Sound Cards

[bober05]

my Onborad sound juss stopped workin yesterday and my dad told me juss to put in a card he had to get my speakers workin again i did and it played fine but i feel like i can get better sound. is it worth it to get a new sound card. would i notice the difference?
i have a jvc 240 watt sterio hooked up to my computer.

thanks alot pleace right bak if u have any susgestions

peace, love, and chicken greese

[SaSi]

I have a sound blaster PCI 128. I have it, can't remember how long. Have been using it mainly to record LPs and cassette tapes on the PC, process and clean them, etc.

It has excellent performance, the sound quality is Hi-Fi level and can't really justify spending for audio right now.

On the contrary, my experience with two on-board "sound systems", which are actually audio codecs driven by s/w, is that their audio quality is a mess. My latest PC has an 5.1 on-board audio. I tried it for a couple of hours, it was horrible to say the least and disabled it.

What I mean, is that unless the board you were given is mono or something (dating back to 1992) you're probably better off that way.

If you MUST spend for an audio card, I would highly recommend a Sound Blaster 5.1 Live!. A couple of years ago it was top-of-the-crop, now a budget card with excellent sound quality and a price (I think) ~ $30.

[steveryan]

I'd agree with that, the Sound Blaster 5.1 is an excellent card for the price. Can be a bit of a pain to install if you're using 5.1 speakers but it's well worth it in the end.

[Jester700]

I would recommend avoiding the Live for any kind of serious work. For less than that $30, an old Vortex based board or Ensoniq 1370 based card would sound slightly better. For $60, a TB Santa Cruz would likely sound significantly better. Of course, there are tons of features for that $30, so pay your $$ and take your choice...

[ABAB]

I would say you get what you pay for, avoid on-board.......disable it and put a S/B in. You can pick up a decent mid range card for £30/£40.
Beware of the 'features' thing, unless you are going to do some serious work you won't even use 1/10th of them.

Just my opinion