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What is the best soundcard for the lowest price?

T

tgzo

Member
Hi there, I'm just looking to buy a PCI soundcard that will replace my crappy onboard sound that won't even work under WinXP. Is there a cheap sound card yet sufficient for mp3 listening and general sound listening that I can get?

It doesn't even have to be as good as Creative Soundblaster 5.1. Just something that works and cheap.

Any brand come to mind?

Thanks!

 
I would recommend the hercules Muse Lt or XL. They use the C-media chipset found in a lot of high end boards. They have excellent fidelity and even beat out the audigy in a lot of areas in this review It supports EAX for your gaming pleasure and 4 channel audio. I bought one for my dad's system for $30 canadian which is $20 US. Great sound card. It doesn't handle as many streams as audigy though so in the most demanding games there will be more CPU usage. Can't go wrong for the price though. Hope that helps.
 
I'm not sure I would trust anything less than a Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! OEM. We are talking $30-35 here. Do you need cheaper than that? The Muse is around $3 less than the Live! OEM most places I gave a quick look, that just isn't worth it in my opinion. The Live!'s are so popular you should be almost guarenteed good game support.

The Hercules drivers on my GTXP do seem better than the Creative drivers on my Live! systems, but mainly because the Creative drivers seem to be such bloatware. I own a few Live! cards and have been happy with them. It's hard to beat the deal on the Live! OEM, IMO (Assuming you don't need anything the more expensive cards offer).
 
Philips AE all the way, I'm sure Insane3D or someone will post detail's on the philips line of cards for you. They're the best card's for the money IMO.
 
I'm not sure I would trust anything less than a Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! OEM. We are talking $30-35 here. Do you need cheaper than that? The Muse is around $3 less than the Live! OEM most places I gave a quick look, that just isn't worth it in my opinion. The Live!'s are so popular you should be almost guarenteed good game support.
Click to expand...

Creative's drivers suck. They have a lot of compatibility issues and are very dated. Problems with via based boards. They also suffer from nasty DRM problems too. The review that I linked to clearly shows the Muse trashing the live.
 
Philips Rythmic Edge (4 channel, PSC 703), or the Philips Seismic Edge (5.1 channel, PSC 705). The MuseXL is ok, but it's not a true hardware solution...sort of a hybrid.
 
Originally posted by: Pink0

Creative's drivers suck. They have a lot of compatibility issues and are very dated. Problems with via based boards. They also suffer from nasty DRM problems too. The review that I linked to clearly shows the Muse trashing the live.
Click to expand...

Their drivers aren't the best, but they're the second best I've used. 7/17/2002 (for the Live!) isn't great, but it's not terrible either. Hercules seems to use unified drivers, which as I have already stated I personally like better but I can't find the dates on them. I have hit some issues with Creative labs cards, but I have hit many more with Cmedia cards.

I have never used a Philips sound card, so I can't comment on it. But I would choose the Live over a Cmedia card any day. In the more expensive range the TBSC and GTXP are better than the Audigy or Live IMO, but that doesn't answer the question for this thread.
 
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