What are some good sound cards?

[eyor]

I don't really need anything spectacular, but I do want something with good drivers and some nice sound for gaming. It must be compatible with the KT133 chipset. What should I be looking at? I know the Santa Cruz, which I am not too interested in, and of course I have heard good things about SB Live, but are there any others?
I will probably just be using two speakers, at least for now.

 

[evanichka]

yeah sb live! or the aureal chipsets are good (although a3d was bought by creative i think just recently)

 

[konichiwa]

SB Live! Value. Or if you want top of the line, Live! Platinum.

 

[bluesky]

You can check some reviews out at gamersdepot.com.

 

[Wingznut]

Why in the world would you NOT be interested in a Santa Cruz?!?

The Santa Cruz is so much better than the Live! series. Imho, the Live! cards are the most overrated piece of hardware around.

 

[Techno]

I agree Wingznut, my Santa Cruz (had it since day one of shipment) kills my old SBLive Platinum!

 

[RagingGuardian]

Me three, the Santa Cruz kicks @ss and eats live cereal for breakfast.

 

[Possum]

Any issues with the Santa Cruz drivers? Are there frequent updates? I'm sort of bored with my computer (even though it's good enough for me for now), and am kind of looking at upgrading the sound card. It there going to be any new sound card in the next half year that will "crush" the Live! and Santa Cruz? I currently have a Live! Value and don't have any problems with it. Just looking for a new toy.

 

[LXi]

SBLive! overrated? I think not, it brings a lot more to the table than the Santa Cruz than just features.

 

[Techno]

The Santa Cruz drivers are extremely good. Turtle beach seems to be coming out with drivers about every month and 1/2. They just released new drivers last week.

And just to add in a little thing: The Santa Cruz's sound quality (as well as features) is a hell of alot better then the SBLive Series cards IMHO.

 

[LXi]

Sound quality better? Like how? Are my MP3s gonna magically sound hell lot of better if I switch to Santa Cruz?

 

[Zucchini]

20bit playback dac/18bit record

 

[Priit]

SBLive is probably best card for gamer, but it isn't too great for anything else. I still feel bad about selling my GUS MAX and buying SBLive value. Stupid me, what was I thinking

 

[LXi]

<<SBLive is probably best card for gamer, but it isn't too great for anything else.>>

Explain &quot;everything else&quot;.

 

[Zucchini]

No versa jack for one very useful for headphones.

 

[LXi]

How useful is it? Im listening to MP3s using headphones right now, no problems.

 

[Priit]

Well, MIDI sounds really bad even with 8Mb soundbank compared to 1Mb of instruments on GUS MAX. SB16 emulation pretty much sucks (no wavetable MIDI, killer CPU hog in real DOS mode, makes even Doom unplayable), but that's not very important today, I guess. Sound output/recording quality isn't as great as Creative promotes (read something about 120db S/N output, put in reality it's more like 75-80db).

 

[LXi]

And thats &quot;everything else&quot;? I dont think the soundfont sound bad at all, it maybe not comparable to professional MIDI hardware but its excellent for the price. If you're serious about MIDI, you'll have to use software synthesizers, the Yamaha synthesizers are by far the best I've heard, I play FF7 and MIDI is very important. SB16 emulation is a mood point, why play Doom when Doom3 is in the works? I believe Creative claimed 95db, not 120db, and seriously, I doubt anyone has the hears to hear the difference. Explain to me, how is the Santa Cruz gonna improve my MP3 listening experience?

 

[Priit]

AFAIK, GUS MAX isn't professional MIDI hardware, it's 7 years old soundcard that sounds much better in MIDI than SBLive even with only 1 Mb of instruments vs 8Mb of SB (haven't tried SBLive with 64Mb soundfonts thougth, but that would be overkill anyway). It isn't card for musician. I've seen Creative's promo-papers, where they claimed that SBLive has 120db S/N ratio output. Even 95db is more than 3 times better than 80 and with good stereo equipment you can hear the difference (hiss vs. no hiss on high volume). Creative hasn't still relased linux driver for SBLive that would support any of those fancy features of SBLive yet (how long time ago the card came out?). By writing &quot;it isn't too great for anything else&quot; I didn't mean it fully sucks, but there's just many better sndcards for MIDI, digital recording/playback etc., even on the same price range.

 

[LXi]

<<AFAIK, GUS MAX isn't professional MIDI hardware, it's 7 years old soundcard that sounds much better in MIDI than SBLive even with only 1 Mb of instruments vs 8Mb of SB (haven't tried SBLive with 64Mb soundfonts thougth, but that would be overkill anyway). It isn't card for musician.>>

Anyway, in my opinion the software synths will still better than hardware, and I dont think there is a soundcard in the market that sounds better than Live! in MIDI.


<<I've seen Creative's promo-papers, where they claimed that SBLive has 120db S/N ratio output. Even 95db is more than 3 times better than 80 and with good stereo equipment you can hear the difference (hiss vs. no hiss on high volume).>>

Hm... just how do you get this 80db figure? I'd like to see some proof.


<<Creative hasn't still relased linux driver for SBLive that would support any of those fancy features of SBLive yet (how long time ago the card came out?).>>

Does competing soundcards have Linux drivers? If so which one? AFAIK Live! has the best driver support behind it, the Win2k drivers are the perfect example.


<<By writing &quot;it isn't too great for anything else&quot; I didn't mean it fully sucks, but there's just many better sndcards for MIDI, digital recording/playback etc., even on the same price range.>>

Which one? If its better, how much better? 'cause its been gererally acknownledged that the Live! series suck for gaming because EAX sucks, and its good for everything else. I have yet to see a soundcard with as good of a feature set as Live! and their driver support is on the top. Again I'd like to see some proof as which soundcard(you keep saying many but...) sound better than Live! for MIDI and digital recording/playback, plus I really dont consider that &quot;everything else&quot;. Finally, if there is a soundcard that will magically make my MP3s sound better than they are right now, dont hesitate to tell me.

 

[xyyz]

how are the new live 5.1 cards?

 

[Priit]

LXi: why to you think that software synths are better than hardware ? I've tested Yamaha's software synth and it wasn'n even as good as SBLive's (mixing wasn't smooth etc.). It's like comparing software and hardware 3D graphics rendering (well, not that bad, but close ). IMHO there's no way that any software MIDI synth would come close to the the quality of Yamaha SW1000XG. About that 80db SNR: that was what I saw by myself, using little soundcard-testing program (full-duplex measurement, sorry that I can't give you the link of that program's homepage, I'll try to find it when I get home. I've seen online review with pretty much same results, too). I have tried Terratec's EWS64 S sndcard, and it's MIDI sounded better thab on Live, output/recording quality was bit better also (frequency response falled down by 3db at 19Khz, SBLive had it on scale till 18,2Khz). There probably isn't soundcard, that would make your mp3-s sound better when they are encoded @ 128Kbit

 

[Possum]

Err, back to talking about the Santa Cruz!

Do any other previous Live! owners like the Santa Cruz better or worse than the Live! ?
Does it have the internal connectors for a 2-wire SPDIF cable from a CD-ROM drive?
Any way to get optical out for minidisc recorders?
Does anyone &quot;notice&quot; sound quality differences between their Live! and Santa Cruz?
Is the equalizer any good? (I got &quot;richer&quot; sound using the simple Bass and Treble slider on the Live! than using the 5-7 slider setup on the MX300)

I'm really thinking of trying this card (replacing a Live! Value), possibly buying it today.

 

[StrangeRanger]

If you're just &quot;looking for a new toy&quot; why not pick up the Aureal SQ2500. unless you're running w2k you can not beat it for games (at least until next gen. games come out) and it sounds awesome for music. personally i think mp3's suck monkey balls and never listen to them, but for normal (.wav) files and audio cd's the card is great.
The santa cruz cards are also excellent sounding cards. only got to play wiht one for a couple days but i thoroughly enjoyed it.
And then there are the new Philips sound cards. Dying to get my hands on one of them. They look incredible!
I guess you need to decide which you want more...good gaming or good music quality. for games, teh sb live is good and the aureal cards are great. for music...either of those will do nicely but check out turtle beach, yamaha, s3, SIIG, pine tech., frontier design...it all depends on what you wanna spend.
j

 

[Wingznut]

I have owned a SBLive! and an MX300.

It's simple. The Santa Cruz sounds better and has more features (way more than I'll ever use.)

The Live! is overrated simply because it does nothing &quot;exceptional&quot;. 3D positional gaming totally sucks. EAX is just reverb. A3D owns it in gaming. However, the future of A3D is suspect (to put it gently.)

The Santa Cruz is just does everything better. I'm not saying that the Live! isn't competant. It does stuff just fine (except for 3D positional gaming.) It just doesn't do anything exceptional.