Realtek HD Audio makes Audigy 2 ZS sound like ass

[j0j081]

So wtf? Turns out my onboard Realtek ACL888 chip sounds at least twice as good as my A2ZS did in Vista. I decided to ebay the ZS to get an X-fi eventually but I'm not even sure I'm gonna bother now. This Realtek hd audio sounds way better in games and although I haven't tested it much in music and movies it is at least even in those. Even stranger, I actually get more fps in UT3 with the onboard Realtek. I think this just goes to show how bad Creative's Vista drivers really are. The only advantage the A2ZS had was being able to use OpenAL in that game which made a few of the effects sound a little more correctly positioned but besides that this onboard audio blows my mind lol. Weird thing to is for some reason my Sennheiser HD555s are a lot louder, more powerful sounding with the Realtek at least when the cp is set to headphone mode. It's like they weren't getting enough juice from the A2. Even funnier my A2ZS just sold for $80 lol.

 

[nerp]

Every week I see someone on these boards has a similar revelation. Glad you've seen the light. 🙂

 

[n7]

Yeah i noticed that the onboard Realtek on my P5B-D is rather good!
I'd used an Audigy 2 ZS & now am wondering why...

On my new DFI, it has the Bernstein module with i believe uses a Realtek chipset, but it has a very low maximum volume for some reason, & seems to be weaker sound than on my P5B-D 🙁

 

[frostedflakes]

So the ZS sounds better in XP? It's just driver related? If so, that's pretty crazy, one wouldn't think drivers could make such a big difference.

 

[j0j081]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
So the ZS sounds better in XP? It's just driver related? If so, that's pretty crazy, one wouldn't think drivers could make such a big difference.

I don't know I think my ZS sounded better in XP than it did in Vista but I never tried the Realtek in XP. I only run Vista now. Judging by how the Realtek sounds in Vista I think it was probably better either way.

 

[zorrt]

Hmm...maybe its time I get rid of that Audigy 2 in my system too. Haven't noticed any sound difference between the onboard realtek and audigy though.

 

[IEC]

One of the reasons I don't use Vista... my Audigy 2 wouldn't get hardware acceleration if I used Vista...

 

[j0j081]

Originally posted by: zorrt
Hmm...maybe its time I get rid of that Audigy 2 in my system too. Haven't noticed any sound difference between the onboard realtek and audigy though.

well this is using semi decent headphones. I can't tell so much on my speakers.

 

[Roguestar]

Onboard sound is great now 🙂.

 

[Pelu]

Vista Strip the DirectSound system I think... they just revamp the entire sound architecture in Vista....

 

[LuDaCriS66]

I built my system a couple of weeks ago and I decided to stick my SB Live! value in there over the Realtek ACL888 chip on my Gigabyte DS3L.

I've been reading a few threads now and it seems like I should save myself a PCI slot.

Another reason is I absolutely hate having processes running in the background that I don't need. The Live! drivers run devldr32.exe all the time. Does the ACL888 run drivers like this?

 

[nerp]

The Realtek HD drivers/sound manager are pretty low footprint, I'd say.