A sound card for Windows 7?

s3rial one

I'm looking to pick up a sound card. I'd be content with my motherboard's built-in sound, except ever since I got a Razer Barracuda, I've been able to hear what I imagine is EM interference from my CPU. When it runs, I can hear clicking on the headset. It's faint, but still drives me crazy.

All I'm looking for is a basic sound card that does 7.1 sound via analog inputs. I've looked into getting the Razer AC-1, but it's apparently no longer manufactured and extremely overpriced even when you do find it (e.g. $220 at Amazon).

The card also needs to be cheap, and work well in Windows 7. I'm leaning towards the Asus Xonar DS and the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio.

Any other advice would be welcome. I'd be happy enough just buying Realtek hardware on a discrete card, to be honest.

Jasconius

I have the X-Fi non-PCI-E version (standard PCI) and it is just dandy, no interference at all.

Amazon's price seems high to me... shop around a bit.

I don't know anything about ASUS sound cards.... I miss the days of Aureal Vortex/Turtle Beach.

Idoliside

Creative seem to get alot of slack for their driver support, but i'm running an X-fi Fatal1ty on Win7 with the latest 64bit drivers and it works fine.
With Vista I used to get cracking in Winamp and sometimes had to restart to restore it, but since going over to Win7 that has vanished completely.

s3rial one

The only thing I worry about with the Creative card is that NewEgg's reviews are full of people complaining about noise from the card.

I know, I know, NewEgg reviewers and all, but it's a large fraction of the reviewers complaining of it.

Jasconius

There are a lot of things that can cause sound interference and noise other than the card itself.

Namely poor wire shielding and shitty headphones.

Sound Blaster's are top of the line, that is to say, they are the only line these days. It's not like this is an evolving technology, sound cards haven't changed much in the last ... 5 years at least.

s3rial one

Jasconius wrote: »

There are a lot of things that can cause sound interference and noise other than the card itself.

Namely poor wire shielding and shitty headphones.

Sound Blaster's are top of the line, that is to say, they are the only line these days. It's not like this is an evolving technology, sound cards haven't changed much in the last ... 5 years at least.

Yeah, I guess that's what I'm worried about. If I drop $50 on a new card just to have the same noise I do now, I think it'd be rather annoyed.

I ordered a new HSF, though. Going to wait until that gets here and I get it installed to see if the noise is still present on my onboard sound. I mean, if it's EM interference, a rather large chunk of copper and aluminum would change the shape of the field, at least. Might as well try, although I don't expect it'll make a big difference once way or the other.

Scrublet

s3rial one wrote: »

The only thing I worry about with the Creative card is that NewEgg's reviews are full of people complaining about noise from the card.

I know, I know, NewEgg reviewers and all, but it's a large fraction of the reviewers complaining of it.

This card has been extremely hit or miss. Some of those reviews are rather dated, and I'd hazard a guess that these days you have a better chance of having success with this card rather than failure. Unfortunately not as many people are buying this card due to its widespread problems at launch (and significantly thereafter), so new reviews aren't as common. And when I say "this card" I'm referring to the X-Fi line in general.

Decius

The X-Fi chipset is pretty sweet, but Creative's driver....support is kinda lame. If you want the power of the X-Fi from a company that actually seems to give a shit, I'd recommend going with one of Auzentech's line of X-Fi cards. I've been using an X-Fi Prelude for a while now, and they're nice cards. Even better is Auzentech actually updates there drivers on a regular basis.

If the Prelude is beyond your price range, the X-Fi Forte is usually about $50 cheaper

s3rial one

I've heard a lot of good things about Auzentech, but unfortunately, their cheapest card is about twice what I'm looking to spend.

I got my new HSF installed tonight, after a lot of trouble. It did change the character of the noise, but now, it's more a low rumble than a rapid clicking.

I think I'm going to try the Xonar cards. The reviews I've seen have had nothing but good things to say about the DS compared to other cards in that price range.

stigweard

Unless things have changed very recently, you will still be using creative drivers with that auzuntech card. They licensed the x-fi chipset for the card and have better op-amps and capacitors, but they suffer the same buggy drivers along with a few new quirks. I can't see spending nearly twice as much for the same tech unless I was going to hook the pc up to a high quality home theater system.

s3rial one

I give up. I didn't want to spend the money, but I've tried six different drivers tonight. I re-wired my entire case, thinking maybe there was a wire with crappy shielding near the southbridge. No dice. Googled around some more, and found other people with this motherboard having the same problem.

I caved in and ordered the Xonar DS.