Sound Cards

[Deadeight]

Well, seeing as we have the monthly "What graphics card should i buy?", i thought id deviate slightly and ask "What sound card should i buy?"

Ive used google yeah, but if im honest a lot of the stuff sounds attractive but is it necessary etc.

I bought a new BOSE setup (staggeringly awesome btw, love bose), but when i play through my computer instead by HI-FI its a pretty noticeable drop in quality. My sound card atm is just an onboard thing as part of a Dell motherboard.

What kind of things do i need to looks for?

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.

[Security]

Atm there 2 brands with the best quality sound cards, Creative and Asus.
Personally I do not like Asus as they do not have full EAX support (EAX 4 and 5 are done by software instead of the hardware).

So I would go for a Creative card, and which one fully depends on how you want to hook your BOSE setup to your PC and if you want a sound card with front bay/front bay support or not.

[VikingRaider]

Really depends on exactly what you want to use your sound card for- if you use it mostly for gaming, then Security is right - go for one of the x-fi's (never been impressed by the quality of the Asus ones I've heard)...

If it's for listening to music over your Bose setup (and you don't mind using just stereo sound for games, or can afford to get another card for gaming use), there's a lot more choice.... M-audio do nice sounding cards, and Lexicon have just entered the PC sound market (they have a long and illustrious history making professional audio kit though, and their sound cards are highly recommended - I have a USB one for my laptop, and the sound quality is superb)...

What do you mean when you say the quality changes? - Are you saying the difference between your hi-fi playing music, and your PC playing it is a problem? If so, the reason is likely to be the difference in sound quality between CD's (which I assume you are playing on your hi-fi), and MP3's (which you are likely to be using on your PC) - Bose bass speakers are generally a design called 6th order band pass (Bose own the patent), the result being very good definition and depth in the bass range - when you're playing a CD, the material being sent to the speakers includes a full encoding of the bass in stereo... With MP3's, the encoding of the bass is much thinner and mono (part of the perceptual encoding used in MP3's), and also doesn't include any audio above 16KHz at the top end... The result is that if you play them through decent kit, MP3's sound fairly bad for the most part (they need to be encoded at 192KHz+ to start sounding decent)...

[Deadeight]

Wow, thanks for the info, didnt know any of that.

Yeah i kept it a fair test by comparing my CD player into the speakers then the same song using the same CD through windows media player from the computer. And theres nothing wrong with my CD drive, its a pretty decent Phillips.

Its hard to explain, but through my computer at the moment its less clear, and almost sounds a bit tinny at the high end. Like one of the ones i was comparing with was Good Riddance by green day just cos it has that clear acoustic guitar, and it sounds much brighter through the CD player.

Ill use it for music for a bit, but mostly i have a CD player for that. Think ill take a look at some of the creative ones then, thanks for all the help so far.

[Sage]

unfortunately dell lock up the bios making u unable to turn off onboard sound, so even if u install the sound card it still wont work but someone here may know of a way

i have tried both the creative x-fi xtreme music and the asus xonar dx and imo the asus sound card is better, the sound is just so much more vibrant. it gave all my old favourite songs a new lease of life and found myself listening to music for hours but the asus sound card does require a 4 pin floppy power connector (if ur not using ur floppy drive anymore u can unplug the power cable and stick it into the soundcard)

altho if uve spent that much money on speakers u might want to buy one of the high end sound cards

[Security]

I didn't even have to turn off the on board sound of my motherboard.
It turned it self off when I placed my sound card (for real).

[Sage]

Originally Posted by Security I didn't even have to turn off the on board sound of my motherboard. It turned it self off when I placed my sound card (for real).

doesnt mean itll do that with other mother boards, i tried installing an x-fi xtreme music in a dell but it wouldnt work

[Security]

Haha I know it will most likely not do that on any other motherboard... but it surprised me in a positive way.

[Bahamut]

Originally Posted by Security ...but it surprised me in a positive way

Like when you're drunk and you think you're just taking a fat lass home cos she's the only one left for the picking, and shes gone in the morning so you dont have to face your shame?

[natasha]

Yeah, exaclty the same ^^