[mrdaveyk]

at the end of the day its all about usage against spendage if i can make that word up

i paid cheap because my uses were simple, gaming, music and work

in my position i wouldn't notice the difference between a high end and dirt cheap card mainly because i dont look for it, the same sounds are being played its just 'a little different' in my ears

but to be fair a dirt cheap card, like i have can do alot more than play windows sounds, i mean i paid £8 for it and it easily produces quality sound

[Desertfish]

The way you are pointing it out is not money vs usage, but rather money vs standards. I mean, if you're talking about using your soundcard for movies, games and music, you pretty much covered every single use you can have for a soundcard.

Don't get me wrong about my remark about cheap cards only being good for system sounds. I had a dirt checp card and an dirt cheap set of speakers for a long time (paid about £20 for the total package) and for the price I was amazed about the sound quality it produced. Having said that, once you started upgrading your soundcard and speakers you will only want to go higher in spec in the future.

It's like upgrading from a cheap graphics card to at least a mid-range on and then taking a step back again to a cheaper graphics card. No one does that. Same happens with sound.

As for the difference in sound, I do believe that practically anyone will hear the difference beteen a cheap soundcard/speakers and a more advanced on in a matter of seconds. But as you said yourself, if does depend on how much you want to spend and what you are willing to settle for. We're all different in that respect.

Cheers:
Chris

[jamie2k8]

So Would Anyone Be Willing To Recomend A Mid Range Card And Mid Range Speakers To Go With It .... I Dont Think I Can Afford Top Of The Range Speakers And Card Because Im Bloody Skint

[Desertfish]

When I got a predicament like that, I'd always like to go to ebuyer. Even if I'm not going to buy the product from them, at least you get the user reviews there along with a star rating.

Stretching your budget a bit to £11.71, I came up with this:

Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme 7.1 OEM card (£52.12)
Creative Labs Inspire T7900 7.1 speaker system OEM (£59.59).

It's mid-rage but leaning towards high range. If you hunt around a little, you might want to find these even cheaper somewhere else (ebuyer are not always the cheapest). Additionally, because we don't know if you want 7.1, 6.1 or 5.1 sound, maybe you should have a look yourself and read the user comments. If you're still not sure, please feel free to ask for suggestions here. You'll always find people who will be able to give you some solid advise.

Cheers:
Chris

[jamie2k8]

great suggestion on the sound card it has great reviews is exactly the price i would pay looks great (Y) what about the Logitech x-530 speakers does anyone know anything about these .... i really dont how to tell if there good speakers or not

[Desertfish]

devhardware.com is giving this also a 5 star rating. Might want to read this: http://www.devhardware.com/showblog/...System-Review/

Cheers:
Chris

[jezza]

My apologies for hyjacking the thread, i have a sony V7700 amp and SEQ-V7700 graphic equaliser with SSH3600 speakers running from my on board sound, it works fine but would like a better card, what would you suggest? As in cheaper the better?

Cheers

[Carbon]

the Asus Xonar D2X is excellent but not compatible with a lot of apps and has some minor problems, so I think the best bet is the SB Creative Xtremegamer (even if you don't game this is a better version of their Xtrememusic).

[Bubba]

I am still skeptical on your knowledge of Creative or the level of what you call good sound Carbon. I'm a musician and as such am picky on sound. If you are recommending Creative to folks using XP, I'm with you, but I think you are WAY off base if they are using Vista. On my last research (a month or two ago0 not only did the Creative Xtreme series NOT support Vista, they had no plans of doing so. But let's noodle this out can we? I know sound, you know computers...............

Correct me if I am wrong, but you use 2.1 which is basically stereo plus a woofer. Stereo was great in 1969 lol but sound has progressed far beyond that. Remember the Quadraphonic sound in the early 70's? They even made 8 tracks that could utilize it lol. Yeah 2.1 has virtual surround (which is nice, my HDD 42 inch TV uses it) but it ISN'T surround sound anymore than "lite" blue cheese (insert your favorite flavor) salad dressing is Blue Cheese salad dressing. Upon my last research (much of it from the Creative website) the Xtreme series on a Vista OS did NOT support 5.1 or 7.1 surround, EAX or CMSS among many other features. In fact using Vista, (especially Vista 64), Creative Xtreme series supports virtually NONE of the formats that we sound freaks bought Creative Sound cards for. Creative Labs may be trying to fix that now due to the world wide shame they received after one of their VP's said out right that if Creative did NOT want to support Vista with their current sound cards (forcing consumers to buy new sound cards when they decide to release them) that it was a business decision for them to make and that DanielK was out of line writing drivers that made the currently offered sound cards work with Vista.

This was all on Creative Lab's own website and copied worldwide by stunned journalists who cover computers and computer related topics. Actually I am a journalist and feel quite comfortable reporting this as I HAVE checked my facts on this. Perhaps you read my sources on the Steam forum. For further proof, one merely needs to look at the price of the Xtreme series cards and compare them to a year ago, hell compare them to the prices in March. Do the same with the price of Creative Lab's stock.

Let me add for the record that I have NEVER bought a card that didn't say "Creative Labs" on it. I love my Xtreme gamer in my old XP system. I took back the one that wouldn't work in my Vista system though and got my money back. Creative stepped on their wang big time, a senior VP went on record talking about it, and things haven't shaken themselves out yet as far as Soundcards are concerned. I think you should either look more into the soundcard issue or show me where I am wrong before recommending Soundblasters to folks (well folks using Vista).

I hope I have been suitably polite here because I respect you and your knowledge more than I can tell you, but I think you have not only missed the boat on this one, but are waiting for that Atlantic Cruiser at a bus stop in Oklahoma lol.

[Carbon]

I speak only from my own experience with the card in Vista. So far for me it has worked flawlessly.

I'm well aware of Creative's screw-ups on this issue regarding the fiasco with DanielK. If there is an issue with 5.1/7.1 in Vista that I obviously wouldn't encounter, that's definitely a huge issue. I also am not trying to white-knight Creative, their stranglehold on the market has created a lot of problems. I do know at least EAX and CMSS are working in my Vista installation.

However, I'm more denouncing the alternative than recommending a Creative card. The Xonar is a great attempt at a card but it is riddled with issues that do not require certain conditions (i.e. 5.1/7.1 surround, Vista) to be met - they are reproducible and extremely common (I misphrased in my last post: they're not "minor problems", they're just independent of games). To me, that outweighs the reports of the Creative cards' issues with Vista.

YMMV, I suppose. If you have sources that say that as of Aug 21st there's still issues with the X-Fi line and Vista, whether in surround etc I'll check them out (I don't have the Steam thread on hand). But even if it does, I'm hesitant to recommend the alternative because I *know* the Xtremegamer at least works. And of course all of this is worthless if the poster we're talking about doesn't tell us his OS :p

Also, as an aside, you're running Vista 64-bit, right? That might explain the disparity between our experiences, as I'm running 32 and the beta drivers.