer chip than the auzentech x-plosion. The inferno uses the same chip as auzentech's new card the x-meridian which is 2x the cost of the sondigo

let me know if you are sick of my edits... but after more reading

edit3: the top sound card is the auzentech x-fi prelude and just under that is the x-meridian. I have not yet found the preferred card for under $100 yet tho.

probably last edit...

If you are an XP user the X-FI extreme gamer is the best mid-range ~ $100 sound card for gaming

If you are a Vista user there isnt a great mid range card at the moment b/c creative drivers still suck. However, if you want to spend $200 for awesome gaming sound go with the auzentech x-fi prelude.

Disclaimer: x-fi extreme gamer (non prof version) does not have DTS/DD decoding
 
I was just about to tell you to never buy a sound card with speakers that cost less then 250$, 200 minimum... and use the extra money to upgrade your speakers instead...

Then I noticed you are sporting the logitech z5500 which ARE 250$ speakers... so you are good.

As for card... buy an xfi gamer from creative.
 
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