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Looking for a decent usb sound card for my netbook

post #1 of 13
1/12/11 at 8:38am
Thread Starter 

Hi I'm happy owner of creative xmod soundcard. I'm planning to buy sonething with sound quality like xmod but with small size , to better fit my netbook. Was thinking about buying SOUND BLASTER PLAY! or maybe SteelSeries Siberia (which it is better in terms of sound quality). Or maybe you would have other suggestions. My budget is max 50 dolars + eventually costs of shipping. Shop that I'd prefer is ebay.

 

PS

On netbook I scale cpu to the lowest to save on battery power and have 1 GB of ram, so would prefer to not install resource eating software along with my soundcard. 


Edited by xmoduser - 1/12/11 at 8:39am
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post #2 of 13
1/12/11 at 8:58am

I reccomend the fiio E7.

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post #3 of 13
1/12/11 at 10:58am
Thread Starter 

Looks nice but I'd prefer something with size of a pendrive (when it comes to using bigger soundcards I already have xmod, and I'd prefer to buy something compact size).


Edited by xmoduser - 1/12/11 at 11:03am
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post #4 of 13
1/12/11 at 11:42am

To me the E7 is quite small i can fit it in my pocket, maybe this is more what your looking for http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/sound-cards/audio-advantage-micro-ii.aspx .

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post #5 of 13
1/12/11 at 12:53pm
Thread Starter 

Better, but what is the usb cable for, it's kind of weird, other mini usb sound cards don't have one, and is it better than Sound Blaster Play! card (in terms of sound quality) ?

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post #6 of 13
1/12/11 at 4:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JRG1990 View Post

To me the E7 is quite small i can fit it in my pocket, maybe this is more what your looking for http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/sound-cards/audio-advantage-micro-ii.aspx .


+100  That is an awesome choice if you choose it. beyersmile.png  Yeah it might have a bit of a dongle, but it won't be accidentally snapped off by a yank on the headphone cord.

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post #7 of 13
1/13/11 at 5:53am
Thread Starter 


 

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChipnDalebowl View Post



Quote:
Originally Posted by JRG1990 View Post

To me the E7 is quite small i can fit it in my pocket, maybe this is more what your looking for http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/sound-cards/audio-advantage-micro-ii.aspx .


+100  That is an awesome choice if you choose it. beyersmile.png  Yeah it might have a bit of a dongle, but it won't be accidentally snapped off by a yank on the headphone cord.



Ok maybe I'll buy that but another question, are there any sound differences betwen micro II and amigo II models or they sound the same ?

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post #8 of 13
1/13/11 at 5:39pm

Never tried an Amigo to know.  I'd assume they are no different.  Your headphones will make a bigger difference than the sound chip ever will.

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post #9 of 13
1/14/11 at 3:53am

How about a Creative X-Fi Go!? The regular version, not the Pro version as the Pro version drops support for 24-bit 48KHz and bumps EAX support from version 4 to 5. And the Go! does sound better than the Play!

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post #10 of 13
1/14/11 at 8:27am
Thread Starter 

 

 

Quote:
 Your headphones will make a bigger difference than the sound chip ever will.

I'm no audiophile just a man who can sense difference betwen build in netbook soundcard and better one (like creative xmod), but I assume that my koss porta pro would do the job well

 

 

 

Quote:
How about a Creative X-Fi Go!? 

is it better than that turtle beach card, and another question, minimal requirements are 1.6 GHz CPU but I always scale my netbook to lowest about 700 MHz to prolong my battery life, will my system be able to work properly with 700MHz + 1 GB ram + windows xp despite that minimal requirements of this card are 1,6 GHz. ?

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post #11 of 13
1/14/11 at 8:37am

It should work acceptably, though I would set the minimum cpu frequency to 1GHz just to be on the safe side.

 

Netbooks can already keep quite some charge on the battery. Also, have you thought about upgrading to windows 7? It has improved power management, allowing you to prolong your battery life longer.

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post #12 of 13
1/14/11 at 12:08pm
Thread Starter 

 

 

Quote:
It has improved power management, allowing you to prolong your battery life longer.

 

Didn't thought about that, because I would like to use legal windows, this one I'm using is oem xp home basic, and buying new legal windows would cost almost 1/3 of price I paid for my netbook (samsung nc 10 a year ago)  

 

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post #13 of 13
1/14/11 at 12:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xmoduser View Post

 

 

Quote:
It has improved power management, allowing you to prolong your battery life longer.

 

Didn't thought about that, because I would like to use legal windows, this one I'm using is oem xp home basic, and buying new legal windows would cost almost 1/3 of price I paid for my netbook (samsung nc 10 a year ago)  

 


 

You can download a copy and use it for 30 days as a trial, not activating it, that way you could test how your netbook would work with your apps in a legit way.

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