best sound card for g4oo max?

[Morpheus]

SB live or diamond monster mx300

[SteveC]

I've gone SbLive! Value. No idea on what the mx300 is like.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[Buuri]

I recommend SBLive! value too.

_
B

[ALBPM]

Three in a row for SB Live value!!

Paul

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P3-616(112x5.5), ABIT BX6 r2, 256MB PC100, MILL G400 MAX-32MB on BNC, Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 on D-sub, ABIT Hot Rod Controller, IBM Deskstar 18GB ATA/66, 21"Trinitron, SCSI CDR/RW, SCSI ZIP,SB Live!Value,USR Voice Faxmodem Pro(USB Ext),
Epson 1520 printer, Umax1200S scanner and a (Very Messy Desk) ;-P

[MM]

Not to start a year old debate, but it all depends on what you want out of that sound card. If you want to do some professional music or is a MIDI hardcore fan, then SBLive is the card.

If, on the other hand, you are into 3D games, MX300 (or to be more exact Vortex2 based sound cards) can't be beaten. The 3D positioning A3D2 is so much better from EAX2 that it's not really a question of which is better when it comes to games. You WILL need 4 _good_ speakers to benefit from that though.

Vortex2 based cards also have SPDIF for digital output...

For legacy stuff it's AWE64Gold, of course

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P2c-300a/450, 192MB PC125 SDRAM, Quantum Fireball Plus KA 18.2GB 7200rpm, Panasonic 7502B x4/x8 Ultra SCSI CD-R, Tekram DC-390U2W Ultra2Wide SCSI controller, Diamond MX300 (Vortex2), Creative Labs AWE64 Gold Sound Blaster, A-Trend Voodoo II 12MB, Matrox Millennium G400Max, 19" Hitachi SuperScan 752, Logitech Cordless MouseMan Wheel and some other fancy stuff

[Jammrock]

I have a SB Live! and my bro has an MX300.

The sound on the Live! is more crisp and clear than the MX300. The MX300 has more bold, loud sound to it. Probably because it was designed specifically for games, which make good use of bass and loud noises (gun fire, screams, explosions, etc.), while the Live! was designed as an all-in-one gamer/musician card.

As for gaming audio, right now the MX300 has the upper hand. A3D 2.0 is great for gaming 3D audio and a lot of games supporting it. EAX, which the Live! uses, is a good API, but not equal to A3D until it reaches the 2.0 level. Unfortunately Creative Labs will not release an SDK for EAX 2.0, because EAX 3.0 is due out any day now. EAX 3.0 will make the Live! superior to A3D 2.0, but I do not know how soon games using EAX 3.0 will be out.

I think the Live! is the better choice for the budget gamer. It has a programmable processor that makes the Live! a contender for a long time. If on the other hand money is no object and you don't mind buying a new sound card for every new version of A3D that comes out, grab an MX300. It is the best all gamer's card right now...until EAX 3.0 games come out that is. Just my $0.02.

Jammrock

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My computer can play all of my games well...except TA: Kingdoms, which I think you need a Kray to play.

[G400 Baby]

After having experience with both cards I can honestly say the MX 300 is the card to get. Especially if your into games like most of the people on this forum are. Everything from 3D sound, too low CPU usage and the ability to addon a wavetable daughter card makes the MX300 excellent. The SBlive is a nice card but its 3D sound is just reverb which in time the MX300 will support.

G400 RULEZ

[agallag]

Get an AdLib. They rock.

[SteveC]

Yeah, carved out of rock, maybe.
anyone who's anyone knows that the Disney Sound Source is unbeatable. (I actually built one of those once out of a load of resistors and it plugged into the parallel port. Played MOD files out of iPlay amazingly!! )

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[PurpleHaze]

The sound card industry is corrupt. Achtung.

They both are pretty bad, if you're talking about sound fidelity. Really. A3D2.0 is pretty nice in what it does, sound raytracing and all - and yeah Creative promises EAX 3.0 will deliver that, but, both of these boards have horrendous noise floors (Creative's claims of -120dB are nothing short of a lie) and erratic response.

But yeah, I'm sure most 'gamers' are really just looking for the explosion to have a lot of 'bass' and not slow down their frame rate. Who cares about the quality, right? Because all we need is a lot of BOOM and higher framerates than we can see. (ergh.)
(cynicism - the world is not powered by bass alone)

If you're looking for a gamer's card NOW, the Vortex chipset is the best, until EAX eclipses A3D, which it will do whether A3D is better or not. Creative owns the sound card market, basically because they've got a head start on the market share.

The SBLive is a more solidly built card but EAX , right now, is a little bit more of a toy than A3D is. (IMHO all 3d sound is a toy unless you're using true discrete positioning on 5 or 7 speakers. None of this make this wave cancel that wave crap, it's BS. Just like Qsound is BS) And who knows how long Aureal will be around to support its stuff. Companies last an average of 37.4 hours in today's internet economy before being merged, acquired, primped, kneaded, and boiled to a firm "al dente".

If someone out there actually made a good sound card with decent quality DACs (Even some of the 18 and 20 bit DACs and ADCs out there are bargain basement) and A3D 2.0, i'd buy it now, but unfortunately they don't exist.

...For some reasons the sound card mfr's dont seem to care about quality and DSP power. They only care about goddamn "voices". Who cares if you can have 1024 midi voices?! Who uses on-soundcard midi anymore anyways?! And I'd like to meet the person who wrote a 1024 channel composition ... and knock the @#%! out of him!!!

*phz.soapbox

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Ami Y. Koriuchi - foxyviolet@hotmail.com
Asus P2B 1010 - P3-500 - And a G400Max now.
256MB 6NS 70 GB of 10k RPM SCSI UW

Mustard is illegal here.


[This message has been edited by PurpleHaze (edited 09-17-1999).]

[tish beta2]

ya. reviewers out there got confused when they tried the "positional audio tester" that came with those cards.

But if mx300 is capable of sending digital ac3 out from it's sp/dif when my DVD player spins The Matrix round and round, that's the card for me. with DVDMax, of course

[PurpleHaze]

They can both do AC3. Some are coax, some are optical, (the Live can do TOSlink optical with third party stuff), but they both do AC3.

[Picard]

If you have 4 points speaker system, SB Live is the best choice. But if you have just 2 pieces speaker system, then MX300 produces better surround effect.

[RoGuE]

I'll vote for SBLive

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aka Chris H
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Microstar 6167 Slot A, AMD Athlon 500MHz, 256MB PC100 RAM, G400 32MB Dual Head, SBLive! Value, 1xMaxtor 10GB ATA/33 & 2xIBM 22GB ATA/66 HDD connected via Promise FastTrak66 RAID controller...etc...etc

[Jammrock]

Neither of the cards "do" AC-3. They will both 'PASS-Through' a digital AC-3 signal to a Dolby Digital decoder. You can pass-throuigh AC-3 on vortex cards via SPIDF (RCA type) and fiber TOSlink, depending on what version of the card you have and what add-ons, etc. The SB Live! does pass-through via SPIDF (RCA type) digital DIN, and fiber TOSlink. CL sells an optical digital I/O card for $54 (works with the value too) that has all 3 digital outs on them (SPIDF, Optical TOSlink and DIN) and there is a 3rd party company that sells their own brand with the full mix too.

High Quality DAC's would be a waste of money in the PC sound industry. First the computer creates so much RF interference that the higher rated DAC's wouldn't make much of a difference. Second, you would not be able to notice the quality difference unless the game or audio application used a high quality recording. Since most games use compressed audio, that pretty much scratches that.

You must also realize that the SB Live! may actually have a -120 dB noise ratio at the card level, but by the time the audio hits your ears it is not going to be anywhere near that, especially if it is an analog source out of the card. You gain noise in every cable you run and also inside the amplifiers you use. This also means that the quality of your speakers, cables and amps will have a serious affect on the quality of sound. If you use an MX300 with cheap $10 speakers, no matter what you do it is going to sound like crap next to a SB Live! using a CS Desktop Theater 5.1 FSP2500 digital setup.

Just my $0.02.

Jammrock

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My computer can play all of my games well...except TA: Kingdoms, which I think you need a Kray to play.