Ok all, I just got a new mobo, etc, and this one (EPOX EP-9NDA3J, Nforce 3 Ultra) has Realtek AC'97 8.1 channel onboard sound. I am having some weird problems with it:
1) When I plug headphones directly into the computer they sound incredibly weird and tinnny. My powered speakers sound fine. My headphones sound fine if I run them THROUGH the headphone jack on said speakers. But headphones straight into jack - tinny as all get out. This isn't normally a problem, but when I take my computer somewhere, I take JUST the computer and headphones.. so I need to be able to have good headphone sound straight from the jack.
2) In World of Warcraft, the sound is flat out weird. Some sounds are loud, others are way too soft. Stuff that should be heard from the "center" (I have a 4 channel speaker system, and yes, the drivers are set to 4 channel) is often too soft.
Here's what's odd. I have an old Hercules Game Theatre XP - I took it out of my old computer because it was down right AWFUL in WoW. I think it had very bad EAX implementation or something. My old comp had a 5.1 Realtek codec and it sounded great. Now I have something with the new version and its awful. I don't see what the deal is. What did they screw up that used to work???
So my quetion is - for pure gaming - would I be better off just buying an Audigy 2 Value? I'm pretty sure this would solve the headphone problem at least. Do people think it would solve the WoW issues? I'm assuming so, since I reckon Creative has the best EAX implementation and I'm fairly sure WoW uses that for positional audio (which could explain the weird effects I've been having).
Thanks!
1) When I plug headphones directly into the computer they sound incredibly weird and tinnny. My powered speakers sound fine. My headphones sound fine if I run them THROUGH the headphone jack on said speakers. But headphones straight into jack - tinny as all get out. This isn't normally a problem, but when I take my computer somewhere, I take JUST the computer and headphones.. so I need to be able to have good headphone sound straight from the jack.
2) In World of Warcraft, the sound is flat out weird. Some sounds are loud, others are way too soft. Stuff that should be heard from the "center" (I have a 4 channel speaker system, and yes, the drivers are set to 4 channel) is often too soft.
Here's what's odd. I have an old Hercules Game Theatre XP - I took it out of my old computer because it was down right AWFUL in WoW. I think it had very bad EAX implementation or something. My old comp had a 5.1 Realtek codec and it sounded great. Now I have something with the new version and its awful. I don't see what the deal is. What did they screw up that used to work???
So my quetion is - for pure gaming - would I be better off just buying an Audigy 2 Value? I'm pretty sure this would solve the headphone problem at least. Do people think it would solve the WoW issues? I'm assuming so, since I reckon Creative has the best EAX implementation and I'm fairly sure WoW uses that for positional audio (which could explain the weird effects I've been having).
Thanks!
. But yeah, an Audigy is probably the easiest thing. I don't know about WoW, as I don't play it, but it wouldn't suprise me at all if it works great.
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