any recommendations for sound cards?

[LrngToFly]

Hey all-

My sound card just died (Creative Labs (formerly Ensoniq) PCI 64) and so I gotta buy a new one...

Anyone have any recommendations. I'm looking for something $75 or less. I hear the company with the competing standard to Creative's EAX 3D standard (Aureal's A3D) has gone bankrupt, so I'm kind of leaning towards a Creative card. However, Creative is not supporting EAX in Windows 2000 for the PCI series. That leaves the Live! series- which is badmouthed here for IRQ problems and driver incompatibilities w/ Matrox products.

So, what options do I have? Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks much!

[Jammrock]

I have an SB Live! from Creative. Don't really have that many troubles with it. Most of the driver issues have been fixed. The only IRQ trouble I have heard of is the extra IRQ the DOS emulation uses, which can be disabled and freed up rather easily.

Aureal has gone bankrupt, but they are not out of the picture, yet. They had a management change to fix their problems, but nobody really knows what will happen.

Jammrock

------------------
Athlon 650, Biostar board, 128 MB PC133 (Crucial), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, 10/100 NIC, lots of case fans, etc...

[HedsSpaz]

I think Aureal has closed shop permanantly. Their corporate web site is gone although their tech support site is still up for the moment.

Anyway, you can get an OEM SBLive value for around 50$. I haven't actually had an problems with mine to date. At least no problems that were the fault of the Live.
If you can find an MX300 somwhere, well, it might be worth it, although since Aureal is dead, thats definately an iffy route. The MX400 is iffy as well, I haven't read anything good about it yet. It doesn't use the Aureal chip, I think it uses an ensonique chip. Its mostly useing the name "MX400" to play off the popularity of the MX300.

My $.02
Ian

[xortam]

The Aureal site was up last week. Maybe its just down temporarily while their lone IS guy is out on vacation.

[paulcs]

The MX400 is based on the ESS Canyon3D controller and uses the Sensaura 3D algorithm.

Aureal is reorganizing under Chapter 11. They aren't officially dead until they declare bankruptsy under Chapter 7. However, not hearing anything about them for such a long time can't be a good thing. In this case, I don't think no news is good news.

Any gaming soundcard can give you IRQ problems, particularly if you keep Soundblaster emulation enabled. I haven't heard reports of driver issues with the SB Live and the G400 in quite some time. Apparently, W2K support is pretty bad.

If you get an Aureal based board, driver support might be iffy as far as updates go, and if they do go belly up, and your card breaks, you can forget about the warranty. The boards work pretty well with the current drivers, however, and many people believe the 3D effects are better. It's a very powerful card, and has had fewer compatibility issues then most. There are lots of new chipsets and peripherals on the horizon, so new issues might pop up.

Some people believe the CL Live sounds better. You can get an OEM Live 1024 for $50.00-60.00. Maybe cheaper. I haven't checked in a while.

Guillemot has a budget board that also uses the Sensaura algorithm and, I believe, a Yamaha chip. A retail board can be gotten for under $50.00.

There are a bunch of expensive, non-gaming soundboards available. They're probably overkill.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 21 June 2000).]

[Nuno]

Creative has launched liveware2 for win2k. I use it and it works preety well. Liveware3 shouldn´t be very far.

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 21 June 2000).]

[Beezer]

I've also read that the SB Live has less of a drain on CPU resources than the MX300.

[dZeus]

When running the SBLive! in Win2k I can play MP3's with 0% CPU Utilisation...

however the current Win2k drivers are not really as good as I hoped them to be, but LiveWare 3.0 for win2k is not far away (acrually it could be released any day now)

[LrngToFly]

Thanks for all the feedback.

I'm just about to open my case to make sure my PCI64 is truly dead.

I think I'll go for the Live! Value. I found a site that sells it for $45.

[LrngToFly]

It is truly dead. Put it into a different slot and no go. Tried it with Win2K and Win98 SE.

Anyone know if the Live! X-Gamer is worth the extra money for the digital out?

Also, is Creative discontinuing the Live! Value? I see very few of them around (on websites.) The price of the Value is good...

(I'm buying my first house and have to be cheap right now!)

[LrngToFly]

Just bought the Live! Value. $38 + $9 s&h at techsumer.com

Thanks again for the advice...

[Pace]

Nuno: MP3 playback with <font size=5>0% CPU Utilisation!</font>

Is that right Nuno? Because I'd be a very happy person!

And is it only when running LW2 for 2000? (btw, when did this come out?)

What player are you using for that? Any? Or only the Creative one?

Thanks, Paul.

[Nuno]

Pace:
Thanks for the credit, but it was actually dZeus to point it out...

But I can confirm it:

[Jon P. Inghram]

Does the SBLive! have hardware acceleration for MP3's or what? I just did the same experiment on my Win98 system and got the same results.

[DentyCracker]

I'll check it out to see if that happens with sonique (I doubt it)
!@#$%ing lack of Internet@home is driving me f*kking up the wall, I don't know how much more of this I can take (takes several deep breaths). At least I have my G400 SH to turn to (and NFSHS)
btw Germany 0 Portugal 3 bwahahahahahahaha