Sound Card Advice Please... | Forums

[foxyboy1964]

One of my mates has just bought a new set of speakers for his PC. The speakers are Harmon Kardon Sounsticks II. His mobo, Acer f672cr, has SiS Realtek High Definition Audio on board.

He was wondering if it would be worthwhile getting an Audigy4 soundcard, or would he be as well to stick with the on board sound? He'll be using the PC to play music but not games.

Any thoughts?

[foxyboy1964]

One of my mates has just bought a new set of speakers for his PC. The speakers are Harmon Kardon Sounsticks II. His mobo, Acer f672cr, has SiS Realtek High Definition Audio on board.

He was wondering if it would be worthwhile getting an Audigy4 soundcard, or would he be as well to stick with the on board sound? He'll be using the PC to play music but not games.

Any thoughts?

[Pigeon_]

No need to get a soundcard for playing music. Some people use soundcards for gaming to put less strain on the system. The only reason I can think of to get a soundcard for listening to music or, more likely, movies, is to get surround sound. If you haven't already, of course...

[MAXMHZ1959]

Before anything else getting an extra soundcard or not is a matter of personal taste.

I don't like Realtek sound myself, so I am using an Audigy 2ZS for sound.

Especially on recordings Realtek onboard sound has dismal signal to noise ratios. At least mine has.

Most people will not hear any difference on playback of music however. Also keep in mind you might loose your front connector functionality when switching to a sound card.

[TheFamilyMan]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Pigeon_:
No need to get a soundcard for playing music. Some people use soundcards for gaming to put less strain on the system. The only reason I can think of to get a soundcard for listening to music or, more likely, movies, is to get surround sound. If you haven't already, of course... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>Well that's one opinion, but from my experience it seems that people who are serious about their music on PCs usually use a sound card. A good sound card usually provides noticable improvements fidelity wise over the on-board, and I'm not talking about those silly "dance hall, jazz club, etc." effects or multi-channel expansion. As mentioned above it's a matter of taste, and for any given individual it may not make that much difference when considering both the additional expense and the quality of the speakers. With those speakers it's hard to say either way; they are very good but still a ways off from being really high end.

[ytareh]

As far as I know the Creative Audigy 4 is not great .You have two obvious mainstream choices :

Creative Audigy 2ZS (NOT the plain "2")older,cheaper (secondhand/used only)but still great

Creative X Fi (Extreme Gamer edition if youre a gamer -not that much dearer anyway)

Ohterwise there are VERY expensive limited editions versions of the above two and the ASUS Xonar and maybe one or two other rare top end brands.

Creative have the mainstream soundcard market sewn up with these two models for the best part of a decade...

Onboard wound eg Realtek has gotten A LOT better but its still not AS good as either of these two sound cards.

[Ba5tard5word]

I have an Audigy SE sound card and it's pretty good.

However in Il-2 I get slight stutters whenever my offline AI wingmen speak. People here suggested it was because I have a separate sound card and that I should have just used the onboard sound card on my mobo...but I have zero sound problems with any of my other games and the sound quality seems bit better with the Audigy card than with the mobo onboard sound card so I just grin and deal with it...

here's the thread I made about it recently:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/foru...9310655/m/8541029267

[NDS_Camp.]

Realtek HDA is far better IMO than an Audigy 2/SE card so you be wasting your time with one of those + if your running Vista or Windows 7 there gonna get bypassed anyway for any aplication that uses DirectX based sound.

p.s. Acer does not make Motherboards and SiS and Realtek are two difrent companies...

Motherboard is probably a Foxconn (labeled as Acer), and the Soundchip is a Realtek HDA ALC8xx

So defenatly give the Onboard a try first and make sure you set all the settings for the Soundchip corectly for the speakers you got for the best posible sound.

[foxyboy1964]

Thanks for the replies , guys

He's going to stick with on board sound for the moment and see what cards become available on ebay.

@ NDS Camp...thanks for the extra info

[NDS_Camp.]

Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeGamer or better should be nice with those speakers btw.

Beware not to fall for a X-Fi XtremeAudio, its only a rebranded Audigy card with an X-Fi userinterface so it lacks the true X-Fi features and Procesor.

I got an X-Fi XtremeGamer in my other rig (XP) with a 2.1 speakerset from Logitech, its able to simulate suroundsound out of 2 speakers or a good stereo headset (good enough to fool my cat in thinking the sound comes from somewhere else than the speakers)

But like i said: its useless under Vista or Windows 7 if a game or aplication uses DirectX based sound, still works pretty good though but the cards effects and procesor are passed by Windows, only OpenAL based sound like from games like GRID or BioShock go trough the cards hardware.

Creative ALchemy can covert DirectX DirecSound3D* to OpenAL sound, but a lot of games use DirectX DirectSound* like Crysis and IL2 wich can not be converted to OpenAL

(*DirectSound3D and DirectSound are two difrent soundengines)