I need a new sound card...

[Reverend Maynard]

Howdy all. I need a new soundcard, but don't know what I should go with.

For starters, I am running a VIA chipset (686B) and Win2k. I will not be using pc speakers for sound, it will all get passed along to a home stereo system.

What I want to know is, which soundcard will be best while using a seperate stereo system.

Things that matter to me...1) I can get Dolby 5.1 working with my stereo, for DVD watching...2) I can get surround in games to work with my stereo...3) everything sounds crisp and clear, always.

I think that about sums up all my needs. Any particular suggestions y'all have for me? I would like to pick up a card as soon as possible, as this onboard crap I got stuck using doesn't cut it.

[Dr Mordrid]

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is a great sounding card. It has a programmable "Versa Jack" that can be either an input or output and the options include 4.1 and 5.1.

Dr. Mordrid

[Reverend Maynard]

Is the jack on the Santa Cruz digital out? And does the surround work well when playing games on a home stereo. Also, does it do EAXx.x or A3Dx.x?

[Gurm]

No sound card currently supports true digital surround in games.

The upcoming nForce is supposed to be able to compress an AC3 (DD5.1) stream on the fly, but no other card does this.

The best you get is "4.1", which is really just Pro Logic on a digital stream.

I can personally recommend the Audigy, or if you never want to play any of the Baldur's Gate type games the Santa Cruz.

- Gurm

[isochar]

Another recommendation for the Audigy.