Trying to decide on a Sound Card

[thestain]

I had heard Creative was going to be coming out with a new gaming sound card this summer, but no word yet.. is this why they have the big rebates and will this be their fix to the problems?

I don't think the IRQ over the PCI bus are the problems they claim, although nVidia and Ati could be to blame, Creative has been pathetic in responding.

Having said this, the Creative sound cards do sound good when working.. and there really is not much else to choose from.. I keep waiting for the Razor Barracuda, but.. it will be new and have its own issues..

What are the best music/gaming cards out for the buck.. with minimal drm engine or content protection..

Rant -not that I do anything... but having a home arrest bracelet put on a person that has never been convicted of a crime does not make sense.. rant.

 

[PurdueRy]

First, what speakers do you have.

Secondly, are you gaming much?

Third, WTF!? HOUSE ARREST?

 

[dBTelos]

If your running a 2.1 setup or headphones, then you have many options. If your running a 5.1 or other surroundsound setup, then your limited to a few. For 2 channel sound, you can go with Chaintech or M-Audio, both would work well for gaming on two channels. If you have surround sound, then pick a Creative X-Fi, or Emu sound card.

 

[thestain]

Not under house arrest, but I do fear some sort of tech use arrest down the line.. LOL

I have a 5.1 speaker system.

I want to use my tv tuner card to record sports and other things and need a sound card that will play nice with whatever tv tuner card I choose..

Currently I am considering:

AirStar HD-5000, Cats Eye 164-e and Dvico Fusion HDTV5 RT Gold and on the outside looking in is the MyHD 130 card.. due to it requiring a daughter card and it possibly taking a pci or pci-e slot away if I use it.

It is hard to find a system where all the parts play nice..

So.. are there work around for any drm issues with the Creative X-Fi and in regards to gaming, I only have been playing four games lately, Battlefield 2, Far Cry, when i feel like being in the tropics, Age of Empires.. and Far Cry.

My PC is where I live and work.. pretty equally divided after 40% for work between web surfing, watching movies and sports, listening to music and playing games.

 

[Ghouler]

All this crackling seems to be random, most people do not have any, including myself.
Many of those that had it, managed to get rid of it with either:
-bios update
-bios settings (pci latency set to higher value or disabling cool'n'quiet in Bios - X2 boards)
-PCI bus management settings (Good Phase Error value can be set to 8 us - using RM Clock software) There are also game specific fixes in regard to OpenAL, if I can find some links I will add them here..

According to the latest statement Creative have issued
these problems have to do with PCI bus traffic management on
some nVidia's nForce4 boards, but some other nforce4 boards, like e.g. n590s are not affected at all. It is actually an interesting read.

 

[manly]

Wow, I recall this problem back in the SB64 and VIA chipset for P3 days. :\

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: manly
Wow, I recall this problem back in the SB64 and VIA chipset for P3 days. :\

That was different ... this time it's more of a design problem in the sound chip, in that its data buffers are too small and it can't cope with the PCI bus being busy doing other stuff for more than about 120 µs (says Creative).
Of course, 120 µs max bus request latency is a fairly optimistic assumption even on a lightly loaded system ...

 

[Wildapes]

I destroyed (maybe not destroyed haven't looked yet) a chaintech card in a violent fit of drunken rage last (after a program destroyed all audio functions and forced me to reformat) however the creative card and the onboard Nvidia Nforce 4 audio are just horrible compared to the $20 chaintech I had. I mean I get crackling using even 16 channels (it gets worse the higher I go, the chaintech allowed 32 easily), the sample rate doesn't allow anything higher than 44.1khz (which sounds very thin and weak) and overall it's just pathetic next to the chaintech card.

So I guess I'm also in the market for a gaming/all around sound card however it seems that creative merely exists to produce mediocre and overpriced sound cards that have terrible sound quality in games and otherwise. Their cards don't even have a basic onboard SPDIF output, what a joke.

Yeah buy one of these suckers
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/calendar/2005/1024x768-creative-x-fi.jpg

You need all of that just to have the same basic function with a creative as a $20 chaintech card. It's really all a massive joke.


The only thing Creative about Creative is they must have a genius marketing team.

 

[Wildapes]

just amazing. The chaintech survived my gorilla like throw 20 feet across the room and after hitting the wall. The metal was severely deformed however the card still functions fine.

Creative are a joke. Really, I apologize for being so harsh but they make crap products and force people into buying all these lame components just to have the same basic level of functionality of every other card. They do it all in the name of gaming as well, EAX 5 or whatever is just not worth that much to me...

I would suggest people in the market for a new soundcard look at the Auzentech HDA 7.1 it allows 5.1 gaming etc over spdif. the chaintech I have is decent but driver support sucks and I can't get bitperfect playback to work with music.

 

[Captante]

3 of my 4 PC's have Creative soundcards (2 X-Fi's & Audigy 2 ZS) and none of them have any of the problems people have described, despite both X-Fi's being installed on an NForce 4 Ultra & NForce 590 respectivly, so I'd have to say that the problems are a bit blown out of proportion compared to the total number of Creative soundcard users.

For gaming, Creative is still pretty much the best bet because they have true hardware acceleration & thus take some load off of your CPU resulting in more consistant framerates. If you are only a casual gamer or listen mainly to music on your PC, then an M-Audio card will produce great sound for you & if you are a casual gamer building a new system, grab a motherboard with HD-sound onboard & skip the add-in card altogether.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Peter

Originally posted by: manly
Wow, I recall this problem back in the SB64 and VIA chipset for P3 days. :\

That was different ... this time it's more of a design problem in the sound chip, in that its data buffers are too small and it can't cope with the PCI bus being busy doing other stuff for more than about 120 µs (says Creative).
Of course, 120 µs max bus request latency is a fairly optimistic assumption even on a lightly loaded system ...

I'm sure you're right, but IIRC the SB Live problem was also related to the PCI bus. Although I recall drivers had something to do with it, I don't believe Creative ever truly fixed the problem for affected users.

 

[Peter]

The SB!Live problem was a glitch on the PCI bus (caused by the Creative chip) that threw some VIA and SiS chipsets off the rail. Knee-jerk attempts to work around the problem on VIA chipsets then caused other problems like IDE data corruption, before a proper workaround finally made its way into BIOSes and drivers. SiS chipsets couldn't work around the problem, and Intel's weren't affected.

Although Creative never admitted to it, the problem magically disappeared in SB!Live 5.1 series chips.

 

[razor2025]

I have a Chaintech AV710 and also Audigy 2. The difference in music quality is pretty rediculous. Audigy loses alot of details compared to Chaintech and this is on a cheapo $70 Logitech X-530. However, the driver on Chaintech sucks. It's worse than Creative. Also, there's some crazy echo on all my games.

 

[Wildapes]

I would suggest people in the market for a new soundcard look at the Auzentech HDA 7.1 as it allows 5.1 gaming over spdif as well as real time DTS encoding. The chaintech I have is decent for 2 channel but driver support is lacking and I can't get bitperfect (kernal streaming) playback to work with the card no matter what. Apparently there is a driver bug that allows the switching of 44.1 and 48 sources on the fly however this doesn't work in the lastest drivers. Generally speaking though the card is superior to $900 worth of Creative products that you need your own creative made high capacity storage tank to fit.



Auzentech HDA 7.1
Auzentech HDA 7.1
Auzentech HDA 7.1
Auzentech HDA 7.1
Auzentech HDA 7.1
Auzentech HDA 7.1

Go Auzentech HDA 7.1

 

[Blurry]

M-Audio Revolution 7.1...best audio card ever!
Gold plated s/pdif out
7 analog channels
192KHz/24bit Audio
No resampling to 48KHz which ALL Sound blaster cards do
Numerous surround sound modes, including Sensaura, SRS Trusurround, X2,X3

Need I say more?

Edit: Damn, just looked at the Auzentech HDA 7.1...that card is an audiophile's dream
so I would have to say

GO Auzentech HDA 7.1!

But...the M-audio is cheaper so I would say it is the second best.

 

[Peter]

The Auzentech card uses the maximum version C-Media chip, while the M-Audio uses one of the VIA (formerly ICEnsemble) Envy24 chips. Beside Creative's, these are the only remaining PCI audio chips.

 

[Ghouler]

Originally posted by: Peter
The SB!Live problem was a glitch on the PCI bus (caused by the Creative chip) that threw some VIA and SiS chipsets off the rail. Knee-jerk attempts to work around the problem on VIA chipsets then caused other problems like IDE data corruption, before a proper workaround finally made its way into BIOSes and drivers.

So, it was actually VIA that released updates, exactly updates for 686-B southbridge that completely fixed the issue with the SB-Live. Creative did not change anything.

With X-Fi it seems to look differently for 2 reasons:

(1) Creative have actually investigated into this and came up with workarounds that work for some people.

(2) nForce4 boards are known to cause audio issues. Look on the RME boards (this is pro audio gear) They have tested nForce4 boards usability for audio processing and concluded that nForce4 boards simply should not be used for digital audio workstation, i.e.
a computer dedicated to sound.
It's good to remember nForce4 chipset is so popular because it is cheap, and one of the reason it is so cheap is that less silicone was used compared to say nForce3:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=19313

With a normal gaming PC the demand for smooth data flow is even higher as PC has to handle not only sound but also Internet traffic and advanced graphics processing at the same time.

In the end, if one device holds off PCI bus for too long, glitches will occur.
This will happen with any sound card. In fact long hold-offs will be detrimental to performance of any PCI card, it's just that sound happens to be erm .... audible so you are getting immediate information about the problem.

nVidia needs to release new chipset drivers to fix this
- if they can make up for lack of enough silicone.

 

[Peter]

So, it was actually VIA that released updates, exactly updates for 686-B southbridge that completely fixed the issue with the SB-Live. Creative did not change anything.

VIA established a workaround that kept the SB!Live from hanging their chipsets, at the expense of quite a noticeable performance loss on PCI. The SB!Live 5.1 series chips magically do not pose that problem ... even though Creative have never admitted to having changed anything, nah. The official line back in the day was "it works on Intel chipsets, we don't care about the others". Go figure.


Now, the X-Fi. Creative says this device can't have more than 120 microseconds of bus latency, which, as a design target, is way on the optimistic side. Often enough, this isn't even in the chipset's hands, as other PCI agents may and will use their time as well. If PCI were point-to-point, there'd be some substance to complaining about "long" latencies - but PCI is a shared bus, with round-robin arbitration and typically up to seven agents. 120 microsecs is /nothing/, a mere 4000 clock cycles.

 

[thestain]

Hi, I got the Auzentech HDA X-Plosion sound card and just upgraded the opamps... easier to do than I thought.. removable opamps make things easier.

Thanks.. next up.. audio connection from tv tuner to sound card..

will start new thread..

Thanks again!!

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: Peter
VIA established a workaround that kept the SB!Live from hanging their chipsets, at the expense of quite a noticeable performance loss on PCI. The SB!Live 5.1 series chips magically do not pose that problem ... even though Creative have never admitted to having changed anything, nah. The official line back in the day was "it works on Intel chipsets, we don't care about the others". Go figure.

You have it the other way around, the workaround also happened to fixed the VIA chipset's previously terrible PCI performance.

http://www.tecchannel.de/ueberblick/archiv/401770/

 

[Peter]

Nope, _that_ was an entirely different fix (increasing the time lease to PCI bus masters to favor single card throughput over multi-card fairness), and in fact, you can only have EITHER the SB!Live workaround or the performance-optimized configuration.

Did I mention that I've been a BIOS engineer for more than a decade?

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: Peter
Nope, _that_ was an entirely different fix (increasing the time lease to PCI bus masters to favor single card throughput over multi-card fairness), and in fact, you can only have EITHER the SB!Live workaround or the performance-optimized configuration.

Yet this fix solved both problems. And why would VIA implement a fix for a soundcard that ended up screwing their PCI implementation for multiple chipsets and affecting every PCI card.

 

[Peter]

Again, these two matters have been separate, but wrongly perceived and poorly represented by the press back in the day. VIA's PR dept. didn't make a good job there.

The choice in the SB!Live matter was, get the (popular) card's problem worked around at the expense of PCI performance, or have Creative fix their chip. VIA was small back then, Creative had the public behind them. Guess what happened - Creative said, our chip works on Intel platform and therefore does not have a bug, so what we got is the workaround in the chipset programming. (Creative fixed the "nonexistant" bug in the SB!Live 5.1 anyway ... so much for that.) SiS chipsets also hung with the original SB!Live, btw. Same reason, but no way to work around it on those.

As for the "missing" performance, this hasn't been a functional issue, just performance. The topic here is sloppy BIOS coding - VIA's PCI engines are and have been widely configurable (which also made the SB!Live workaround possible at all), but many BIOSes from those days left them at their default settings, which are safe but also very slow. VIA's PCI optimizer patch was a quick fix. Teaching the mainboard makers to pay attention to setting the PCI arbiter up properly followed right behind it.