I already stop buying secondary card after my Creative sound blaster card blasted me five years ago. hate to say it doesn't last longer. i want to know if today sound card are worth upgrade, since i was thinking about getting one next year but dont even know which to go for. So i am doing a little survey of what kind of Sound card or brand you guys going to get if you had the free cash from Christmas ? Just think of the free cash = dreaming
What is your priority? What do you expect more from a sound card? Sound Quality? Gaming features? Multi-channel?
yes chai, for gaming and musics. i dont really know about creative, hearing lots of negative on their drivers. but only hearing a lot of good review from Asus.
I don't have too much gripes about their drivers. Just tacky interface. X-Fi or Auzentech (technically still a X-Fi). Make sure you go for the EMU20K1/2 chips and not the CA0106 chip (X-Fi Xtreme Audio). One thing I love about the X-Fi are the Alchemy software that converts older games DS3D to become hardware accelerated in Vista. Only way you will get true hardware acceleration in game is via Creative's offerings (or the X-Fis licensed to Auzentech).
I don't know how the drivers are now, but people used to complain about the Vista drivers especially. Auzentech/Asus are good alternatives too, although the Asus Xonars are a bit expensive.
In Creative's defense, they had Vista drivers REALLY fast (pretty critical since the HAL removal pretty much killed all forms of Audio Hardware Acceleration). Unfortunately, they didn't think about porting their software/utilities until MUCH later. They FINALLY fixed that and even provided an ISO for an updated driver disk and their regular updates (again through tacky interfaces) continue to add more and more stuff (recently the reintroduction of DTS and Dolby support for Vista). I really don't have a lot of complaints now.
i use head phone a lot. Currently using Edifier 2.1 and if i get 5.1, i dont even know where to put it.
hmm, it really depends on the budget though..Asus D2 is good but i remember it lags a few features..speaking of for gaming, X-Fi cards still preforms better than asus D2X (their higher end cards) and also not to mention EAX. If one does not really care bout all those, can op for Asus D2 or D2X.After all, OEM X-Fi cards are freaking cheaper over here (if you noe where to get)..considering getting a asus card to try out though...Auzentech x-fi cost a bomb over here lol..
Asus D2X uses software emulation, that's why it's slower than X-Fi. But if your priority is sound quality, you might wanna stay away from the X-Fi series. Auzentech Prelude uses better DAC and opamps, which makes it better than all Creative X-Fi series.
especially when i saw them using high quality capacitors. but i still not too sure on Creative products since their business starting to get very bad this year. never seen them improved their product until now.
