Good sound card?

[Adabiviak]

I'm looking for a sound card with fiber optic out and with realtime Dolby encoding. Apparently this allows me to play games not originally encoded with 5.1 to play in this format. I currently enjoy this with integrated Intel HD sound, but was looking for an alternative - a relatively inexpensive card that would take some load off the CPU and maybe throw in some extra features. I searched a bit, and most optical outputs were actually cable. Who's got a fave?

 

[giant384]

dosent the audigy 2 zs have optical?

 

[3ssence]

I think so... fairly sure mine does

 

[Adabiviak]

I'm looking at a review of this card on Guru3D.com and the images of the port side show digital out, line in, mic in, line out 1, 2, 3, and a Firewire port. The digital out port is optical on that card? I have a Toslink cable, with adapters for this sort of rot that look like they'd fit, but I really don't want to find out the hard way. If you change your settings to digital out, do you see light coming out of that hole? The card looks quite nice, and I might get one. EAX 4 sounds like it'd add a bit to a game.

 

[3ssence]

Ok, looked up on it, and it would seem that the audigy 2ZS only has a digital out, but not an optical out, whilst the platinum/platinum pro versions have an optical spdif out. I also read that it is possible to use a coaxial to optical adapter on the audigy 2ZS card.

 

[Revisedsoul]

arnt the spdif ports on creative cards suposed to be horrible. i hear nothing but complaints about it.

weather the new x-fi's are good or not, no idea

 

[Adabiviak]

...let me take a gander at the Platnum versions. I was always skeptical of the "digital" or "optical" outputs for audio being substantially better for somebody who isn't an audiophile, but the proof is in the pudding. I hear things in digital that I didn't notice in analog. Maybe because of the clarity? I don't buy that it's because of noise reductions, I think it's because it's a more "true" representation of the sounds the game manufacturers intended. Note: think, not know - I'm making a guess that the sound files, being digital, sound better when they aren't translated to analog to get them to your speakers. Now the speakers aren't digital, but with my receiver doing the conversion from digital to analog, it starts with pure digital instead of something that has already been translated. Am I on the mark? I'm guessing here.

 

[DrDevin]

You will want to check out Bluegears

http://www.bluegears.com/index.html

Their cards do real time dolby (new ones in January can do DTS) encoding over both Coaxial RCA and Optical Toslink.

There is one for $89.95 on newegg that does what you want.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829127001

 

[Adabiviak]

Pricey. Worth it if I was using the Analog out, because the bulk of that appears to be the "front end" module, but since I'm using a receiver, I've already got a nice front end. I'm looking at a Turtle Beach Montego. Anyone here ever used this card? I like how simple it is with apparently a lot under the hood.

 

[Adabiviak]

Bluegears for the win! Simple, and it looks better than the Turtle Beach. Are you using this card?

 

[Adabiviak]

It doesn't look like this supports anything over EAX 2. I'm sure it's a ball of fire, but how important will it be for cards to support EAX 3 and 4 in new games? External EEPROM interface for sub-vendor drivers? I actually have an EEPROM burner and an assortment of blank chips - that could be fun.

 

[Adabiviak]

Well - recent purchase at Newegg will have the BlueGear job here in a few days. Those aren't EEPROMs, they are upgradable op-amps. We've got an IC catalog at work, I might just do that for a hoot.

 

[the_lone_wolf]

had an argument recently about using realtime dolby in games, tbh it's not worth the downsides compared to the audigy series...

http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=11421

comparing the mystique to an old audigy soundcard (which has since been surpassed by the audigy 2, audigy 4 and X-Fi cards) the mystique really hasn't got a foot to stand on in games, 10fps less than the Audigy in UT2004 and has lower audio quality output in every benchmark...

the only place it shines is during DVD movie playback...

you may want to change your order if it's not too late

edit: btw my audigy 2 doesn't have optical out, but i'm pretty sure a variant of the X-Fi range will have

 

[Adabiviak]

The order's placed (sorry about the late reply - just got back from a road trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Awesome!). I'm not sweatin' frames per second as much as higher quality sound than my on-board audio produces. I'm also not fond of Creative's use of background applications. I'll let you know how the new card works out.

 

[the_lone_wolf]

The order's placed (sorry about the late reply - just got back from a road trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Awesome!). I'm not sweatin' frames per second as much as higher quality sound than my on-board audio produces. I'm also not fond of Creative's use of background applications. I'll let you know how the new card works out.

fair enough, both cards did whoop the onboard audio in most of the audio quality tests, but even the onboard sound was better than the HDA in some. i doubt you'll notice that though, it should "sound" better and i suspect your dolby speakers will be great for movies, even if they won't make a difference in games. i think you also will need to download a driver patch from HDA's website to get OpenAL and EAX2.0 support on the card - as for creative's background processes i have only the two important ones running on my system, between them they are using about 1.5MB of my 1GB of RAM and my computer's been on for days:naughty:

 

[Adabiviak]

Well - have this card running on a fresh install of Windows 64 and, well, wow. I've only played Quake 4 (which doesn't recognize this card as EAX capable, but that's a different story) with it so far, but offloading the sound from the on-board audio sure made a difference.

...and it sounds nice too. I'm not an audiophile, but I do expect to hear footsteps when somebody creeps up behind me and all the ambient noised made to make games more immersive. I'm quite pleased - anyone else have this card?