Hello all,
i would like to know your opinion about best sound card from around 2003 - 2006 for my latest retro rig.
HW: Asus K8V SE deluxe / Athlon64 3200+ (Clawhammer) / 2GB RAM / Geforce 6800 / 2x 160GB sata HDDs for dualBoot Win98 / Win XP (It was a NIGHTMARE to deploy windows onto these SATA HDDs).
Usage: Latest Win98 and early WinXP games
I would like to install best possible soundcard into this machine (best possitional audio API with good output quality, I'm using headphones only)
Till now I tried : SB Audigy 2 (bad output or at least nothing special, HRTF not working)
Terratec Xlerate AU8820 , it's not bad , but there is noise/hum on the output and a3d wasn't working for all games, and there is no XP support
Integrated AD1980 soundmax, it's strange but this was the best from these three, Sensaura API is working properly, output quality is OK, I also tried to use external DAC with coax-Digi in quality was perfect but a want better HRTF.
So I searched little bit and I think these are my options:
Terratec Sixpack (hard to find here, but possible)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (One bought today on ebay)
Aureal Vortex 2 card (NO way to find these around me)
Hercules game theater XP (I can buy it, but heard about their quality issues/unreliability)
Please give me an advice , maybe I'm completely wrong with my choices (I'm a newbee in these better old sound card waters)...
THANX