Are soundcards getting better?

[kipman725]

I just upgraded my AWE64 in my music playing pc to the AWE64 gold. This card plays stereo back with it's native 16bit 44.1khz sample rate and has a very good design with phono outputs and what apears to be great attention played to the grounding, powersupply and master clock. Looking at a more modern card like the audigy2 I see poor quality resampling algorithms and pickup of noises from things like disk access due to bad grounding. Due to having to fit 6 channels on the board instead of only 2. For stereo playback of the PCM data from cds have the cards actualy improved in any way?

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kipman725 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just upgraded my AWE64 in my music playing pc to the AWE64 gold. This card plays stereo back with it's native 16bit 44.1khz sample rate and has a very good design with phono outputs and what apears to be great attention played to the grounding, powersupply and master clock. Looking at a more modern card like the audigy2 I see poor quality resampling algorithms and pickup of noises from things like disk access due to bad grounding. Due to having to fit 6 channels on the board instead of only 2. For stereo playback of the PCM data from cds have the cards actualy improved in any way?

One of the best if not the best performing card is the creative labs X-Fi Elite Pro. The sample rate converter programming is second to none & does offer playback & recording without having to do sample rate conversion at all. Performance specs are second to none in the current state of the market but that could change soon, however not in any really meaningfull way as it is very hard to improve on the specs in anyway to improve the sound. Other things can be done with this card to radically improve the actual sound. This card already has flagship DACs & ADCs though so the improvements come mostly though better passive parts & maybe an opamp upgrade.

Check out this thread http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=229350

 

[pompon]

SoundBlaster are gaming soundcard.

You can get signifiantly better with AuzenTech x-Meridian 7.1 .. and it's cheeper too. Juste remplace the stock opamp for LM4562 and you done. You on par with 2000$ cd player.

 

[Kr1z]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pompon /img/forum/go_quote.gif SoundBlaster are gaming soundcard. You can get signifiantly better with AuzenTech x-Meridian 7.1 .. and it's cheeper too. Juste remplace the stock opamp for LM4562 and you done. You on par with 2000$ cd player.

Whoa really? Were do you get this LM4562 and how do replace it?

 

[Joeywhat]

Sadly, I think soundcards are on their way out...with mp3's and other lossy formats becoming so mainstream, audio quality is taking a seat behind file size and portability. With this, most people are just using onboard sound. Of course, on board sound has also come a long way.

I'm sure in the future there will still be sound cards, but mostly for audiophiles. They are of no use for professionals (DAW and other pro recording uses), and 90% of the general public probably can't tell the difference between 128 Kbps mp3 and 192KHz/24 bit.

 

[003]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pompon /img/forum/go_quote.gif and it's cheeper too. Juste remplace the stock opamp for LM4562 and you done. You on par with 2000$ cd player.

No, it's not on par with a good cd player. In fact most quality dacs will trump any sound card, modded or not. The x-fi is extremely overrated.

 

[TheVinylRipper]

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news...ound+card.html

 

[jaredy]

^Thread over/Question Answered.^

For internal sound cards there is definitely still improvements.

 

[kipman725]

lots of big capacitors... are they needed though?

anyone seen a review of this beast?

 

[TheVinylRipper]

""Parts left off cost nothing and cause no service problems"" -Henry Ford

 

[Zorander]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kipman725 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just upgraded my AWE64 in my music playing pc to the AWE64 gold. This card plays stereo back with it's native 16bit 44.1khz sample rate and has a very good design with phono outputs and what apears to be great attention played to the grounding, powersupply and master clock. Looking at a more modern card like the audigy2 I see poor quality resampling algorithms and pickup of noises from things like disk access due to bad grounding. Due to having to fit 6 channels on the board instead of only 2. For stereo playback of the PCM data from cds have the cards actualy improved in any way?

Excuse my curiosity: aren't the AWE64 cards ISA-based (which means your PC is really really ancient)?

 

[kipman725]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zorander /img/forum/go_quote.gif Excuse my curiosity: aren't the AWE64 cards ISA-based (which means your PC is really really ancient)?

yep ISA I run a seperate PC (400mhz P2 256mb ram) for my audio and get it to read files from my file sever... I can't find a lossless way of streaming audio over the network so controll (as it's headless) is abit convulted at the moment. Works well though.

 

[pianomav]

yea,, i use to have the awe64 gold... it is very old but for playing audio it should be sufficient but it's definitely not audiophile grade.