keropi wrote:

are you sure about this? because I have seen benchmarks claiming the opposite... not questioning you but could this be specific to your hardware combination?

I remember that PCI latency settings for Sound Blaster Live were "not optimal", so they could cause sound cracking and low system performance. There were some programs to change latency values to solve these situations.

I have an Audigy 2ZS in my main computer. No onboard audio to compare it to though; I probably have one of two or three consumer desktops made in 2005 to not have any manner of onboard audio.

I haven't done much myself with the SoundBlaster Live! series but have found them to perform decently. BTW, has anyone ever played around with the Live! Drive accessory? It's a digital connection from it to the soundcard and it has it's own DACs. The headphone jack on it I've noticed has much cleaner and nicer sounding audio than the output jack on the card itself.

Zup wrote:

I remember that PCI latency settings for Sound Blaster Live were "not optimal", so they could cause sound cracking and low system performance. There were some programs to change latency values to solve these situations.

The problem often was caused by the video card(s) having too high PCI latency. 3D accelerators perform better with more bus time, but it causes problems with latency sensitive devices like sound cards. And some PCI designs are worse than others (or set up improperly by the BIOS as many VIA boards were).

It's not just Live!. You'll hear problems with almost any PCI sound card. Aureal, Ensoniq, etc. I had bad problems with my AudioPCI and Voodoo1, for example.

Maybe the blame should like with the design of the peripheral buses we've had?

I just remembered there are some benchmark tables on my WF192-XG thread if anyone is interested... Yamaha WaveForce 192XG infos and drivers
edit: some more I found here: http://www.hardware-one.com/print_review.asp?reviews=193

and there are some other benches here saying similar: http://www.hardware-one.com/print_review.asp?reviews=193

Since I have some pci cards like this specific santa cruz, a live, a wf-192xg and several other uninteresting ones I have decided to do some benchmarking of my own 😁

General rule of thumb - if you're not a professional musician with very high class equip then no chance you'd ever notice any difference regarding sound quality. And in that case you'd maybe not want to grab an old consumer level card. I got a buddy who is making music himself and he got an external soundcard for his laptop that actually costs more than my whole laptop. I think he'd belong to this rare breed of people who can hear the difference. I can't however.

I used to be a "add in cards only" kinda of guy for a long time but I am perfectly happy with with the Realtek ALC892 on my P67 motherboard. I never hear any crackling or pops, bass is more fuller then my last add in card and I can turn my headset up all the way and there is no hiss. I was actually surprised that current onboard sound is better then sound cards from the mid 90's. Of course I guess not all onboard sound is the same, depends on the quality of the motherboard.

I will never buy a sound card again. Well, unless it's for a retro system of course. 🤣

Just go digital. The quality of the sound card only matter if you are using the analogue outputs.

With SPDIF it all comes down to the quality of the amplifier and what DA converters they use.

Main reason why I tend to buy Creative cards is compatibility. But Realtek is just as well supported now. Most boards have realtek. But I would avoid VIA for example because you might have issues with some games.

Oh and for legacy EAX games, Creative all the way!

PCI X-Fi cards are selling very cheap (2nd hand) because everyone is moving to PCIe. They should sell for peanuts in a year or two.

fronzel wrote:

General rule of thumb - if you're not a professional musician with very high class equip then no chance you'd ever notice any difference regarding sound quality. [...]

I strongly disagree on this one , with my 60eur 7.1 speaker set I can hear a huge difference between various sound cards... others have richer sound, other have a more "plain" one... you don't need to be a professional to hear that 😁

Ah, this topic...one of many reasons why I wrote this guide over at Head-Fi, and am continually revising it as I learn more.

The Audigy 1 only has EAX 3 and forced 48 KHz resampling, so it's not the most ideal of cards, especially with all this X-Fi hardware floating around, but it's still a slight edge over Realtek codecs there (unless said codec is paired with an X-Fi MB driver package so it can do EAX 4 or even 5 in software; some modified driver packages floating around might work).

As already stated, the main advantage of an internal sound card is a cleaner analog output stage (hissing and buzzing from my motherboard's analog outputs is really annoying), and they happen to have more DSP effects for gaming, be it higher levels of EAX or something like CMSS-3D Headphone to get binaural surround out of good stereo headphones.

If you use digital outputs to feed an external DAC, however, the cleaner analog output on the sound card itself instantly becomes a non-factor, and now it's just a DSP.

In case any of you were unaware of its existence, Realtek makes a utility for their audio chipsets that allow you to use EAX/EAX2 with older games in Vista and Windows 7, called 3D SoundBack:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Realtek-3D-SoundB … nload-1996.html

Funny how that OpenAL wrapper is still at "beta 0.1" stage...but I suppose that anyone who really cares about EAX 3 or above already owns a Creative-based card or used a modified driver suite with X-Fi MB.

FYI, all of the Audigy cards with the EMU10K2/2.5 chips support EAX4. Audigy 1 and 2 both received driver updates for it. These DSPs are essentially identical when it comes to gaming.

The software driven budget Creative cards have EAX support varying from EAX 1 up to 5, depending on age.

XFi MB and MB2 are nice for gamers. They are essentially the software suites from the Creative budget cards, reworked to run on various Realtek chips too. It uses what looks like the XFi entertainment mode. No music creation or gamer-specific modes. Weak MIDI support (if any). But it does supposedly have EAX5 support and does a decent headphone downmix. Also has Alchemy for oldies and I have tested it and found it beneficial.

I do have to admit, my knowledge of the EMU10k2/Audigy line is a bit lacking, if only because I went straight from Live! to X-Fi.

X-Fi MB seems to be limited to EAX 4, but X-Fi MB2 raises that one version to EAX 5 along with throwing in the "THX TruStudio Pro" features Creative's been hyping lately (some of which appear to be rebranded existing X-Fi features). At least, that's what Creative's OEM tech site suggests.

I can't even get the Audigy 1(sb0090) drivers to install in XP. Is there a trick to this? I've read a lot of different sites and it just acts like nothing was installed even when I do it manually. I tried the iso on the vogon download site and the unsupported Audigy Support Pack.

My Sound Blaster Z Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgmqqPhGSWA

MrTentacleGuy wrote:

I can't even get the Audigy 1(sb0090) drivers to install in XP. Is there a trick to this? I've read a lot of different sites and it just acts like nothing was installed even when I do it manually. I tried the iso on the vogon download site and the unsupported Audigy Support Pack.

Don't know about the Audigy, but the last cards supported under XP is the Titanium range. APART from the Titanium HD. So the Titanium HD, Recon3D and new Z range, none of them will work in XP 😒

I haven't had a Sound Blaster since Windows 98. When my friends complained about their drivers I always thought they were just perfectionists. I guess they were right...

MrTentacleGuy wrote:

I haven't had a Sound Blaster since Windows 98. When my friends complained about their drivers I always thought they were just perfectionists. I guess they were right...

Nope, they were wrong. What Windows XP are you installing to? x64 or x86?
Either way, use KX drivers instead of normal ones. You will be amazed 😀

...and happy new year 😀

Nice. I'll have to try those. Happy new year to you too. 😀

Well I tried the KX drivers. They look promising, but I guess I mainly can't get any driver set to recognize the card. I upgraded my BIOS to the latest version and installed the latest VIA 4 in 1 set. I'm running Windows XP x86 SP3 and my motherboard is an Asus A7V8X-X. I've read about possible problems with VIA chipsets but they mainly seem to be sound problems not driver problems. I guess it could be a problem board. I seem to be saying that a lot with Sound Blasters lately. 😀

Hmm this sounds weird. Does the system recognize the card at all? Do you get the "new hardware found" message? Do you have the device and how does it look like, in device manager? Asus A7V8X-X is an old system so I figured you are using Windows XP 32bit; everything should be working fine. Are you sure that audigy is alive?