Sound Card

Cobalt

Cobalt

New member
Hey guys,

So was looking for a little advice.

Recently built a new PC. It's kind of a mid-range HTPC vibe designed to be able to play pretty much everything at good to very good frame rates.

Spec:
Asus B85 chipset LGA 1150 Mobo
Haswell i5 4430 3 GHz
8 GB RAM (corsair value)
Geforce GTX760 (kfa2)
Coolermaster elite 344
Corsair 550W PSU

I also have a really nice Yamaha RX v475 AV receiver and boston floorstanders connected to it.

I kind of feel like I'm wasting such a nice sound setup using onboard so I'm looking for a reasonable sound card that's not too pricey.

Not sure whether creative or asus xonar is better?

This is the one that seems to be good value for money with all the different sound modes supported:

http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=15331

Would appreciate some advice if there are any audiophile/computer hybrid guys out there! :-)
 
Cobalt said:
Hey guys,

So was looking for a little advice.

Recently built a new PC. It's kind of a mid-range HTPC vibe designed to be able to play pretty much everything at good to very good frame rates.

Spec:
Asus B85 chipset LGA 1150 Mobo
Haswell i5 4430 3 GHz
8 GB RAM (corsair value)
Geforce GTX760 (kfa2)
Coolermaster elite 344
Corsair 550W PSU

I also have a really nice Yamaha RX v475 AV receiver and boston floorstanders connected to it.

I kind of feel like I'm wasting such a nice sound setup using onboard so I'm looking for a reasonable sound card that's not too pricey.

Not sure whether creative or asus xonar is better?

This is the one that seems to be good value for money with all the different sound modes supported:

http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=15331

Would appreciate some advice if there are any audiophile/computer hybrid guys out there! :-)
Click to expand...

Dude, this is going to make most laugh, but Creative still makes better sound cards than anyone else.
We were searching and comparing spec's and output Digital and input digital, Creative has the best ever.

Looking through Asus sound card's list, you can never get the best of both worlds, I.e. you either get optical in with RCA out, or optical out with RCA out.

Since you are running a Yamaha receiver, the single will be amplified so you would need something like Optical so that you don’t cause distortion in the source output signal.

Creative is a little expensive, but when you compare the hertz or the DB you will understand why they are little more expensive.

The reason I choose to have both 3.5mm out / optical out / optical in, this gives you the option to plug (Xbox, PS3 , [Place optical out device here]) and play through the pc( i.e. record high quality audio) and still output to main speaker system.
 
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Creative drivers are still awful, but I've got the X-fi fatality and it's an awesome card with some great software. Immense difference between onboard and dedicated card. Also, just as an extra point if you play Path of Exile, there was an known issue that Creative cards would cause blue screens - not sure if that's been fixed yet.
 
yah. the XOnar Essence is the most commonly rated number 1 sound card for 2013. Think I'm gona go with that. :-) thanks for the advice.
 
I'm a fan of discrete audio cards, but I'd like to also stand up for on-board sound chips. Some of them can be good, but it depends on the motherboard.

I'd say the main thing is to go for a shielded discrete card so you don't get interference from your PC components, especially if you are using an amp.

The next point is on what your amp can actually do. Does it have Dolby and THX and all that jazz? If so, you basically want to pass your audio signal to the amp in the cleanest possible way (digital) and let the amp handle the decoding. For this you can even use your GPU which should have audio pass-through on the HDMI. This negates the need to have a discrete card doing the Dolby/THX decoding, and negates the need for a shielded card.

The thing Creative offers above Dolby/THX is their EAX (Environmental Audio) processing, which is very good IMO, and many games are still supporting it (although TBH, I lately haven't checked a list of games supporting EAX).

Hope my 2c helps!
 
The last sound card I owned was a Sound Blaster Live! Even got some nice Cambridge speakers with it, I think the speakers only died about 2 years ago, after a lot of abuse (not by me).
 
James said:
I'm a fan of discrete audio cards, but I'd like to also stand up for on-board sound chips. Some of them can be good, but it depends on the motherboard.

I'd say the main thing is to go for a shielded discrete card so you don't get interference from your PC components, especially if you are using an amp.

The next point is on what your amp can actually do. Does it have Dolby and THX and all that jazz? If so, you basically want to pass your audio signal to the amp in the cleanest possible way (digital) and let the amp handle the decoding. For this you can even use your GPU which should have audio pass-through on the HDMI. This negates the need to have a discrete card doing the Dolby/THX decoding, and negates the need for a shielded card.

The thing Creative offers above Dolby/THX is their EAX (Environmental Audio) processing, which is very good IMO, and many games are still supporting it (although TBH, I lately haven't checked a list of games supporting EAX).

Hope my 2c helps!
Click to expand...

good point

At the moment I'm just using my asus anologue out (which sucks) there is a way to connect a SPDIF adapter to the board apparently but i havent figured it out yet. (since it didnt come in the box)

My gtx760 is still on order so I guess I'll wait to see if I can pass through the sound and video with the hdmi.
 
Cobalt said:
This is the one that seems to be good value for money with all the different sound modes supported:

http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=15331
Click to expand...

I have 1 of these for my Logitech Z5500 and it was an instant improvement over my onboard (ALC892 - Realtek). But James' post does make a lot of sense in your situation where you have your nice amp to do all the processing. So I'd also reckon try taking the audio through the graphics card with hdmi, I doubt it'll be difficult to set up based on my experience with my htpc :)
 
Eugene said:
The last sound card I owned was a Sound Blaster Live! Even got some nice Cambridge speakers with it, I think the speakers only died about 2 years ago, after a lot of abuse (not by me).
Click to expand...

I still have a set of 4.1 Cambridge Soundworks... they are STILL awesome!
 
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