would i benefit from a sound card..

[T2urtle]

I do a lot of movie watching, tv series watching on my computer.

I have a dell E510, pretty much is 2.8ghz pentium D, 3gb of ram, 500gb maxtor, 8600GT 256mb, on board sound and a logitech x-530 setup. this paired up with a acer AL2216W moniter.


now i'm going to be building a computer in a year or so. Not sure if that can play a role or not.



i have it setup for 5.1 but i feel a lot of times my 2 rear speakers aren't doing anything. I have some extra cash in my pocket for the holidays, about $200 bucks and i was looking into a sound card.

but i'm not sure if i would benefit anything from it... i know in the past i went from onboard to a simple $25 soundblaster card and i noticed nothing diffrent.

 

[Blain]

On my HTPC, I went to an X-Fi XtremeMusic (NOT XtremeAudio), and noticed a nice bump in volume level over "onboard" audio.

 

[zerogear]

blugears or Xonar is also nice.

 

[KGB]

Another vote for the X-Fi XtremeMusic.

Nice card; bloated drivers.

$80 seems a little steep though. Shop around.

 

[jae]

theres no controls for each channels?? i would wait till next upgrade.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: KGBMAN
Another vote for the X-Fi XtremeMusic.

Nice card; bloated drivers.

$80 seems a little steep though. Shop around.

Actually $80 is pretty good for that model. The X-Fi "XtremeAudio" is the cheapie at about 1/2 that.

 

[T2urtle]

but is the difference noticeable guys?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: T2urtle
but is the difference noticeable guys?

2nd post in thread

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

The difference between a quality soundcard and your onboard chipset combined with quality speakers is absolutely noticeable. I watch a lot of 5.1 encoded content over my PC, as I use it for HTPC quite a bit. I've tested the `digital output' of the onboard audio setup on the motherboard, but it completely did not sound as good, didn't decode well, and simply couldn't handle the things I wanted to do with it. An add-in sound card was more than necessary. I wanted hardware dolby digital decoding/encoding. So I went with an Auzentek 7.1 (prelude & cinema xplosion; the prelude is more of a gamer's card, the xplosion is the one for HTPC folk). Creative cards are overhyped from their `dominant' days of years before. Now they're not that impressive compared to other offerings and have questionable driver support just like everyone else. They over price their cards, I know that much.

Here's some example offerings that are equal if not better than the creative equivalent in price range:

HT Omega @ $85
M-Audio Revolution 5.1 @ $78
Asus Xonar DX @ $65
TurtleBeach DDL @ $50

Very best,

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: T2urtle
I do a lot of movie watching, tv series watching on my computer.

I have a dell E510, pretty much is 2.8ghz pentium D, 3gb of ram, 500gb maxtor, 8600GT 256mb, on board sound and a logitech x-530 setup. this paired up with a acer AL2216W moniter.


now i'm going to be building a computer in a year or so. Not sure if that can play a role or not.



i have it setup for 5.1 but i feel a lot of times my 2 rear speakers aren't doing anything. I have some extra cash in my pocket for the holidays, about $200 bucks and i was looking into a sound card.

but i'm not sure if i would benefit anything from it... i know in the past i went from onboard to a simple $25 soundblaster card and i noticed nothing diffrent.

thats simply how the surrounds are encoded. not all surround tracks are filled with tons of fx. playback of 5.1 requires nothing fancy unlike 3d generated sound on the fly like in games, films and tv are simply dumb playback of what was encoded. and even game audio is done mostly in software these days. invest your money in upgrading your speakers before your sound card. your speakers are seriously weak, little dual cone setup for looks instead of sound. tiny weedy subwoofer. its bargain basement 5.1 speaker. you need something far more substantial before you can even begin to justify a better sound card. upgrading your sound card at this point would be like running crysis on a quad core with a 40 dollar video card. basics of speaker design haven't changed for a long while, you need a large heavy subwoofer. and large mid range for good mid range frequency reproduction, and tweeters to do the rest.

unlike in the past onboard sound is decent these days. you have to spend hundreds on speakers before they become a limiting factor of any kind. the sound cards suggested above are fine only after you get new speakers. and even then if your onboard sound is half decent you might find that its just not necessary. if you drop big bucks like home audiophile stereo equipment level speakers then yes, a nice soundcard would be in order. but i'm guessing thats far more than you are willing to spend.

 

[T2urtle]

well i picked up this set about 2-3 years ago for $50 refurb and i like them. I've considered going to a 2.1 setup due to lack of space for the speakers. i'm not a huge audiophile guy at all. I'm more of a budget builder.

on a side note, I was wondering if there was a sound card that i can run to i can get audio off my ps3 similiar to a audio reciever.

my acer montier is HD ready so i can get video thru a HDMI~> DVI adapter. but there isn't a source for sound.

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: MalVeauX
Heya,

The difference between a quality soundcard and your onboard chipset combined with quality speakers is absolutely noticeable.

Here's some example offerings that are equal if not better than the creative equivalent in price range:

HT Omega @ $85
M-Audio Revolution 5.1 @ $78
Asus Xonar DX @ $65
TurtleBeach DDL @ $50

Very best,

How about for analog only?

I don't care about bangs, booms, or blood curdling screams but I'm willing to go 150-200 if the analog is good.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: T2urtle
well i picked up this set about 2-3 years ago for $50 refurb and i like them. I've considered going to a 2.1 setup due to lack of space for the speakers. i'm not a huge audiophile guy at all. I'm more of a budget builder.

on a side note, I was wondering if there was a sound card that i can run to i can get audio off my ps3 similiar to a audio reciever.

my acer montier is HD ready so i can get video thru a HDMI~> DVI adapter. but there isn't a source for sound.

http://www.cambridgesoundworks..._spk_csw&item=k1sntos4
slightly less for refurb if they have it around.
http://www.cambridgesoundworks...s5&akhg1999=YAHODTFDC5
specs look good for those, actually decent size sats for one. a midrange that actually is big enough for the job 3.5" lucky to get 2" on most pc speakers.

and as for analog...speakers are analog
digital speakers are a gimmick