[primus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by james__bean I use the Chaintech AV-710 in games and it runs fine for me. But then again, I only use it with headphones.

As do i

So the Chaintech is the go then?

and yes halcyon, I do want more than just 'sound'

cheers

 

[Alereon]

Sadly, the only option for new soundcards that offer 3D audio support is Creative Labs. You won't get the straight sound quality you would with a Chaintech AV-710 or better card, but Creative cards do offer full 3D Positional Audio acceleration. Check out the Audigy 2 ZS for $88. At this point, I'd just stick with your Soundstorm onboard sound.

 

[primus]

Sadly, I'm tending towards the Audigy 2 ZS

I've heard they aren't TOO shabby with regards to music playback and of course have unparalleled gaming performance/features. Also the fact that it'll be close to $80 odd Aussie dollars to get a chaintech card shipped here which detracts a fair bit from the main attractive point of this card.

Also, I'm pretty keen on upgrading the onboard sound because being a bit of an overclocker

, I'm getting a bit of disturbance/distortion from the overheating southbridge

 

[Anomaly]

Hi, I’m very new to Head-Fi but I love this forum already. Found a lot of helpful topics and posts in here.

I think I have the same problem as primus since Imp a hardcore gamer. i.e. CPL, TFL, was in United 5 / shockwave awhile back (only know who they are if u play cs). Besides being a gamer I love listening to music whenever Imp not matching / scrimming.

Was wondering which soundcards are really good for me. My Labtec headset broke around 4 days ago so I came here reading up on a lot of headphones and bought a Sennheiser HD600 (waiting for it to deliver). I heard that having a soundcard was better than using onboard since it doesn't require a lot of processing power but Imp not sure.

Anyway Gaming / Listening to Music is very important to me.
Oh yes I was wondering what kind of cable I should buy for my Senn. HD600 since people were posting about upgrade cables that make the HD600's sound even better overall.

Your input will be very much appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Alereon]

If you're a professional CS player, you'll want to find a card that still supports the Aureal A3D API. No current cards that I know of do, so you'll have to do some looking. The advantage is that, in CS, using A3D allows you to hear sounds from twice as far away, meaning you gain a very real advantage in the game by hearing other players long before they hear you. If you don't want to bother with this, I'd just go with the Chaintech AV-710 for CS. The hardware requirements for CS are so low, the lack of hardware acceleration for 3D audio won't have any performance impact unless you're playing on a super low-spec machine.

 

[Anomaly]

well theres no real point of using that since Tournament PC's dont have those options I dont believe. And very lil respectable BYOC LANs around Ontario.

Dont want advantages I wont have in the tournament so the A3D wont be very helpful for me.

I'll look at some reviews for Chaintech AV-710 ^^ Are they good for music though? I bought the HD600 so I could listen to great music as well as playing cs.

Thank you for reply Alereon

 

[Damage]

Gamewise, Creative's got every 3D codec locked up under their belt, including A3D somewhere if I'm not mistaken (by acquision of Aureal's assets or what not). That mean, in most gaming rigs, you'll see Creative's Audigy 2 as the default sound card. And you get all the plus (fairly low CPU overheads, its 3D/surround codec, etc) and minuses (crummy interpolation, somewhat questionable drivers, etc) with it.

You may want to take a look at VIA Envy chipset. While it works like most AC97 codecs, it's got 24bit/96kHz audio with certain Envy chipset/soundcard implementations. Since it's CPU host based, it'll sap more CPU cycles. But with modern CPUs that shouldn't be much of an issue. And its sound quality has generally been agreeable to most "professional" reviewers ears.

Speaking of Soundstorm, the Soundstorm isn't the onboard chip itself, but refers to particular output specification of Nvidia's NForce2 based Mainboard. You can find more at nvidia.com (do a search for Soundstorm), but basically, it refers to the number of outputs that a mainboard must provide, that is basically certain number of digital out (TOSLINK or COAX) with certain output levels. From what I know, there is certain uncertainity whether or not the digital out from the NF1/NF2 (MCP-D/MCP-T respectively) uses the Realtek/Chintech/AC97 codecs or not, though I believe that they do not. Finally, your SoundStorm is the only PC card capable of encoding any and all digital streams in Dolby Digital. Driver quality however varies wildly between version to version, introducing bugs and noises here and there between versions. Personally, I've found no problems with its digital output or drivers in general.

Finally, the new Intel chipset/mainboards coming later this year will have HD Digital codec on the mainboard itself. It's supposed to revolutionize PC Audio scene as we know it, but since it's not released yet, no one knows. Right now though, it doesn't have the hype of SoundStorm yet, which may be a good thing after all.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anomaly I'll look at some reviews for Chaintech AV-710 ^^ Are they good for music though? I bought the HD600 so I could listen to great music as well as playing cs.

The AV-710 is highly reccomened as a music card. It does have a quirk however that when used with Kernel Streaming any other sounds will cause your music to stop, however when you're gaming you could probably just use DirectSound because you probably wouldn't notice the difference between KS and DS while you're concentrating on gaming.

 

[skitlets]

very true. its not like cs has great sound files anyway. i used to play competively. boy i wish i culd find the time 2 still do so.

 

[Anomaly]

Would the Chaintech AV-710 be better than the Onboard sound for my ASUS P4P800-D? I have a P4 2.6Ghz C so the performance hit wont be noticed. I'll definitely get the Chaintech for music but is it better than my Onboard for gaming?

Why are the Audigy 2's better than AV-710 for gaming?

I have a week's time before my Senn. HD600's get here so I still have time to decide

 

[Mr.Radar]

The Audigy 2 is reccomened for gaming because if support EAX 1, 2 and 3, and processes the positional audio information on the card itself, while most onboard audio/add in cards will offload the positional audio processing to the CPU.

 

[Anomaly]

Wow I didnt know there were so many levels of EAX. Only thought there was just 1 / 2. I'll probably get the Audigy 2's after AV-710's then or after I get my amp

 

[Rodent]

I believe HL/CS only uses EAX 1.0 but HL2 will surely use something more up to date.

 

[primus]

woops, was supposed to be a new thread