Budget Sound Card

[cheesegrater]

I need a sound card. Onboard audio is an abomination. When do you recommend under $100? Under $50?

[ctjoyce]

Soundblaster 2 ZS from Creative. Excellent card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102178

Cheers
Cameron

[swordfish1227]

Yeah, it is a great card. don't buy the pro or silver or gold or platinum or whatever other audigy 2zs's there are if you are on a budget. they only add a front panel with a million adjustments that aren't needed.

[cheesegrater]

I already heard about the ZS. I was hoping an online store like NCIX or tigerdirect would have a better deal on a different card but they don't. Yeah, on a budget I can't even afford Platinum. The only problem with the ZS is availability. I'm gonna have to go with eBay with this one and there are many snipers and shipping to Canada is expensive. Also, I'm gonna have to wait one or two weeks before I get it.

Hehehe. I got a MDG (Canadian version of Dell) flier and their top of the line $3800 computer has onboard audio. What a joke.

I noticed that Diamond XTreme Sound 7.1 and Turtle Beach Montego 7.1 is the exact same card. Is this some sort of reference card that was sold to Diamond and Turtle Beach? I wonder if the drivers are interchangeable.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... &CatId=107

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... 30&CatId=0

I saw a pretty cool deal on X-Fi. $130 but after rebates it comes down to $55. However, you have to go to their store, and it is in Toronto, and I don't think they have the sale anymore.

[Sir_Crashalot]

Just buy a soundcard from Sweex. I have it, cost me something like 20 Euro. It has nothing fancy like 5.1 Dolby Surround or something like that but you can plug in 4 speakers. The sound is pretty good if you have a decent set of speakers.

Crash

[richardd43]

If you are in Canada check this store out.
http://www.memoryexpress.com/
I do all of my buying there and have never had a problem with them.

They have a Audigy SE card for $29 CND and a Audigy 4 SE for $70 CND

[cheesegrater]

NCIX has Audigy 4 SE for $53. With shipping its gonna be $70, so I might as well try for 2 ZS. They just stripped down features from the 2 ZS, and called it 4 to make it seem like an upgrade. If it was cheaper I would definately buy it though. I could get a Diamond 7.1 card for a total of $50, but again its one of those things where you pay extra $20 and get quality over crap. It has bad signal to noise ratio. You just can't save money with computers and the upgrades never end.

[cheesegrater]

I got a brand new shrinkwrapped retail Audigy 2 ZS for $68.49 US with shipping. I guess it's not bad considering OEM sells for $64.99 US on newegg plus shipping. I still have to get a job though to support my computer addiction.

Just for fun, I'll run 3DMark before and after installation. Does 3DMark05 have sound? I don't remember if it does.

Next on my list is a video card upgrade, but that can wait.

[ctjoyce]

I still have to get a job though to support my computer addiction.

The problem your going to find is that it dosn't help any. It just gets worse. Insted of looking at the $70 cheap card, you end up looking at the $140 X-Fi saying to yourself "yea I can afford that, its only one weeks pay." Then you just watch as each paycheck just slips into the hands of newegg, frozen CPU, and others. And you watch as your pile of crap gets bigger and bigger.

Cheers
Cameron

[NicksFXHouse]

Never had a problem with the onboard 8.1 from Asus or MSI with AMD or Intel. Both pump up da jam and rock da house.

[cheesegrater]

Well, under high CPU load I get cracks and pops with onboard sound. For example in FS9 when I select aircraft and pick the Project Tupolev Tu-154 and press OK in that second or two when the aircraft is loading I get a click in my speaker. Hopefully a sound card will fix that.

[congo]

That's possibly due to the addon sounds for the plane.

I've never had problems with onboard sound over the last several years on modern boards.

Most people are upgrading to expensive soundcards out of ignorance and marketing hype, when just installing updated sound drivers and understanding the inbuilt windows sound settings is all that need be done.

[cheesegrater]

That's possibly due to the addon sounds for the plane.

I was using FS9 as an example. I also got in when Quake 2 Anti-Cheat client loads, there isn't any sounds playing when it loads. I also sometimes get it when I double click on an MP3 file. I close winamp, double click on the same file again, and there is no click this time.

I got the latest drivers.

Maybe it is the hard drive lagging or something?

[congo]

What mainboard/onboard sound chip do you have Cheesegrater?

[cheesegrater]

Abit AN8 32X
Realtek ALC850