Opinion on Sound Cards?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I'm building a media server to hook up to my home theater system. I have
two sound cards salvaged from old systems to choose from. One is a
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and the other is a SB Audigy.

Does anybody have a strong opinion on which one would be a better choice?

One factor might be that the system has a somewhat underpowered CPU - an
AMD Athlon 1.4. If either of these has a better engine, and can
accelerate decoding MP3s, that might be a factor.

Any and all opinions welcomed.

--
....I'm an air-conditioned gypsy...

- The Who

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Mon, 5 Jul 2004 15:52:33 +0000 (UTC),
EskWIRED@spamblock.panix.com wrote:

>I'm building a media server to hook up to my home theater system. I have
>two sound cards salvaged from old systems to choose from. One is a
>Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and the other is a SB Audigy.
>
>Does anybody have a strong opinion on which one would be a better choice?
>
>One factor might be that the system has a somewhat underpowered CPU - an
>AMD Athlon 1.4. If either of these has a better engine, and can
>accelerate decoding MP3s, that might be a factor.
>
>Any and all opinions welcomed.

Audigy is the better of the two, but an Athlon 1.4 is plenty
powerful for (any card), there should be no issue of whether one
has a more efficient engine, even a Celeron 800 should be
overkill, even if playing from DVD. Divx full-res decode might
benefit from 1.2 GHz+ though.

If you'll be using analog out, your subjective opinion (from
trying both) might be the best way to choose.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Using the Audigy will give you better sound quality and put less of a load
on the CPU.

--
DaveW



<EskWIRED@spamblock.panix.com> wrote in message
news:ccbtg1$s9j$1@reader2.panix.com...
> I'm building a media server to hook up to my home theater system. I have
> two sound cards salvaged from old systems to choose from. One is a
> Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and the other is a SB Audigy.
>
> Does anybody have a strong opinion on which one would be a better choice?
>
> One factor might be that the system has a somewhat underpowered CPU - an
> AMD Athlon 1.4. If either of these has a better engine, and can
> accelerate decoding MP3s, that might be a factor.
>
> Any and all opinions welcomed.
>
> --
> ...I'm an air-conditioned gypsy...
>
> - The Who

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt, DaveW <none@zero.org> wrote:
> Using the Audigy will give you better sound quality and put less of a load
> on the CPU.

Thanks. The Santa Cruz is older, but I liked it when I got it. So I
figured that it wouldn't hurt to ask.

--
....I'm an air-conditioned gypsy...

- The Who