Best Sound Card of All Time or So Far???

Necrosis · May 27, 2002, 01:12 PM

So folks which one do you think it is???

DaSnIpE · May 27, 2002, 07:38 PM

Um...tough to say, lol, the Awe32 is nice, but so is the SB Live 5.1

Malus · May 28, 2002, 11:03 PM

Mmmm. . . Philip's. . .

Zardon · May 29, 2002, 06:09 PM

my old, rather limited and yet rock solid PCI128 SB

p0rnflake · May 30, 2002, 11:32 AM

The philips cards are supposed to ve really good - I've got a Hercules Fortissimo II myself - and that pretty much rocks too - much better than my old SB live !

I wouldn't buy ANY creative card if I was shopping for a new sound card as none of the newer creative cards live up to the PCI specs.

Look for cards bases on Cirrus Logic chips and you cant go wrong !

Necrosis · May 30, 2002, 11:39 AM

I'm going to have to say my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz..though I did really like my AWE64.

Impulse · Jun 1, 2002, 07:27 AM

[SIZE=x-small]8-Bit ISA Soundcard

or the Hercules MuseXl, which is a great and low price Soundcard, perfect to replace the on-board AC-97 Audio

...[/SIZE]

Yostarr · Jun 1, 2002, 12:46 PM

The best sound card has to be the SB LIVE! value. Almost everyone has had one or still does.

Funkybuffalo · Jun 1, 2002, 10:02 PM

I would have to go with the Philips Acoustic Edge. I haven't heard all of the non-Crapative cards, but the Acoustic Edge is great. EAX 2.0 (and as far as I've heard it works), QSound for audio output and Dolby 5.1. Also has S/PDIF in and out (go figure, Sony/PHILIPS Digital Interface). It's also much cheaper than the comperable SB card.

Man, I sound like a salesman. Let me change that.

Philips Good.

Necrosis · Jun 2, 2002, 03:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Funkybuffalo
I would have to go with the Philips Acoustic Edge. I haven't heard all of the non-Crapative cards, but the Acoustic Edge is great. EAX 2.0 (and as far as I've heard it works), QSound for audio output and Dolby 5.1. Also has S/PDIF in and out (go figure, Sony/PHILIPS Digital Interface). It's also much cheaper than the comperable SB card.

Man, I sound like a salesman. Let me change that.

Philips Good.

I used to have one of these for a short period of time. However, I returned it for reasons outside of the card. What I replaced it with was a SBLive 5.1. I'm sorry I did that. It is a very good sound card.

J_A_M_F · Aug 7, 2002, 09:37 PM

SMEG, nobody here favours the Aureal Vortex II.
I use it, I like it, I hate that it was killed by Creative, pissed off

at CL that they don't release the source code for the A3D2.0 or 3.0 drivers.

Next card will be the Phillips Acoustic Edge, heard that the 3D was second to none.

e-Seeker · Aug 8, 2002, 04:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Yostarr
The best sound card has to be the SB LIVE! value. Almost everyone has had one or still does.

...or is still having problems selling it

Ah well; it is a good card, but it kinda went down in time... Simply compared to the Audigy (for normal music playback, without any 'tweakers') it doesn't stand a chance...

Hmmm, I can't speak for any other cards, as I've only dealt with CL ones...

Vampyromaniac · Aug 10, 2002, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by J_A_M_F
SMEG, nobody here favours the Aureal Vortex II.
I use it, I like it, I hate that it was killed by Creative, pissed off at CL that they don't release the source code for the A3D2.0 or 3.0 drivers.

Next card will be the Phillips Acoustic Edge, heard that the 3D was second to none.

Guess what I have in my comp right now? A Turtle Beach Montego II (based on the Vortex AU8830 chip.) I love A3D in Half-Life and its mods!

Oh yeah . . . . And I plan to add a Philips Acoustic Edge in a couple months.

Necrosis · Aug 11, 2002, 12:05 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Vampyromaniac
Guess what I have in my comp right now? A Turtle Beach Montego II (based on the Vortex AU8830 chip.) I love A3D in Half-Life and its mods!

Oh yeah . . . . And I plan to add a Philips Acoustic Edge in a couple months.

Great card!!

Why no Santa Cruz???

DallasStar · Aug 11, 2002, 07:37 AM

I have SantaCruz and Audigy, and I can't honestly say its the best card on the planet

. I mean... the sound is cleaner somewhat, but the same effect can be had by modifying an equalizer with the audigy

.... Not only that, but the SantaCruz's midi synthesizer can't even begin to compare to the Audigy's... (especially with a good soundfont

). Lets not also forget Audigy's great gaming. .............. anyway, I'm not saying that the Audigy is better than the Santa Cruz or the other way around... I'm just saying that none of them is better than the other and that they both have their good features. I have my headphones hooked to the SantaCruz, but I have my Audigy's line-out plugged into the SantaCruz so that my midis don't sound like crap

. As far as gaming is concerned.... some games are better on SantaCruz... others on Audigy.... (and that Virtual Ear is pretty nice

). These two cards coexist nicely

.

digitalwanderer · Aug 11, 2002, 08:04 AM

I really like my fortissimo II a lot, it blows away my SB-live 5.1 for quality & performance at about half the price.

Vampyromaniac · Aug 11, 2002, 07:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Necrosis
Great card!! Why no Santa Cruz???

Well, the Montego II is the card I chose when I bought my comp about 2.5 years ago. After that, when the Santa Cruz and Philips "Edge" series came out, I started thinking about a new card. Since then, I kept hearing such good things about the Acoustic Edge, and I like the QSound features the card has, so I think I'll probably go with that one.

Of course, I will still keep the Montego II, since the others apparently can't do A3D 2.0 or 3.0 . . . I, too, am sad that Aureal is gone

P.S. To dallasstar: Since I'm planning a 2-card setup, can you please explain just how to go about it? Like how do you specify which card handles what audio. Please PM me if you don't want to clutter this thread. Or, you can start a new thread (eg "How to do a multi-sound-card setup"), and I'll reply there. Thanks in advance (I just hope you come back to this thread and read this

)

Necrosis · Aug 12, 2002, 02:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Vampyromaniac
Well, the Montego II is the card I chose when I bought my comp about 2.5 years ago. After that, when the Santa Cruz and Philips "Edge" series came out, I started thinking about a new card. Since then, I kept hearing such good things about the Acoustic Edge, and I like the QSound features the card has, so I think I'll probably go with that one.

Of course, I will still keep the Montego II, since the others apparently can't do A3D 2.0 or 3.0 . . . I, too, am sad that Aureal is gone

I have owned one of these cards myself, and was very impressed with it. The only thing I didn't like was the doinger connector coming off the card. I like my input/outputs in a fixed location. Othern than that great card, and I imagine you can now find it at a very reasonable price.

Xploited Titan · Aug 12, 2002, 11:01 PM

Let's not forget the Gametheater XP!!!!!!!

It has some really interesting features, and it isn't bad at all.......

It does take some room, I've still problems with the Virtual Ear drivers, but all in all, I think it can compete without shame against an Audigy, even though the sound is a little bit muffled...

Shodan · Aug 14, 2002, 03:28 AM

There is only one REAL Sound (MUSIC) Card out there:

The Terratec DMX 24/96 (The Full pACKAGE including the nifty front module)

-> Sound is WAY CLEANER than the SB Audigy - has almost all features of the Audigy, a better front module, and so on... only thing it lacks is EAX 2.0...well, A3D is better than that so far....

WyreTheWolf · Aug 14, 2002, 10:07 PM

Aureal SQ2500 "Super Quad" ... Never had any problems with it... My wife is still using it. Ran perfectly under 98, 98se, and ME... 2K, and XP no support

I HATE CREATIVE FOR WHAT THEY DID!

The AWE64 was great....

And I can now get my A3D lovin' from the Philips Acoustic Edge! Thanks to a wonderful sound card, and a great company.

2 minutes to install the drivers, and reboot.

Vampyromaniac · Aug 15, 2002, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by WyreTheWolf

And I can now get my A3D 2.0 lovin' from the Philips Acoustic Edge! Thanks to a wonderful sound card, and a great company.

Doesn't the PAE only support A3D 1.0 ? That's what it says on their site . . . .

Ryo-Ohki · Aug 16, 2002, 06:24 AM

The Sound Blaster Live! and 5.1 flavour are both very nice, served me faithfully until now. Can't figure out why there are people hating them so much.

I also like my older A3D Vortex based card for its DOS support.

WyreTheWolf · Aug 16, 2002, 07:14 AM

Vampyromaniac, you were correct on that. It supports A3D 1.0 Sorry about that. I know that with Quake, everything does sound nice with A3D enabled. EAX is good, but it just doesn't have the depth of the wave tracing.

fornicatarachnid · Aug 17, 2002, 04:12 PM

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, coupled with my Abit SP 50 speakers, the sound quality is awesome

Kelsenellenelvian · Aug 17, 2002, 04:15 PM

I have a mongrel bank of different brands for speakers and they all work great.

egarrard · Jan 17, 2003, 10:20 AM

Lynx Two

Frodo301 · Jan 18, 2003, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by WyreTheWolf
Vampyromaniac, you were correct on that. It supports A3D 1.0 Sorry about that. I know that with Quake, everything does sound nice with A3D enabled. EAX is good, but it just doesn't have the depth of the wave tracing.

EAX does not even come close to the realism of A3D. I still have my Diamond MX300 running in another machine with Win 98se.

reno · Jan 19, 2003, 03:50 AM

Ahhh...the Creative AWE 64 Gold...I loved the MIDI effects on that card. I was big into FF6-7 MIDI music and LOVED listening to it with the soundfonts provided on my FF7 disc....dang nab!

Plus it also did "reverb effects" which, at the time, blew me away.

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Jan 19, 2003, 04:09 AM

sb live is the best soundcard ever made. all these competitors are gay. with retarded names lol. fortissmo and santa cruz absolutely suck. sb live paved the way for eax technology. audigy has too much hype. i bought it i found very little diff. i was using my 5.1 5300 on sb live value so i couldnt take advantege of 5.1 entirely so i bought a audigy for its 5.1 capability. all the 24 bit and eax advanced HD is the same crap as eax 1 pretty much. but sb live is the top card ever made and is most commonly used still after 5 or 6 yrs.

May 27, 2002, 01:12 PM	#1
Necrosis HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio Posts: 8,838 Rep Power: 129 System Specs	Best Sound Card of All Time or So Far??? So folks which one do you think it is???

May 27, 2002, 07:38 PM	#2
DaSnIpE Driverage Snipe Join Date: May 2002 Location: Montreal, Canada or NYC, USA Posts: 372 Rep Power: 0	Um...tough to say, lol, the Awe32 is nice, but so is the SB Live 5.1 __________________ Antec SX1030 Case - Enermax 431 W Whisper PS - 4 Case Fans -ThermalRight AX-7 With Panaflo Ultra Fan - Sb Audigy / Logitech Z-560 Speakers / Sennheiser HD497 Headphones WD 80GB 7200 rpm HD - Samsung SyncMaster 955DF - LG 16x10x40x Burner / Pionner 16x Slot DVD View my rig http://nl.dodhq.net/Rig/

May 28, 2002, 11:03 PM	#3
Malus BSD SMASH! Join Date: May 2002 Location: A rabbit hole. . . Posts: 1,170 Rep Power: 0	Mmmm. . . Philip's. . . __________________ 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

Jun 1, 2002, 10:02 PM	#9
Funkybuffalo DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Huntington,WV Posts: 75 Rep Power: 0	Philips I would have to go with the Philips Acoustic Edge. I haven't heard all of the non-Crapative cards, but the Acoustic Edge is great. EAX 2.0 (and as far as I've heard it works), QSound for audio output and Dolby 5.1. Also has S/PDIF in and out (go figure, Sony/PHILIPS Digital Interface). It's also much cheaper than the comperable SB card. Man, I sound like a salesman. Let me change that. Philips Good.

Aug 7, 2002, 09:37 PM	#11
J_A_M_F DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2002 Location: Netherlands Posts: 11 Rep Power: 0	SMEG, nobody here favours the Aureal Vortex II. I use it, I like it, I hate that it was killed by Creative, pissed off at CL that they don't release the source code for the A3D2.0 or 3.0 drivers. Next card will be the Phillips Acoustic Edge, heard that the 3D was second to none. __________________ Still waiting for a lean, mean gaming OS. Perhaps Lindows, but too much hot air at this time.

May 29, 2002, 06:09 PM	#4
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	my old, rather limited and yet rock solid PCI128 SB

May 30, 2002, 11:32 AM	#5
p0rnflake DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Denmark Posts: 40 Rep Power: 0	The philips cards are supposed to ve really good - I've got a Hercules Fortissimo II myself - and that pretty much rocks too - much better than my old SB live ! I wouldn't buy ANY creative card if I was shopping for a new sound card as none of the newer creative cards live up to the PCI specs. Look for cards bases on Cirrus Logic chips and you cant go wrong !

May 30, 2002, 11:39 AM	Thread Starter #6
Necrosis HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio Posts: 8,838 Rep Power: 129 System Specs	I'm going to have to say my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz..though I did really like my AWE64.

Jun 1, 2002, 07:27 AM	#7
Impulse l33t Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 248 Rep Power: 0	[SIZE=x-small]8-Bit ISA Soundcard or the Hercules MuseXl, which is a great and low price Soundcard, perfect to replace the on-board AC-97 Audio ...[/SIZE]

Jun 1, 2002, 12:46 PM	#8
Yostarr DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Toronto Posts: 5 Rep Power: 0	The best sound card has to be the SB LIVE! value. Almost everyone has had one or still does.

Aug 11, 2002, 07:37 AM	#15
DallasStar Junior Join Date: May 2002 Location: Wave Existence Posts: 2,065 Rep Power: 0	I have SantaCruz and Audigy, and I can't honestly say its the best card on the planet . I mean... the sound is cleaner somewhat, but the same effect can be had by modifying an equalizer with the audigy .... Not only that, but the SantaCruz's midi synthesizer can't even begin to compare to the Audigy's... (especially with a good soundfont ). Lets not also forget Audigy's great gaming. .............. anyway, I'm not saying that the Audigy is better than the Santa Cruz or the other way around... I'm just saying that none of them is better than the other and that they both have their good features. I have my headphones hooked to the SantaCruz, but I have my Audigy's line-out plugged into the SantaCruz so that my midis don't sound like crap . As far as gaming is concerned.... some games are better on SantaCruz... others on Audigy.... (and that Virtual Ear is pretty nice ). These two cards coexist nicely . __________________ "A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night." --- Franz Kafka

Aug 11, 2002, 08:04 AM	#16
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,620 Rep Power: 0	I don't know about "the best", but I really like my fortissimo II a lot, it blows away my SB-live 5.1 for quality & performance at about half the price. __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Aug 12, 2002, 11:01 PM	#19
Xploited Titan Driverheaven's evil Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Brussels, capital of Belgium Posts: 207 Rep Power: 0	Let's not forget the Gametheater XP!!!!!!! It has some really interesting features, and it isn't bad at all....... It does take some room, I've still problems with the Virtual Ear drivers, but all in all, I think it can compete without shame against an Audigy, even though the sound is a little bit muffled... __________________ I see living people...

Aug 14, 2002, 03:28 AM	#20
Shodan DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	You are forgetting the best one: Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 There is only one REAL Sound (MUSIC) Card out there: The Terratec DMX 24/96 (The Full pACKAGE including the nifty front module) -> Sound is WAY CLEANER than the SB Audigy - has almost all features of the Audigy, a better front module, and so on... only thing it lacks is EAX 2.0...well, A3D is better than that so far....

Aug 14, 2002, 10:07 PM	#21
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,111 Rep Power: 0	Aureal SQ2500 "Super Quad" ... Never had any problems with it... My wife is still using it. Ran perfectly under 98, 98se, and ME... 2K, and XP no support I HATE CREATIVE FOR WHAT THEY DID! The AWE64 was great.... And I can now get my A3D lovin' from the Philips Acoustic Edge! Thanks to a wonderful sound card, and a great company. 2 minutes to install the drivers, and reboot.

Aug 16, 2002, 06:24 AM	#23
Ryo-Ohki World Destroyer Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Masaki Shrine Posts: 196 Rep Power: 0	The Sound Blaster Live! and 5.1 flavour are both very nice, served me faithfully until now. Can't figure out why there are people hating them so much. I also like my older A3D Vortex based card for its DOS support. __________________ Join the Hanners cult NOW and save your soul! "Bork Bork Bork!" On Rear of Big Rig, San Fransisco, CA Warning! Do not attempt to drive under, over, or through this truck. If you should choose to ignore this warning, good luck and have fun! Do not pass on right side.

Aug 16, 2002, 07:14 AM	#24
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,111 Rep Power: 0	Vampyromaniac, you were correct on that. It supports A3D 1.0 Sorry about that. I know that with Quake, everything does sound nice with A3D enabled. EAX is good, but it just doesn't have the depth of the wave tracing.

Aug 17, 2002, 04:12 PM	#25
fornicatarachnid Clanless Join Date: May 2002 Location: On the web, England UK Posts: 714 Rep Power: 0	Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, coupled with my Abit SP 50 speakers, the sound quality is awesome

Aug 17, 2002, 04:15 PM	#26
Kelsenellenelvian Master of my own Destiny Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: EverDawn Kingdom,TruEarth Posts: 1,395 Rep Power: 0	I have a mongrel bank of different brands for speakers and they all work great. __________________ [color=#0000ff] Download Windows Post-Install Wizard v4.3.8 and WPI Lite v1.2 Here [/color][color=red][color=blue][/color][/color]

Jan 17, 2003, 10:20 AM	#27
egarrard DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Manchester, TN, USA Posts: 20 Rep Power: 0	Lynx Two

Jan 19, 2003, 03:50 AM	#29
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	drt Ahhh...the Creative AWE 64 Gold...I loved the MIDI effects on that card. I was big into FF6-7 MIDI music and LOVED listening to it with the soundfonts provided on my FF7 disc....dang nab! Plus it also did "reverb effects" which, at the time, blew me away.

Jan 19, 2003, 04:09 AM	#30
BiGBrOwNPimpsta HH's #1 Hustla and Pimp Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: The Dirty Dot Posts: 7,706 Rep Power: 105 System Specs	sb live is the best soundcard ever made. all these competitors are gay. with retarded names lol. fortissmo and santa cruz absolutely suck. sb live paved the way for eax technology. audigy has too much hype. i bought it i found very little diff. i was using my 5.1 5300 on sb live value so i couldnt take advantege of 5.1 entirely so i bought a audigy for its 5.1 capability. all the 24 bit and eax advanced HD is the same crap as eax 1 pretty much. but sb live is the top card ever made and is most commonly used still after 5 or 6 yrs. __________________ Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music \| Logitech Z-5500 THX 5.1 Surround Sound Speakers \| 2 Lite-On 20x S-ATA Burners \| Logitech G700 Mouse \| Logitech MX5500 Bluetooth Keyboard