Vista x64 Sound Cards

[edro]

I have an original Audigy in my x64 Vista machine. They had beta drivers for a while, and just recently released a new version (2.12.0002), but they both sound horrible.
The sound is very flat, bassy, and muffled. On the Creative forums, everyone is saying the same thing.

I have an on board AC'97 (ALC850), but when installing the drivers (6231_Vista_APO.zip), the installer just keeps asking to install Unsigned Drivers. Even when I hit Yes, it just asks again in about 30sec. Even if I could get these driver to install, I don't want unsigned drivers on there. I don't want to hit F8 to disable Unsigned Drivers at every startup.

Sooo... What sound cards are you Vista x64 guys using, and do they sound alright, and are there good Vista x64 drivers out there for it?

I just listen to music on this machine... so I don't need anything exotic.

Who would have thought that the two largest sound card manufacturers in the world wouldn't have working drivers for the worlds largest operating system upgrade...

 

[chizow]

I'm pretty surprised there hasn't been more of a fuss made about Vista and the sound situation either. From what I've read though, MS is more at fault than any of the various sound solution providers. MS apparently scrapped DirectSound support with DX10 and created all kinds of problems for existing sound solutions. I'm not sure of all the details myself, but its something I'll definitely look into more when I move to Vista. A few threads indicated only cards that support OpenAL have a shot at achieving similar levels of performance in Vista relative to XP. I believe only the X-Fi line and one other non-Creative sound solution currently support OpenAL.

 

[Tegeril]

X-Fi Platinum. Works quite nicely.

 

[krotchy]

I have an X-Fi Fatality FPS, and it works pretty well for the most part. I get some random sound dropping and crackling. But overall aside from the few problem moments I have it sounds fantastic.

 

[Brian48]

3 machines running Vista. X-FI ExtremeMusic, Audigy2, and AV-710. All about the same, but X-FI is running best. The advantage of being a newer product, the drivers support is better than the other two.

 

[nZone]

X-FI ExtremeMusic with Vista Ult. 64.

 

[drum]

bump for more suggestions