[Emon]

Ouch! It sounds terrible! This box used to be my main machine a few years back...it has an onboard Creative CT880, or Creative Soundblaster 128. The sound is extremely bright, with zero bass even after an EQ and mids are...not really there. There's like...well...it's just bad. I can't believe I once used that crappy card with some crappy speakers (though that was mostly because I had no money). My main rig only has an Audigy 2, and it's complete hi-fi bliss with my ER-6 compared to this peice of junk with my ER-6. My ears were hurting...seriously.

So I guess go and post your experiences of reverting back to old equipment or listening on someone else's setup and realizing how good your own sounds, be it that high end or not.

 

[Head Creep]

I go to high school, so I experience that every time someone decides that they have a great song I should hear. Now I've learned to hand them back their cheap streetstyle phones, plug in my E2c's and turn the volume down from 90% to something a little more sane.

 

[Sottilde]

Well, I do have to say the soundcard in my computer is no match for my Neuros II. So I have forsaken iTunes and listen to the Neuros whenever I'm on the computer. Like right now.


King Crimson...

 

[SockMan!]

I have an old Soundblaster 16 ISA soundcard which I used in a secondary computer before I scrapped it. Despite its age, it sounded pretty darn good (better than my SB Live and integrated sound on my newer Athlon Barton computer). The clarity was a bit better than the others despite having a bit of background noise at moderate to high volumes. I think these older soundcards amped the output moreso than modern soundcards in order to accommodate crappy non-externally-powered speakers; that might have contributed to the better sound. Then again, I don't really know for sure the hows and whys of its sound quality; just that the SB16 sounded good to my ears.

On the other end of the spectrum are my SB Live!s, which sound worse than anything I've ever heard. Worse than my SB16, Audigy 2 ZS, Phillips portable CD player, home stereo, and my Barton computer's integrated sound (everything except my el cheapo Koss stand-alone CD player/boombox that you can probably find on a Wal-Mart shelf for a heavily discounted price). The verdict is still out on whether they sound worse than my SB128 PCI, but I think that they do.

 

[Aman]

Also remember that Linux audio is very mediocre compared to other platforms.

OSS and ALSA both need work for most audiophiles - I was offered a multimedia position in Gentoo but I said "HELL no". Guess why

 

[Emon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aman Also remember that Linux audio is very mediocre compared to other platforms.

Perhaps, but when I had my Audigy 2 running with Ubuntu or Knoppix on my main rig, it sounded just like Windows.

 

[Aman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emon Perhaps, but when I had my Audigy 2 running with Ubuntu or Knoppix on my main rig, it sounded just like Windows.

You couldn't tell the difference maybe

Well also remember that the Audigy is a very lowly card - I hardly doubt any strengths in Windows Vs. Linux would have been apparent.

Take a pro card, for example the M-Audio or EMU series - and put them side by side.. you start noticing differences.

 

[450]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SockMan! I have an old Soundblaster 16 ISA soundcard which I used in a secondary computer before I scrapped it. Despite its age, it sounded pretty darn good (better than my SB Live and integrated sound on my newer Athlon Barton computer). The clarity was a bit better than the others despite having a bit of background noise at moderate to high volumes. I think these older soundcards amped the output moreso than modern soundcards in order to accommodate crappy non-externally-powered speakers; that might have contributed to the better sound. Then again, I don't really know for sure the hows and whys of its sound quality; just that the SB16 sounded good to my ears.

I agree on that. We need a "TEAM SB16"

I do like the SB16 better than my SoundMAX...

 

[Fidelity]

Hmm now you remind me, I still have an old Creative AWE64 Gold ISA card lying around, despite it's age it sounds MUCH BETTER than all the current consumer grade PCI sound cards I've heard, amazing!

 

[AdamWill]

aman: ...and that's the point at which I call BS, because the 0404 doesn't _have_ any Linux drivers, so you couldn't possibly have compared them side by side. And if you were such an expert on Linux audio, you'd have known that.

 

[Damage]

I wonder when will people start dropping some vintage classic sound card names like Gravis Ultrasound and Roland MT Synthsizers? (Along with some not so Vintage Sound Cards like... SB Pro and Disney Sound thingy that made screeches and such via Parallel Port? I used to have one of those, and I think it played back some weird 8-bit samples at 4khz or something)...

For what's its worth, I used to use a Gravis Ultrasound, and by jove, I still miss that little wonderful card. To be truthful, I've never used headphones with them...

Though the Audigy wasn't a barn-burner, it was decent for what it did, and a fairly decent gaming card.

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fidelity Hmm now you remind me, I still have an old Creative AWE64 Gold ISA card lying around, despite it's age it sounds MUCH BETTER than all the current consumer grade PCI sound cards I've heard, amazing!

On the other hand, I have an AWE64 Value (some OEM version, IIRC) that sounds like crap - harsh, "digital" sound. I guess it's important which of the 2 million subversions of Creative cards one has. (I bet the AWE64 Gold would sound much, much better.) Particularly the SB16 saw quite a number of variations.

 

[AdamWill]

damage: oh, I can beat that, I remember a couple of old games (Pinball Dreams, I believe, was one, the other was an obscure golf game) which used a cunning trick with the PC speaker. They turned it off and on at a high frequency to approximate real digital sound, and were actually able to play a vague approximation of real music and speech. Crazy.

 

[sgrossklass]

Actually there even used to be a PC speaker sound driver for Windows 3.1 that allowed playing WAV files up to 22 kHz 8 bit mono or so. Very multitasking unfriendly, everything else was halted while the sound was playing. (DOS game programmers were used to computing time juggling, so they probably got that solved more elegantly.) That's why you could set a limit on playtime. Was useful for stuff like my very first notebook which had no other sound hardware. BTW, I remember there was another shareware driver available that was supposed to give better quality. Technically you're using the CPU as a crude 1-bit DAC with the loudspeaker forming the lowpass.

 

[Emon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aman You couldn't tell the difference maybe Well also remember that the Audigy is a very lowly card - I hardly doubt any strengths in Windows Vs. Linux would have been apparent.

Yes true, but my point was that the Soundblaster 128 just sucks and couldn't be blamed on a different OS.

Just realized I have an old portable CD player lying around, now listening on that. It's beautiful compared to that onboard POS. It's some old Sony, has ESP though, so not THAT old. It does have a line out, which sounds pretty good. The headphone out is quite dull and boomy sounding. Well the line out is lifeless too but not the screetching treble-out of my onboard.