Looking for a New Sound Card for my PC

[alleycat]

I've got an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 which has been good so far. They're not too expensive.

 

[Pjotr]

" Have a look at the plots above from a PCI card. Are these that bad? ..."

Yes, in that they do not reflect the reality of installation into any generic PCs ... or even representative of a stripped down PC with a heavy duty power supply.

Yes, these are about as good as it gets for a plug in PCI sound card ... but that's my point. ALL PCs' power supplies are dirty, noisey mashups intended for the powering of digital chips, only.

........................

Uhh, the plot I posted was made with a standard MSI KT3 Ultra2 mobo with an Athtlon XP2000 running W2K. PSU is a standard Chinese el cheapo 300W one. Pretty standard I think.

Apart from what is better, most noise is entered through the external audio cables at these levels, especially mains related noise. Whether or not the card is a PCI card or an external card.

If you feel more comfortable with an external card, no problem. But your motivation isn’t second by my experiences with various cards in various PC set ups.

 

[samsagaz]

looks like i will purchase the onlyo card, these caps and specs looks amazing

 

[wxn]

Are you sure there's no resampling to 48kHz with the kx drivers with a sb live? I think that's a hardware limitation, sb drivers or kx drivers, you still resample all your 44.1 stuff to 48 while playing

That is correct, upsampling is inevitable. But kX driver is a real miracle, I once got two way stereo LR 24db/oct crossover up and running on a Live! card. Very sophisticated functionality for the price. And I think some Audigy models are supported too - they have much more memory (for soundfonts) and DSP power than Live iirc.

 

[Pjotr]

looks like i will purchase the onlyo card, these caps and specs looks amazing

Yes, up to now it appears to be the best bet for the money if you are out for multi channel.

 

[samsagaz]

and if purchase it directly from Japan will be an nice price



USD Total USD 197 with shipping fee included

 

[Bricolo]

That is correct, upsampling is inevitable. But kX driver is a real miracle, I once got two way stereo LR 24db/oct crossover up and running on a Live! card. Very sophisticated functionality for the price. And I think some Audigy models are supported too - they have much more memory (for soundfonts) and DSP power than Live iirc.

I completely agree. kx drivers are a must-have when you own a sb soundcard.

that's one of the only thing I miss since I switched to a laptop with a vanilla hd audio codec