[Tech] sound cards?

[thatbloke]

A combination of an Xmas bonus and Santa bringing me some cash means I'm thinking o getting myself a shiny new headset, the sennheiser PC 360's.

What I do not have, however is a dedicated sound card that will do such a headset justice. And long story short because all I've had the past few years are USB headsets I'm way out of touch on what soundcards are decent.

So I'd like to ask you for your recommendations on soundcards, I'm not afraid of paying a decent sum of money for one, but I'd like you to explain why you are recommending it.

BTW I'm on windows 7 64bit.

 

[Iron_fist]

i hear the Xonar cards are really nice, and unlike the creative ones have proper support for W7

personally i have one of the Creative Audigy cards, however the driver support for W7 is lacking\broken from official channels and although it's a nice card, the support, or lack thereof isn't a particularly good recommendation.

 

[Xarlaxas]

I'm using a Xonar DX and am very pleased with it, I'd definitely support the brand over Creative, it depends on your price range which one to get but the DX is pretty good as it's not *too* expensive but does everything you need for gaming and should be pretty good for movies (though I haven't done much investigation into that aspect yet).

Iro is right about the lack of support for the Creative cards, the only drivers that are any good are made by the community, which is not a good sign.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I have a Creative Audigy 2 ZS (it's really old), but I've only had a mediocre experience with it. When it works it gives decent sound (definitely far superior to onboard), but it's nothing overly special. It's just a shame that it seems to conflict with a lot of other stuff on my PC, sometimes acting very strangely during games and applications. I'll also echo the lack of support; the drivers are a pile of shite. That's if you can actually manage to get the drivers, and then only if the install program works on your PC (it didn't work on this PC or my new laptop).

 

[[THN]Buffalo_Hunter]

Use an X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty with the break-out box - found it to be very good when running my VSTs when using ASIO.