[Duke309]

Ok my current setup is Audigy 2 to either my headphones (or cmoy then headphones) or to my logitech z680s. I am really sick of these speakers especially since i can only run them in 2.1 right now so I am looking at getting a receiver and some decent bookshelfs.

I think I should get a another soundcard strictly for music while still using the audigy 2 for games, what soundcard and how would be the best way to hook this up?

Keep in mind that I am relatively new to the home theater side, so receivers confuse the hell out of me. With the right receiver and enough speakers, I could get surround sound that is utilizing the audigy 2's eax while using some other sound card for better music playback?

Having two soundcards sounds really confusing, I mainly want to be able to have better music quality while still being able to retain surround sound from my 680s until I get the receiver and bookshelf setup.

 

[Nebby]

Are you planning on using the receiver as the dac for both the gaming and music cards? If you are then it doesn't make much sense to spend money on a good sound card because it will basically be a transport, converting the signal to spdif to your receiver.

I'll be assuming that you have a windows computer. The best way I have found to have two soundcards is leave the default/active soundcard as your gaming soundcard in windows control panel, then specify your music player to output to the music sound card. Most players will have the option in their options menu.

Personally I am partial to Onkyo sound cards, but they seem to be hard to get everywhere outside Japan

Perhaps others can chime in with their own preferences. I do know there were a couple of threads asking for best soundcard so a search may pull them up. I tried but was unable to find them.

 

[Duke309]

I'm thinking about using the receiver as a dac, the reason for getting another sound card is, doesn't the audigy 2 resample everything to 48 khz even the digital out?

 

[Duke309]

Would the chaintech av710 be worthwhile to run along side my audigy 2? How does the DAC on the chaintech compare to say an Onkyo Sr504 or other cheap receivers?

So basically the setup would be audigy 2 > av710 > logitech z680s or headphones until i get a receiver/bookshelfs.

How would I wire the audigy 2 to the av710?

 

[bangraman]

If you use ASIO playback on the Audigy, then the resampling problem is averted. Someone correct me here if I'm wrong.


Nebby's method is the best way for running two soundcards. The way I do it on my general purpose / entertainment computers is to set the X-Fi Elite Pro as the main soundcard so that all my gaming / default audio goes through it. I then hook up an analog link from the X-Fi to the RME Fireface 800, which is the designated ASIO target for my music playback software. The RME is then set to pass through the analog signal from the X-Fi to the outputs. The headphones and the speaker outputs come out of the Fireface. This way I have both gaming and listening audio without needing to do anything.

 

[Duke309]

A question about my setup though, if i had both the chaintech and audigy 2 hooked up and used asio in foobar to output to the av710, would it still be resampled by the audigy2?

 

[ROBSCIX]

I use a dual card setup of a Audigy 2 and a X-Meridian 7.1.
I have full EAX/OpenAL and the sound quality of the X-Meridian 7.1 for gaming and music or movies.

 

[Duke309]

can you explain exactly how you have this setup?

 

[Zodduska]

Hi, I have a similar setup soundcard wise.

Audigy 2 ZS (analog out) > Klipsch 5.1 Ultra (this is set to default in windows)
AV710 (digital out) > My DAC > Headphones

to be honest, if you are not planning on using digital output from either of your soundcards, and you are planning on running both analog into a receiver I dont think I would notice a difference between the two cards.

as has been mentioned in this thread already the main advantage of dual soundcard setup is to isolate the windows/game/movie output from your music output, generally going to different equipment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duke309 /img/forum/go_quote.gif A question about my setup though, if i had both the chaintech and audigy 2 hooked up and used asio in foobar to output to the av710, would it still be resampled by the audigy2?

I'm pretty sure that no matter what the Audigy2 will always output at 48khz