Q: which sound card?
Tryout
I wonder if you can advise me on that difficult issue: I want to dabble in computer music and, the
first thing I need then, is a sound card. I read some recent hype on Soudblaster Audigy, and wonder
what you'd say about it? Any other worthy options here? Any input will be helpful, I'm a total
newbie as far as computer sound/music.
You Know Who ~
still a gamers card, despite the name. A reasonable alternative (and more
musically oriented) is the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card.
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"Tryout" <ab...@aol.com> wrote in message news:1107_1008633306@u34n2n-23j...
Fuzz
as a videologic sonic fury. Also consider the old SBlive the sample based
synth is still one of the best around and at £25 for the bog standard 5.1
you can't beat it for price. My thoughts would be to buy both cards, this
combination will beat the audigy hands down at less than half the price. Add
in the hoontech SBlive addon www.hoontech.com and you've got your optical
I/O to connect to your minidisc player. And your coax s/pdif to connect the
two cards together.
Fuzz
You Know Who ~ <you_kn...@att.net> wrote in message
news:OsAT7.300875$W8.10...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
God
> It's worth pointing out that the turtle beach santa cruz is often packedged
> as a videologic sonic fury. Also consider the old SBlive the sample based
> synth is still one of the best around and at £25 for the bog standard 5.1
> you can't beat it for price.
w/ a breakout box, etc. Check out Platinum EX, even the software bundle is purely music
oriented. 'course the chip itself is the same on all of them, so I'm not sure.
Invader Zim
If I were you, I'd stay away from creative and go for the Turtle Beach
Santa Cruz or the Terratec DMX 6Fire for starters, depending on your
financial resources.
-Invader Zim
np: Big Dumb Face - Mighty Penis Laser
God
wrote:
> If I were you, I'd stay away from creative and go for the Turtle Beach
> Santa Cruz or the Terratec DMX 6Fire for starters, depending on your
> financial resources.
anything specific. It seems like a good package for the price.
Invader Zim
"God" <ab...@aol.com> wrote in message news:1110_1008713867@u34n2n-23j...
The software support and drivers are horrible. If something doesn't seem to
work right (eg. wave files aren't played right and also have an insane
amount of static noise in most games, and the all the different software
developers tell you to ask creative for help in fixing this problem), and
you ask tech support about it, I'm willing to bet you'll get ignored unless
you keep hounding them about it every third day for three months. Then,
finally, they one day tell you that they've ceased supporting that
particular version of the soundcard you have because they've just released
a new revision of that series, and that they're sorry for the
inconvenience, but you're welcome to buy a new one with the updated chipset
or try out their latest line of soundcards (basically).
LOL Yes, I'm speaking from personal experience.
...and that's when I decided I would never buy anything from creative
again, because from the looks of it (and considering everyone else's
statements), creative isn't going to change their policies any time soon.
I also decided to warn other people about the problems with spending money
on creative soundcards that could have been used to buy a much better card
from a friendlier (and more deserving) company.
-Invader Zim
np: Nothing at all.
la.bouch
to start moving .wav files from ,say, a sampler to something like Cubase, or
Logic. A 'proper' card would let you select (the industry standard) 44.1khz
as a sampling rate. Having just 48khz to play with might not bug you at
first, but believe me, it will as you become more proficient.
Roj
In the case of the Live!, badly designed hardware, specifically a
faulty ACPI header that mistakenly got branded the Via 686B Bug.
Then you have the poor SNR and downsampling algorithms.
Moving right along, we have the pathetic drivers and technical
support.
That pretty much says it all.
Now the Audigy doesn't suffer from the ACPI problem, but everything
else on the above list as well as CL's misleading advertising (24/96
capability when there isn't any apart from DVD playback 100db SNR when
the best it can manage is 85db with a tailwind helping) make it a
pretty mediocre buy unless you're a hardcore gamer. The Audigy is
essentially a Live! gaming card on steroids.
Roj
God
On Wed, 19 Dec 2001 14:52:42 +0100, "Invader Zim" <dapolicema...@heads.fuk>
wrote:
Patrick Schriner
..
> Everyone bashes Creative! But what exactly is wrong with it, I'm curious. No one says
> anything specific. It seems like a good package for the price.
Quite simple. They do good consumer cards, but for anything
professional they are way off the target. The Live! Cards (old or new)
are good for Games, but nothing else (maybe DVD, though i heard about
driver troubles).
And besides they don“t really over much on a price-per-value
comparison. And from what i“ve heard and experienced their drivers
(and support) are not the best to say the least.
So why not buy a non-CREATIVE card that has better hardware, costs
less and has fewer driver issues (or, when talking about Terratec, at
least no more than CREATIVE).
Roj
wrote:
>Quite simple. They do good consumer cards
Debatable at best previous to the Audigy.
Roj
spot
from. "turtle beach"
You can pick up an o.e.m version of the sound blaster live 5.1 card for
around $55.00 This is the way to go. I've had both cards and have been happy
with the creative labs card. The only reason the platinum is so expensive is
simply for the fact they offer the live drive which fits into the front of
your computer. The o.e.m card will work just fine!
"Tryout" <ab...@aol.com> wrote in message news:1107_1008633306@u34n2n-23j...
Kike G.
>You can pick up an o.e.m version of the sound blaster live 5.1 card for
>around $55.00 This is the way to go. I've had both cards and have been happy
>with the creative labs card. The only reason the platinum is so expensive is
>simply for the fact they offer the live drive which fits into the front of
>your computer. The o.e.m card will work just fine!
That would be o.k. if it wasn't for the bad resampling algorithms of
the Live series. This means that when you play a 44.1KHz sound, the
sound is resampled to 48 KHz an degraded in a quite bad manner.
I'd better go for a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, whose algorithms are
better and basically don't alter in an audible way the sound. The only
advantage of the Live series is the synthesizer system (SoundFonts)
which is quite of a standard, and the better support for games. About
the Audigy, it isn't a true 24/96 card, and at sound quality I think
it has no significant advantages over the Santa Cruz.
If you want to get more serious and want to spend more $$, you can get
a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (around 150$), which has no resampling at
all, has true 24 bit 96 KHz capabilty, included midi interfaces and
cabling, perfect digital in and out, and better quality, but is less
friendly for the common user, because is not multiclient (can't play a
sound from two programs at the same time) and can't be controlled via
the Windows standard volume mixer.