Salivate at my new sound card :D

http://www.cwol.com/usb/sound-blaster-audigy-2-nx.htm


With his thing, mp3 playback is DVD quality. Now I have another reason to stay home.

 

Cool but why an external one?

 

You won't get the kind of entertainment that I'm going to be to having when I get my Radeon 9800 All-in-Wonder Pro. I'll be watching cable on my computer with top of the line video quality. And don't forget about my remote.

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9800/aiw9800pro/

 

The SB NX is actually the extigy done well. It has all I need without the crap that platinium versions have, like software.

Optical output, 24 bit, EAX HD, you name it. Playing mp3s on this thing is DVD quality. If you can believe it. The internal versions don't have an optical out, except the platinium versions.

 

mp3 playback corresponds to the quality of the mp3. Your sound card cannot increase the quality of the sound. It's a silly claim to make you buy the thing.
Optical outuput is silly when it is going to be limited badly by the USB.
My sound card kicks its ass, but mine has the obvious advantages of being internal and not being made by Creative.

Why do you want it to be external? Hooking it up to a laptop?

 

Yeah, that is true about the mp3 playback. Since it's on your hard drive, it's at it's optimum quality.

 

Yes, that is true, but not fully.

I have an amplituner with good speakers plugged into it for quite some time. I've tested DVD in Stereo, Pro Logic, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS.

I've tested MP3 in Stereo and in Pro Logic all with the same equipment.

And I'm saying this: There is a difference between what was and what is.

I'm not sure what you mean about the optical cables and USB.
The sound does not travel through the USB cable, it's just a medium of communication between the computer and the card, like the PCI, the sound is then produced in the card, and outputed through the optical cable which is directly picked up by my amplituner, the USB doesn't have anything to do with the quality.

How is PCI better? Explain.

I never said it was the reason I bought it. I wrote it because it surprised the shit out of me.

Obvious advantages such as the lack of EAX?
And again, explain why PCI>USB 2.0


External doesn't bother me. There are some neat cards out there, true, but most of them are totally unsupported by games and just work like a regular SB. They can be used very nicely for sound recording though.
I also considered getting a guillmont card, but I read dozens of reviews that called it bugdet buys, stressing that anyone who buys them can't really expect HQ sound.
Another thing that convinced me of getting the NX was the optical output itself, the internal ZS card which is basically identical doesn't have it.

I always had the comfort of being able to switch between analog and optical sound dynamically to compare the performance. I don't really care what people say about this, I know my shit from my own testing.

It would be also nice if you linked to the "uber" card you claim to have.

 

I'm hooking my friend up with a 9800XT through work - I think he'll be enjoying better visual quality than you . I may get myself an X800XT card, which would be hella expensive, but I really want to wait for some PCI-X cards before I go for a major upgrade again.

And sound wise, if it has a SPDIF output for my amp, I'm happy.

 

Well Jar, it seems I'm the only one who gets high quality entertainment here with my onboard Geforce 2.

 

You're talking about topshelf cards for insane prices. Not much will change before a new model is released.

Onbaord GF2? I've never heared of such a thing. But with the amount of stuff mathboy has onboard, I wouldn't be surprised if his monitor was onboard too.

 

PCI vs USB:
PCI gets a much higher data transfer rate.
USB's Data Tranfer rate isn't spectacular, which is why it seems odd to have Firewire or Optical connections on something that connects to the computer via USB.

Oh, and my card is a Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1

 

I knew you were gonna write about that.

Tell me, how does 480Mbits/s sound? That's the data transfer rate of USB 2.0. Compare that to PCI... hell, I'm not sure that it's necessery, nothing can push it to the limit yet.

Now, lets take a look at that card shall we?

Despite the shitty PLASTIC/Metal outputs it has that degrade quality, it's a good bang for the buck.

A random review

Notice that they really say it's worse that the audigy 2... A card that I think sucks by itself, the NX is tons better...

I don't really feel like getting into the details, listing every spec that my card is better in... It's better in every aspect, just read.

At lest yours has an eax emulation, the fortissimo card I had didn't, but it had an optical out. Again, the only reason I had it.

 

Hyah. Well will he be able to watch basic cable from his box?

I'm getting an Athlon 64 3200+ , that'll make a difference, that's fuhsho. What do you think of this motherboard?
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 490&depa=1

I'm taking that particular motherboard the most thought.

 

It's a VIA motherboard. Run for your fucking life.

 

I swear last time I checked it was Nforce.

What about this?

--> http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 498&depa=1

 

Okay, it's got a nice amount of PCI slots, which could be handy, but aren't necessary, it has a decent amount of IDE and SATA slots, onboard RAID and can take a nice amount of RAM (although I don't know if it supports dual channel). However, it does have only one onboard ethernet port, although it is a gigabit one and the onboard sound doesn't look too flash either. If you're planning on getting a dedicated sound card though, this won't be a problem. Overall, a pretty decent motherboard, but there are probably better ones out there (the ones for Intel's 915 and 925 chipset are fucking brilliant, even if they are for mouldy old 32-bit P4's ), but I'm not an expert on 64-bit computing.

 

What do you think of MSI motherboards? I've seen some that don't look that bad. I see Gigabyte isn't the way to go. What I want is speed and room for plently of ram. I plan on having 2GB's in it.

Do you trust Asus? As far as I can see, they seem to make quality products.

If I get the Asus motherboard I showed you, then I'd definitely put the pci slots to work with a different NIC and a sound card later on. I'm thinking about buying another gigabyte of ram instead of the video card for now. 2 GB of ram, that would be something to brag about.

 

ASUS makes a very nice product. I've never had any problems with their stuff, unlike ABIT.