[se7enty7]

Hi,
I have a set of senn 590's, and am in the process of building an amp. (waiting for parts). I currently have a sb audigy, but due to extremely horrible drivers I am forced to look for another sound card. Any suggestions? My motherboard has good 5.1 sound onboard (soyo dragon plus)..
"On board CMI 8738 Audio chip to provide 6 channels audio solution

Supports optical output & SPDIF output
"

(qoute from site..)
anywho.... what is a good sound card that could be used with headphones?

Thanks!

 

[radrd]

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is a great option, especially since you can plug your headphones into the versa-jack and still have 4.1 speakers hooked up to the line-outs. Plus, AFAIK, it has the best sound quality of any consumer-level soundcard.

However, if you don't play games or watch movies, you might want some sort of pro soundcard, which I know nothing about other than they are used for audio editing and the sound quality is better, but they are less efficient for gaming and more expensive.

 

[rawhit]

Hi,
since your motherboard already supports digital output mey be you should lookinto outboard DACs instead of a new sound card.

I think external DACs would give better sound quality and will also avoid the noise problems that most computer based sources have.
Though I havent listened to one ART DI/O has been discussed here a lot and is considered a great DAC for the price.
Using search button would help as this topic has been discussed here a lot. If you are interested in soundcard only then check out this thread

cheers
RawHit

 

[se7enty7]

Well, I do play games.....


Games are an integral part of my computing experiance... as are mp3's.. (high quality, 320kbs..) .... How is the hercules game theater xp?

What sets the santa cruz above the rest?

 

[dcg]

se7enty7-

Check out www.3dss.com for a very in depth review of the TBSC, as well as many other soundcards. I myself use that card, and have had no problems with it.

I was very close to buying the game theater xp when i built my rig, but (1) couldn't justify the extra price and (2) more importantly, they had A LOT of driver problems, (not sure if those have been resolved yet or not).

 

[zowie]

I've stopped using any sort of DAC. I just run the digital output stream into a preamp and then listen with very neutral phones or speakers.

Now, I'd imagine most of you are saying that's ridiculous. Well don't be too quick to judge.

Initially, all I heard was digital noise, not unlike what you hear when you listen in on a modem connection.

But with a fair amount of time and patience, using CDs I was very familiar with, I became able to translate the digital "noise" stream into the equivalent analogue music in my head. It's sort of like mastering a foreign language. After a while, everything just clicks and and your ears and brain effectivley become the "DAC" itself, with no jitter, artifacts, or distortion.

Interestingly, I have been unable to do this with an ATRAC compressed digital stream, problably because of the complex compression algorhythm, but I bet I could figure it out eventually.

 

[se7enty7]

zowie you should see a doctor dude.



I'm thinking about losing the audigy due to driver issues and using the onboard cmedia 5.1 chip.... costwise thats the best way to go, I think, and since I'll be using an amp then that won't matter...