Zardon

well I had been looking at upgrading this and I wanted to hear your view points on this little card ive had for years now ....

I really dont need digital sound (as I have a home cinema setup via DVD and widescreen TV), all I use my computer sound for is playing games and MP3s .. so stereo quality is important.

I have a nice speaker setup .. with 4 highend yamaha satellites via 2 subwoofers (cost over £300 in total), so the sound for playing music is really clear and effective. (well as good as ive heard from a computer setup)

Recently I took home a SB live card from work but this sucker did not want to tango with my setup and XP and caused more problems for me than anything ive ever had, so I took it back and just replaced the old PCI128 card I have had for years. rock solid, never a problem, never any issues at all actually. just plug and hear.

im happy, so tell me, why should I upgrade? is it worth the money?

Necrosis

Hmmm...

Since you enjoy games, and I bet you would enjoy effects on your music and more control. I would suggest going with either the Santa Cruz or Philips Edge. You don't have to spend a whole lot, and plus get much better STABLE drivers for XP. I used to have a nice Pioneer Receiver with a 12" Polk Sub and four Yamaha bookshelf's. It sounded great but took up a lot of room in my small computer room. Plus seemed odd my computers receiver was better than my home theater receiver. So I just moved the new receiver to my home theater, and bought myself a pair of Klipsch. Really though if your content with what you have, and it works I say don't upgrade. You probably have a very nice receiver on the card anyway, so what really is the point. Remember the old saying, if it's not broke...don't fix it.

Malus

What Necrosis said. Personally, I like Phillip's better (QSound is awesome), but both brands are really good and should fit your needs quite nicely.

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quad (FreeBSD/amd64 8-CURRENT): Intel Q6600 - Asus P5E-VM HDMI - 2x2 GB Kingston PC6400 DDR2 Ram - Seagate 320GB 7200RPM HD - 2xSeagate 1TB 7200RPM HD in RAID 1 via ZFS - Lite-On 20x DVD Multi Recorder - Coolermaster Centurion 5

router (FreeBSD/amd64 8-CURRENT): Intel E4500 - Intel D945GCNL - 2 GB PC6400 Mushkin Ram - Lite-On 48x24x48x16 - Seagate 320GB 7200RPM HD - Silverstone SST-SG02-F

wanderer (FreeBSD/i386 7-CURRENT): Lenovo Thinkpad T61p

mini (OS X 10.5): Intel Core 2 Duo @ 1.8Ghz, 4 GB Mushkin PC5400 Ram - Headroom MicroDAC

Portable sound: Rockboxed iPod Video -> Westone UM2's
Not-So-Portable Sound: Headroon MicroDAC -> Singlepower PPX3-SLAM -> Grado RS-1's or Beyerdynamic DT-880's
Very-Not-Portable-Sound: Squeezebox v3 -> Denon AVR-1507 -> B&W 683's & Sunfire HRS-10