VertigoX1 Posted July 6, 2001 Share Posted July 6, 2001 Which sound card do you think is better? The Santa Cruz, The XGamer\+MP3 5.1\Platinum, or the Philips Acoustic Edge 5.1? As far as sound quality goes. http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/sound_cards/philips/acoustic_edge/001.htm http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/sound_cards/sound_blaster/platinum_51/001.htm http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/sound_cards/turtle_beach/santa_cruz/001.htm Later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike2021 Posted July 6, 2001 Share Posted July 6, 2001 santa cruz.... Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sonic98 Posted July 6, 2001 Share Posted July 6, 2001 Go with one of the Sound Blastrer cards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rol1 Posted July 6, 2001 Share Posted July 6, 2001 You've got to be kidding? Would you pay $200 for a live drive? No way!! I can still get Aureal SQ2500 boards for $40 and have A3D 2.0 in the games that support it. EAX developers are very happy not to be compared to A3D 2.0, muchless, A3D 3.0. TurtleBeach may support A3D 2.0, alot of their older Vortex chip cards did. Phillips has their Q-sound, hardware or software or both I'm not sure, does tricky things with stereo and surround not intended by their makers. But I understand, when the DVDs have 5.1 sound why accept the 4ch mixdown? But you have to understand that an audio card in a PC is not audio componet quality stuff and the analog stage in the case is subject to every bit of noise produced by fans, video-boards, modems, or lame power-supplies. Many soundcards passthru the digital signal to an external decoder using the s/pdif. This gets the data away from the noise of the PC and lets a good quality componet do it's job. Which means an external decoder or receiver, which means another $200 or $300, but you can get DTS-CD-Audio decoding this way.(the only way I have found to play audio-DTS cds. If I were to spend that much I would have to spend $270 for the Inca88; http://www.tracertek.com/inca_88.htm Do you want to say I bought the live drive or a pro audio 8ch recording studio with ultra low latency software?(it does games and DVDs too) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike2021 Posted July 6, 2001 Share Posted July 6, 2001 persoally i lik ethe game theater xp the best... Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnum29 Posted July 6, 2001 Share Posted July 6, 2001 I vote for the Santa Cruz; works great for me with the 4.1's. The creative live card I had was nothing but a headache with my AMD......mag Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sonic98 Posted July 6, 2001 Share Posted July 6, 2001 quote: Originally posted by rol1: You've got to be kidding? Would you pay $200 for a live drive? No way!! http://www.tracertek.com/inca_88.htm Do you want to say I bought the live drive or a pro audio 8ch recording studio with ultra low latency software?(it does games and DVDs too) The platinum is not the only 5.1 SB card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rol1 Posted July 7, 2001 Share Posted July 7, 2001 The rest of the SB stuff are farther down the list in terms S/N, THD, etc... They are all very close in audio quality, with a range in prices from $39 to a $199 price tags, and they all only record only 2 channels. The Hoontec Digital NX at $39 with its' s/pdif in & output(into a ext. decoder/receiver) is going to give you better sound than any of the above SB, Phillips, or TB cards can give you through the analog outs of their cards. That is a matter of quality of the componets. Did you check out the 8ch studio stuff with the 5.1/7.1 dvd playback? Ever heard of latency in terms of audio n comps? The Inca88 has values of 3ms, the blasters are in a range that make them unacceptable for live work.(no jammin') The only comparrison is the prices. This message has been edited by rol1 on 07-07-2001 at 02:24 PM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VIV Posted July 7, 2001 Share Posted July 7, 2001 Heh,the P AE kicks ***. How many other cards do you know of that can take a regular stereo mp3 and play it to all channels of a 5.1 setup? And I'm not talking about just mirroring the signal, it splits it up so that each speaker has its own individial signal. For games, the cards sounds EXTREMELY good, only problem is that since it doesn't take as much processing off of the CPU as the SB Live cards do, games run a bit slower on my crappy Celery 466 (might upgrade to T-bird 1.2 GHz as a temp measure till next year), but otherwise, games sound incredible. If you're considering these cards for the Pro 5.1, I'm running a HT setup right now, so at least you can know that the AE can deliver quality sound on a much better setup, so on the Pro's, it should be excellent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Windstorm Posted July 13, 2001 Share Posted July 13, 2001 Had to bring this thread back to the top, I'm still undecided... DVD playback is the most important, then good music quality, finally games, but I don't play those very often. Or should I just keep my old SB value and buy the audio tornado? ------------------ Caring is the first step toward disappointment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alymca Posted July 15, 2001 Share Posted July 15, 2001 I prefer the Philip AE instead of LIve card, I have an AMD machine with kt133a chipsets and my game always lockup if i enabled EAX for sblive value Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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