New Sound Card Ideas?
I’m sick of the crackles and garbage that comes from my Creative Audigy 2 ZS all the time. Creative can’t fix it so the only solution I can see is to start using something better.
Does anyone have some ideas as far as brands/models to look at which are comparative to the Audigy series in features, not in defects?
Does anyone have some ideas as far as brands/models to look at which are comparative to the Audigy series in features, not in defects?
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do you have access to another sound card that you could try?
anyways the type of soundcard that is suitable depends very much on your needs
do you play games?
watch films?
make music?
listen to music?
give us a bit more info and we can start to make some suggestions
i'm surprised to hear that. creative makes very good soundboards, as long as you wait 6 months after release. I'm sure the Audigy you speak of is alot older than that as that is the card i use and it is fantastic.
If you are really experiencing issues, put the Audigy into the last PCI slot of your system....and oh yes, download the updated drivers.
Lastly, it's bad mojo to put anything in the last PCI slot as often that slot is shared with AGP or PCI-E.
i better google that one. i never knew. (i knew about the resource sharing however)
I tried giving the card its own IRQ, all the PCI slots, increasing PCI latency, using different speakers -including both digital and analog outputs, and I can say it's the card/drivers without a single doubt.
I really wish the card worked like it's supposed to, and I understand the Linux drivers for this card have none of these issues (or so I've read - I never tried it myself). But the fact remains that it just doesn't work.
For now I'm using the onboard audio adapter my motherboard provides. It's nice to be able to play games again without them sounding like there’s a perpetually spinning rainstick in the room. I can live without EAX if that’s the price I have to pay.
EDIT:
Oh yes, and I've tried every driver I could get my hands on to get this POS to work, including betas. It's not happening. I've been trying to find a solution for this problem for weeks and I only wish a driver update was all that I need to fix this.
I'm mostly worried about compatibility with games. I’d prefer to spend no more than $50 unless there’s a feature I absolutely cannot live without.