Yeah, I'd go for Audigy 2 ZS though I can't remember why a ZS and not a straight 2.

Doesn't the motherboard have onboard sound? Onboard sound might have been crappy way back when it was first introduced, but unless you have special requirements it should be perfectly adequate on a board that's new enough to have PCI-e.

Audigy 2 ZS is my choice for best XP sound card. Use the Daniel K drivers to get everything working correctly. They're updated and more complete than the stuff Creative Labs offers.

However, it's a terrible card for Vista/7/8/10, even with the Daniel K drivers. It just doesn't work correctly. Use onboard sound, or X-Fi, or something else.

Yeah what I originally had in mind was the X-Fi Titanium which I got new in the box. But I'll have to wait and try it on a different board that has the room, for now I'll make do with the on-board sound.

Question : What do you want from a sound card ?
ASUS Essence ST - Superb Sound Quality (yes, it is compatible with Win XP, X-FI's are better in XP games tho) 😀
X-FI Elite Pro - Awesome Sound Quality + native EAX 5.0/X-RAM
X-Fi Xtreme Music - Great/Good Sound Quality + native EAX 5.0 at reduced price => it's basicly updated version of Audigy 2 ZS.

I can vouch for the Audigy 2 ZS. It doesn't have as clean, perfect sound as I would like it to, but it sounds very good for everything I use it for.

X-Fi range were the last cards supported in XP, shame the Titanium doesn't fit as that would have been perfect!
But as you already have a X-Fi, which will end up in another PC sometime in the future maybe go with something non creative just for something different?

Yeah I'm open to any suggestions. Doesn't have to be a creative card, just PCI compatible. Might try out an Asus card for the heck of it.

I've also found the SBLive! Digital 5.1 SB0220 cards to work nicely in WinXP. I wouldn't go out of my way to get one though, because you can buy an Audigy 2 ZS for about the same price.

I also have a Chaintech AV-710 VIA-based sound card. It worked fine in XP. I bought this card because people were raving about its sound quality when it was new. I guess the DAC on one of the channels is capable of doing bit-perfect digital output or something. I'm not an audiophile and I can't tell a difference anyway... Personally, I bought the card because it was cheap and had an optical toslink s/pdif output on it. It also does EAX and A3D via "sensaura" software emulation. Overall, it was a nice card and I had no complaints with it.

ratfink wrote:

Yeah, I'd go for Audigy 2 ZS though I can't remember why a ZS and not a straight 2.

Possibly because the ZS is 7.1, and the regular Audigy 2 is just 6.1. Not that it matters in most practical setups. Especially because the 7.1 is rigged to only work with Creative's special cables.

I too like the 2 ZS for XP. The drivers are very easy to use, plenty of configuration options, and I did not encounter any issues. Did not even need DanielK's releases.

Jorpho wrote:

Doesn't the motherboard have onboard sound? Onboard sound might have been crappy way back when it was first introduced, but unless you have special requirements it should be perfectly adequate on a board that's new enough to have PCI-e.

Your comment reminded me of the onboard sound which came on my dual PII-400 in 1998. I beleive it was called Crystal sound. Next to the sound emitting from the PC speaker, this onboard sound chip produced the worse sound of any sound card I have ever tried. At one point I thought I could at least use it to play back mp3s, but it was unbearable. For such high-end systems of 1998, why not spend a little extra on something with at least mediocre sound? Or remove the onboard sound completely and save the consumer some money.

Onboard sound has come a long way since then, even for value systems.

Jorpho wrote:

Doesn't the motherboard have onboard sound? Onboard sound might have been crappy way back when it was first introduced, but unless you have special requirements it should be perfectly adequate on a board that's new enough to have PCI-e.

nah even in 2005 onboard sound wasn't that great. Until about 2009/2010 you really wanted a dedicated sound card for good audio quality. Today with a brand new 2016 board you'd be hard pressed to tell the diffrence between onboard and a 2000 dollar sound card.

My 2004 board (P4P800-E) had reasonable onboard sound for the time (one of the first onboard 7.1 codecs), but had lots of static due to PCI interference. That's pretty much the main reason I put that Audigy 2 ZS in there.

dr_st wrote:

My 2004 board (P4P800-E) had reasonable onboard sound for the time (one of the first onboard 7.1 codecs), but had lots of static due to PCI interference. That's pretty much the main reason I put that Audigy 2 ZS in there.

yea that was the big problem, the codecs where good but they still had bad motherboard interernace and improper shielding.

A 2005 onboard sound was comparable to the Live.

candle_86 wrote:

yea that was the big problem, the codecs where good but they still had bad motherboard interernace and improper shielding.

Funnily enough i still get those problems with my fancy X99 system AND the Asus PCIe cards i tried (don't remember which), while the output may be clean the microphone is unusable.
In fact those issues started years ago on older systems, graphics cards are the culprit here. I think the GTX260 was the last problem free one. USB to the rescue.

For an XP based system i'd prioritize EAX support, i had one of the X-Fi cards with extra memory back in the day which was used to great effect in a lot of Battlefield 2.

candle_86 wrote:

Today with a brand new 2016 board you'd be hard pressed to tell the diffrence between onboard and a 2000 dollar sound card.

If to compare with common Creative's card, there should be quality difference where games may use hardware accelerated sound effects. How is the practical situation in today Win8-10 times, - don't know.
To hear the difference between cheap on-board sound and normal sound card needs good amplifier, accoustics and not music from youtube. The onboard sound on MBs made 10 years ago I remember was worse even on my mediocre hardware playing mp3, than with card. Though did not experimented with fancy SRC plugins. Maybe will compare modern on-board MB sometimes and the miracle you said have happened.

Tertz wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

Today with a brand new 2016 board you'd be hard pressed to tell the diffrence between onboard and a 2000 dollar sound card.

If to compare with common Creative's card, there should be quality difference where games may use hardware accelerated sound effects. How is the practical situation in today Win8-10 times, - don't know.
To hear the difference between cheap on-board sound and normal sound card needs good amplifier, accoustics and not music from youtube. The onboard sound on MBs made 10 years ago I remember was worse even on my mediocre hardware playing mp3, than with card. Though did not experimented with fancy SRC plugins. Maybe will compare modern on-board MB sometimes and the miracle you said have happened.

Well after XP hardware accelerated sound died, there is no hardware accelerated sound its all done via software. Meaning a sound card is just a glorified codec on a riser with vista and newer