Best Sound Card All Around

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Ender_Wiggin

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Jan 27, 2014
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I am looking into building a system for all around entertainment purposes, but mainly music and gaming. I am unsure what sound card I should buy or even which brand I should buy. I understand Asus and Sound Blaster are the two main companies to get sound cards from. I was hoping for 7.1 but I am unsure how much 7.1 would be an improvement over 5.1, I would eventually set-up a speaker system for it, not just head-phones. I'm also wondering how important Dolby endorsements are for gaming, or even what each endorsement means (I have been looking at the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy RX 7.1). I would prefer under $200. If I had to chose between gaming and music I would chose music quality over gaming sound. I would also like to know if sound from the sound card would could be or is routed into the GPU, specifically a GeForce GTX 770. Among other things how important is shielding. I would like to have 7.1 output to movies unless can be taken care of in a receiver. The last thing is, provided I can't reroute the sound from the sound card through the GPU, how am I supposed to connect a receiver to the sound card considering that the Onkyo TX-NR709 is effectively discontinued, the 809 is getting spendy and Onkyo is the only company I have found with multi-channel analog inputs. I'd prefer to go with Denon if at all possible.


The cards I have been looking at
Creative Sound Blaster Z series
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy RX 7.1
Asus Xonar DX

If all else fails,
Asus Xonar Essence STX
Asus Xonar Phoebus (Solo)
Creative Sound Blaster ZxR

I ask that nobody try to talk me out of getting a sound card, I have my mind set on getting one.
Also Despite asking for a solution I request a discussion.

Thank you in advance.
 
Solution
X
Sound Blater Z series all have Dolby and also DTX. As i said i recommend zx because of the gold capacitors, but z is also good. Zxr is really good but i don't see a need to spenda that much diffrence. But zxr has really good features like full seperation of digital and analog, no annoying led, TI Burr-Brown etc.
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xboost

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Dec 8, 2013
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I have Sound Blaster Zx on my pc and it is really good. I can really recommend it. (Only diffrence between z and zx used to be acm, now zx also has niccipon fine gold capacitors which makes a huge diffrence.)
 
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gamerk316

gamerk316

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Jul 8, 2008
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The top three cards on the market:

ASUS Xonar Essence ST(X)
Creative Soundblaster ZxR
ASUS Xonar Phoebus


Note these cards serve different purposes. The ST(X) especially is really only meant for headphone users, and relies on the H6 daughter card to handle 7.1 analog output. Hence why the Phoebus is ASUS's best offering when using multichannel analog [though it still packs a very high quality headphone amp]. ZxR is similar to the ST(X), focusing on headphone users, and not multichannel output.

So what are you using the soundcard for? Headphones, or speakers? Stereo or multichannel? The card you choose is going to be partly dependent on your audio usage.
 
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Ender_Wiggin

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Jan 27, 2014
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The hope is that the sound card would eventually feed out into some multichannel surround sound set up of speakers which seems to be a problem of it's own considering linking issues. I would use headphones to start with though. If I were to use my Tritton AX Pro's, I'm assuming I'd need to get a sound card with some type of Dolby codec otherwise I would use my Audio Technica ATH-M30s.
 
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xboost

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Dec 8, 2013
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Sound Blater Z series all have Dolby and also DTX. As i said i recommend zx because of the gold capacitors, but z is also good. Zxr is really good but i don't see a need to spenda that much diffrence. But zxr has really good features like full seperation of digital and analog, no annoying led, TI Burr-Brown etc.
 
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Solution
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xboost

Honorable
Dec 8, 2013
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Sound blaster z is 5.1 so it is probably 5.1. He will not get any benefit from 7.1, but 5.1 surround can give same experience as 7.1, similar to 7.1 or 5.1 on stereo headphones. If you connect 7.1 to 5.1 2 extra mid speakers will sound mixture of back and front whic is what mostly happens on 7.1
 
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Ender_Wiggin

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Jan 27, 2014
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The last thing is the matrixing / upconverting / upscaling of 5.1 surround sound. Some A/V receivers can upscale from 5.1 to 7.1, does anyone know if the 7.1 matrixing is any different than what a 7.1 sound card could do.
 
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gamerk316

gamerk316

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Jul 8, 2008
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I'd imagine the receiver is just doing Dolby Pro Logic on the signal to upconvert it to 7.1, which is the same thing most soundcards do, so I'd imagine the effect would be equivalent.
 
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