[J-Pak]

Just curious who you guys think puts out the best sound card drivers. I've got a E-MU and feel they're very average; nothing special but not horrible. The downside being that you need to install from the cd first, and only then can you upgrade.

I recently used my friends PC with a M-Audio sound card and I will say those drivers looked flawless. He told me he's on Windows XP 64 bit and the drivers from M-Audio were available as soon as the OS was available. Also they're extremely stable and not bloated. I was impressed, this will probably be a company to put out drivers for all their cards for a while.

I left out Creative on purpose since they don't make hifi soundcards (wanted to limit the poll to hifi, instead of gaming), even though there is the high end X-Fi I doubt anyone has first hand experience with it

 

[Glod]

My RME DIGI96/8 driver has never caused me any problems.

 

[J-Pak]

Neither has my E-MU, but I don't think that alone can be a criteria for judging drivers.

 

[Daroid]

RME digi 96/8 PAD - very simple, and extremely easy to use. It has the least bloat i have ever seen implemented in a driver. There's no fancy graphics at all just the standard "grey pattern" look (i.e. http://www.stereophile.com/images/archivesart/rme-a.jpg)

 

[Asmo]

The EMU drivers are very powerful, you can do so much with them, that is a huge bonus. A "simple" driver, is nice sure, but a lot of ppl forget that the EMU cards are designed for doing a lot of recording, so there are tonnes of options most of us here at head-fi never ever use. So it seems complex, which dosn't really make it a 'bad' driver.

Anyways, I like the m-audio drivers, the E-MU drivers are buggy, ever since I switched from using analog outs (which gave me zero problems for about a year) to digital, I sometimes have to do a RESTORE DEFAULTS to get sound back, for no apparent obvious reason. And now, my analog card is not giving any output, I simply don't care about fixing that, but it is a driver issue. So, I say nay to the EMU drivers

 

[mrkangpae]

Anyone BUT ESI. They have VERY inconsistent drivers (ranging from decent and easy to install to terrible and extremely difficult to install).

 

[lan]

Since I'm a poweruser, I prefer the emu drivers and patchmix.

 

[RedLeader]

big fan of revs drivers, work very nicely

 

[Tachikoma]

... why has chaintech been included in the poll, at all? I own the chaintech AV-710; nice sound, hate the drivers >.>

 

[Scrith]

When I was using an M-Audio Audiophile USB I was not able to use ASIO output at all, Kernal Streaming output became distorted as soon as some other program tried to make a sound, and the performance was very questionable when using Direct Sound output (there were many glitches when other applications made sound, including some red error light flashes on my Benchmark DAC1).

I'm back to my E-Mu 1212M, whose drivers/software are as powerful, reliable, and flexible as any audio device I've ever used. After the M-Audio driver experience I don't think I'll ever be going back to one of their products.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Other: RME

The Digi Series drivers are remakably simple and stable, effective yet unobtrusive.

The HDSP drivers are just as stable, but with hordes of options pouring out. My personal favorite.

 

[Oink1]

Using the latest Via Envy24 drivers - Front end looks good and i've had no issues (as yet!)

 

[Erukian]

Other: RME

 

[Xakepa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tachikoma ... why has chaintech been included in the poll, at all? I own the chaintech AV-710; nice sound, hate the drivers >.>

Second that.