Which is better? C-Media 8738 or SB128 PCI?

[Ionizer86]

I have a SB128 PCI sound card, but I also have a $6 C-Media 8738 sound card from Fry's. The C-Media card seems quite cheap, and it says it is a software card, but this chip is also used on expensive mobos, such as the Dragon+ and Asus family boards.

I'm wondering which sounds better to all of you, as the C-Media card is powering a cheap speaker set, and my SB128 is powering up a decent 2.1 set. Maybe if the C-Media sounds better, I should put it into my system...

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

i have a dragon+ with the 8738 enabled. i can't tell the difference between it and my creative labs live mp3+ 5.1. works great with my logitech z560s. extremely happy with it, and it's very low overhead.

 

[TimeKeeper]

I just replaced my SB128 w/ CMI8738 w/ 6 channel support. Needless to say, I love 8738 better w/ my WinXP.
How many card out there able to do 5.1 w/ Daughter card + fiber Optic cable for less than $15??????

 

[Ionizer86]

Hmm, sounds like the 8738 is decent even though most of the processing is done by CPU. Unfortunately, mine is 2 channel, or 4 at max. It should still sound the same
I should test CPU utilization on the $6 card later

 

[sMashPiranha]

To put it politely, SB128 is crap. I use onboard 8738 at the place I'm studying and it is way better than the crappy 128 that came in my dads gateway. Besides that the CMI8738 does A3D, the SB128 doesn't even do EAX let alone A3D (cheers creative :disgust: )

 

[bluemax]

One more vote for the AWESOME C-media chip!

 

[EMAN]

I think C-media drivers suck. I can never get A3D or EAX to work on my onboard C-media sound. Other than that it's fine and I rather have a Soundblaster 128 PCI anyday.

 

[bluemax]

PCI 128 = garbage. Some of the newer ones **might** use the 10k1 chip that sucks less (and you get the neato EAX) but for both sound quality, speaker options and overall use, I'd still recommend the C-media 6-channel ANY day over the stinky PCI128.
And I've gone through both.

 

[DSTA]

AFAIK, there's no hardware acceleration for any 3D effects on either card, so for gaming they'll probably be as good as the respective drivers.

For audio (mp3, recording) I think the SB128 will be better, especially if it's an *older* card. I don't think they made any SB128 (might be wrong though) with Emu chips, and the later SB128 had super cheap analog stuff on them - just like the C-Media card will have, considering the price.

Dunno what you want to use the card for, but just give it a try and listen. People usually come equipped with super measuring equipment for that .

 

[arcas]

I have to admit I'm somewhat puzzled over the animosity towards the SB128. Between here and the office, I have 3 SB128s (each based on an ES1370 chip, not the 1371 or the newer CLxxxx), a CMI8738/C3DX, a TB Santa Cruz (CS4630) and a CS4236. The CMI8738/C3DX and the CS4236 are on-board chipsets found on my IWill KK266-R and an older IBM Intellistation, respectively. The others are PCI cards.

For MP3 listening, I really don't think you're going to tell the difference, assuming the drivers are up to snuff. For instance, in Linux the ALSA drivers for the CMI8738 suck so you should stick with the OSS drivers for now. I will also note that there currently seems to be some "issues" between XMMS and the OSS CMI8738 driver that causes mp3s to skip annoyingly. Other Linux-based mp3 players (mpg123, mpg321, etc) do not exhibit this problem though. I don't have an WinXP box so I can't comment on the driver quality over there but Win2K seems fine with SB128 and the TB SC.

I've listened to each of these through AKG 501 headphones at one time or another and really can't tell the difference. The SB128 can reach higher volumes than the others but sound quality is basically the same. Even the ISA-based CS4236 (it's on-board but connected via the ISA bus) sounds fine for playback. I've also listened to the CMI8738, one of the SB128s and the TB SC piped through a Denon 3200 going through Definitive Technologies ProTower 400s and BP2Xs and they sound virtually the same.

Recording is another matter. The CS4236 has nowhere near the dynamic range that the others have. For instance, if you record line-in while playing King's X "The Train" (one of my personal benchmarks since it's mixed so badly), the CS4236 can just barely pick up the vocals. The others including the SB128 have no problems with this song.

I don't play many games so I can't make many comments here. This means I don't know how well EAX or whatever the soundfield-of-the-day performs.

Keep in mind, that there were several versions of the SB128. The first version came out shortly after Creative bought Ensoniq and was very similar to the Ensoniq AudioPCI which was and still is a decent card. Later versions performed worse as Creative started cutting corners.

For some fairly in-depth sound quality analysis of various cards past and present, take a look at pcavtech.com

So, in summary, it comes down to what you're looking to use it for and the quality of the drivers.

 

[RolyL]

My onboard CT5880 (PCI128 of sorts) works just fine under WinXP and Linux. No complaints about compatibility or sound quality. Pity it doesn't support EAX, but then again, how popular are these proprietry APIs anyway? RtCW doesn't support anything other than DirectSound.