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What would you all recommend for semi-decent and quality sound cards (no junk), from reasonable cost (say $40 or so) to extravagent (hundreds of $$ or more)?
In the past, I've liked Turtle Beach, but Turtle Beach doesn't have a very good rep for doing driver updates for later (or a variety of) OSes, even when one of their card models is still on store shelves (ex., tropez plus, pinnacle, montegos).
Creative seems to go through phases of sound quality and compatibility. Some of their so-called better cards have compatiblity problems, or really don't sound that good. They've produced some decent ones, but also some very harsh sounding crap.
A Philips Rhythmic Edge (PSC702, admitedly a cheap model) sounds harsh to me, and doesn't work very well on 440BX chipset mobos (surprisingly, it seems to work better on a VIA 133 MHz FSB mobo). What about other Philips sound cards? Do they even still make sound cards or the Thunderbird chip?
Including Turtle Beach, Creative, and any others, what would you all recommend? Anyone have experience with Terratec or other higher end sound card manufacturers? or the more recent, better quality cards from Creative (Audigy and above) and Turtle Beach (Santa Cruz and above)? Any other sound card vendors? Hercules?
Any recommendations on decent older sound cards that may crop up surplus? Various Turtle Beach Montego models sound decent, but there is poor driver support after W9x. Early SoundBlaster PCI's (ex. SoundBlaster 512) sound like crap, even some SoundBlaster Live!'s sound harsh to me (surprisingly, old AWE64's sound better to me, but have issues with [old] 430HX mobo chipsets). Any others?
Thank you for any suggestions, experiences, opinions, personal biases, etc.
In the past, I've liked Turtle Beach, but Turtle Beach doesn't have a very good rep for doing driver updates for later (or a variety of) OSes, even when one of their card models is still on store shelves (ex., tropez plus, pinnacle, montegos).
Creative seems to go through phases of sound quality and compatibility. Some of their so-called better cards have compatiblity problems, or really don't sound that good. They've produced some decent ones, but also some very harsh sounding crap.
A Philips Rhythmic Edge (PSC702, admitedly a cheap model) sounds harsh to me, and doesn't work very well on 440BX chipset mobos (surprisingly, it seems to work better on a VIA 133 MHz FSB mobo). What about other Philips sound cards? Do they even still make sound cards or the Thunderbird chip?
Including Turtle Beach, Creative, and any others, what would you all recommend? Anyone have experience with Terratec or other higher end sound card manufacturers? or the more recent, better quality cards from Creative (Audigy and above) and Turtle Beach (Santa Cruz and above)? Any other sound card vendors? Hercules?
Any recommendations on decent older sound cards that may crop up surplus? Various Turtle Beach Montego models sound decent, but there is poor driver support after W9x. Early SoundBlaster PCI's (ex. SoundBlaster 512) sound like crap, even some SoundBlaster Live!'s sound harsh to me (surprisingly, old AWE64's sound better to me, but have issues with [old] 430HX mobo chipsets). Any others?
Thank you for any suggestions, experiences, opinions, personal biases, etc.
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