A Good Soundcard.

[dmfp321]

Hi everyone. I'm planning on upgrading my sound card and speakers. What I have now is the onboard audio on my Shuttle AN35-N and These crappy HP speakers. I've seen a couple of good choices for speakers but first I want to get the soundcard. I want to stay away from the creative labs sound cards because I've just heard alot of bad stuff about them. And it seems alot of people have had trouble getting them to run with EOC. I don't even want to take my chances since EOC is one of my favorite games. I was looking at these (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=57&manufactory=1431&DEPA=1&sortby=14&order=1) and also a Hercules Fortismo that used to be on newegg for $45 but has disapperead. Do you guys have any suggestions. And what to you think about the cards I posted?

[Ranger]

Hercules are good. I had a Fortissimo once, ran some pretty sharp sounds. But I had to give it up because my uncle's onboard sound crapped out and I was the only one with onboard that worked so I got kinda screwed. But I do like my current Nforce-enhanced sounds so I'm ok with it either way.

As for speakers, I'm using Altec Lansing Model 221 which has 2 satellite speakers and a subwoofer. My mom hates it because it makes the dishes rattle when I'm doing my combat games (generally an A-10 screaming to the ground at 400 knots).

I wouldn't really go for "generic" stuff, since more often than not they are cheap ripoffs of the good companies. This applies to generally all areas of life, ranging from Rolexes to Space Shuttles (Yeah, I'm look at you Russians..."Buran", my ass)

[Stephen Robertson]

I'm expecting delivery of a Hercules Fortissimo III right now.

I decided on that card because I had major problems with both onboard sound (interference from the processor / mouse, can't use the microphone at the same time as 4/5.1 speaker sound), and a SBLive5.1 OEM (terrible creative official drivers, crackling sound, missing channels, kept disabling itself every couple of reboots).

The reviews of the Fortissimio are pretty good, and it compares well with a SB Audigy 2 sound wise. I had great trouble getting hold of one though, as most stockists only sell SB cards. :mad:

I'll let you know how good it is when I get it.

[MajorTom]

Unless you are a musician, remember the old saying:

"The only good sound card is a dead sound card"

As in: With EOC and WinXP, for example, the only way to get good preformance (no stuttering) is to turn sound hardware acceleration off.

Although all the games hype about EAX and such, there just isn't a good sound card on the market that really works in games. (that I've found to date.)

I sympathize with your dislike for Creative Labs. They almost have an market monopoly but don't provide an acceptable level of preformance in spite of their hype. One thing they are best at: squeeze every cent out of the customers! If you buy a "bulk" card somewheres you have to pay Creative extra for a Audio HQ and Mixer CD, you can't just download them!

The Fortissamo III runs well and is a solidly stable sound card, but it isn't a better card. A friend of mine has one and gets around 5% less preformance on the 3DMark 03 sound test. (compared to an Audigy 2)

If you have a sound card you will get a higher result on the 3Dmark 03 tests, but that doesn't mean you have better system preformance or real EAX functionality.

I hope some day Sound cards will get better, and put less strain on the System itself, like graphic cards did a few years ago with the advent of the GPUs

[Nightwatch]

I use a Hercules FOrtissimo II and its a very nice, stable sound card. I remember the jump in performance it gave me when I sloted it it. I guess syou can chalk me up as a fan oif the whole Fortissimo line its soooooo good :) Sounds good too, btw. :)

[Stephen Robertson]

The Audigy 2 is by all accounts very good, but I still hear of compatibility problems with via based motherboards.

I have a very nice set of Medusa 5.1 surround headphones, and I'm looking forward to trying them out with the Fortissimo III.

[sauron1]

Originally posted by MajorTom
Unless you are a musician, remember the old saying:

"The only good sound card is a dead sound card"

As in: With EOC and WinXP, for example, the only way to get good preformance (no stuttering) is to turn sound hardware acceleration off...

I hope some day Sound cards will get better, and put less strain on the System itself, like graphic cards did a few years ago with the advent of the GPUs

I agree with all of that. Soundcards can be a major issue in game framerates. My old Fortissimo II was OK, but it caused stuttering in some games.

Right now, I'm using the onboard sound on my laptop, and headphones so I don't wake the baby. :) The quality is surprisingly good.

[arrrse]

I'm generally quite happy with my nforce2 integrated sound so-far :)

Crackles on some games but nVidia seems to have finally managed to get vaguely decent drivers now.

On principle, I would expect soundcards will get better with PCI express, since they will no longer be limited by the crappy shared PCI bus, instead having a dedicated 800mb/s (or whatever it is) full duplex channel.

[Keyan]

I have an Audigy 2, and my brother also has one on a VIA box I built for him. As long as you have a decent motherboard that follows PCI spec you will have no problems with the Audigy 2s. And in EOC in XP I have NEVER had a framerate issue with my sound card giving me great surround sound in the game (i.e. full acceleration)

The drivers and software to set the card are now very solid and very low on extra memory useage while the card also takes up a low amount of CPU time even in full EAX A-HD games.

[Stephen Robertson]

Put the Fortissimo III in my PC last night, and I'm pretty pleased with it.

Took me a while to setup the graphic equaliser to get a good sound range for my 5.1 headphones (initially the sound was fairly flat), but the end results are excellent.

As the reviews stated it's actually fairly quiet compared with other sound cards, but my headphone amp has enough volume to make it loud enough without it sounding hissy or distorted.

Battlefield 1942 works fine, with no stuttering, no dropped channels or dodgy audio positioning. Tron 2.0 worked fine too. MP3 playback is crystal clear. DVD 5.1 sound playback is awesome.

EAX support isn't that good, but I expected that. Only the Creative labs card have decent EAX, because Creative invented it.

The control panel is nicely designed - quite minimalist. Midi playback is ok, but there's no options for reverb or chorus, so it tends to sound a bit flat. TBH only my SB AWE32 ever had proper control over onboard midi sounds. These days it seems to be a bit neglected due to the ability to play back MP3s in realtime.

The bonus is that I can finally have my mike active at the same time as having all the speakers plugged in. :up:

[Nightwatch]

One issue you have to remember is that the 3d drivers in a lot of games are faulty. One example is neverwinter nights, where I was having tremendouns framerate problems and I could not figure out what was wrong. It was only when I went into the advanced sound options and set it from 3d acceleation (the defoult) to directsound software emulation that the horblims vanished. I suspect that this problem is prevelent in a lot of games because the underlying program architecture is faulty *Resists urge to start Microsoft Rant (tm) :)*

[Mehrunes]

I've been using whatever came with my Nforce 2 board for a while now. Strangely, it seems to run much better, and with fewer issues, than the GameTheatre XP I was using.

[AR81]

A good soundcard?

Audigy 2 Platinum supports THX and EAX. Perfect for gaming.

Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96 is a brilliant choice for music production.

Also if you need good headphones, try Sennheiser headphones.