Picking sound card mostly for gaming

Asus Xonar DX and D1 have a $20 mail-in rebate this month.

The Xonar DG has a $10 rebate.

All can be ordered with no tax and free shipping (U.S.A.)

Creative X-Fi Titanium (non HD) can be had for little over $80, or less than $50 if refurb.

But overall, those prices seem a bit high.

Not really. The Bravura is based on a lower chip version, and while having overall higher quality components is important, for the price difference you'd be better served with the Forte.

EDIT: You can order online, and even taking shipping expenses in account, it should give you better prices.

Well, the thing is that the regular X-Fi Titanium has a second generation real X-Fi DSP chip, while the Bravura is based on a quite low end X-Fi card that doesn't even have a real X-Fi chip. So what Bravura has going for it is the higher quality components, but basically you're between Forte and regular Titanium.

I wish Creative would stop doing that with the X-Fi brand. In my book, if it doesn't have the EMU20k1 (PCI) or EMU20k2 (PCI-Express), it isn't a real X-Fi device. It's not the first time Creative's done it, either; they've been doing this since the Audigy and Live! days.

Though it is baffling as to why Auzentech would not give the Bravura the EMU20k2 when the Forte and HomeTheater HD got it...I thought they were supposed to be making top-of-the-line cards. (Then again, given the capacitor issues some complain about with the Forte, and which may also affect my own, albeit only on the front panel output...)

Your best shot still seems like the Forte in spite of that and the high price (especially given that mine only cost $90 used, right here on Head-Fi), since the general accepted pecking order for X-Fi cards and headphone users, in terms of sound quality, is:

1) Creative Titanium HD (as long as you only need stereo output in analog; surround only provided through S/PDIF and DDL or DTS Connect)

2) Auzentech Forte (probably HomeTheater HD too, but if you're getting that card, you're probably not going to use the analog outputs)

3) Creative Titanium non-HD

Creative? You can go with many many brands, but since we're talking about computer hardware, let's just keep in mind that both ATI and Nvidia do it as well. Oh, and the Titanium HD as a third generation X-Fi chip, newer than EMU10K2.

I just bought the Soundblaster F-xi Titanium HD and all I can say is I'm telling you that you wil be highly impressed!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I hear sounds in my games and music I never heard before.  Worth every bit of the $150.00 I spent on it! 

Have you considered the Asus Xonar DG, they have dropped to $23.00 in the U.S.A., not sure what shipping charges would be for Denmark.

It has Dolby and will support 5.1 speaker setup and has a headphone amp. and uses GS version 2.5 which is for emulating EAX 5.0.

The Xonar DG uses the C-Media CMI8786 audio chip, It's a slightly older chip design then the C-Media CMI8788 which is used in all the other Xonar cards.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

Creative? You can go with many many brands, but since we're talking about computer hardware, let's just keep in mind that both ATI and Nvidia do it as well. Oh, and the Titanium HD as a third generation X-Fi chip, newer than EMU10K2.

I've seen nothing that suggests this. There's only two generations I've seen, one for PCI, one for PCI-Express, and both "EMU20k2" and "CA20k2" seem to be used interchangeably.

The Titanium HD's performance improvements seem to stem from a different driver set and overall better components.

(And yes, lots of tech companies do the rebadging thing. GeForce 8 Series -> GeForce 9 Series, anyone?)