Need some advice

After reading alot of the threads and reveiws on different sound cards, I'm still pretty confused as to which sound card would be great for my audio set-up.

Btw it is a very low end set-up so audiophiles look away!

Currently I'm using a HT Omega Striker, I'm thinking about the PCI-E 1x Asus Xonar, possbily HT Omega Claro plus, maybe X-fi not too sure...

I use Sennheiser PC165 headphones, for games, movies and music. (most of the time)

I use Genius SW-V2.1 1250 for some RTS games and singleplayer games I usually use, and the occasional movie or music.

I have used the Audigy 2ZS, and the present Sound card, now I am looking to start over with a new build but my only area where my knowledge just isn't quite affluent enough is the sound card arena. If I had to set a budget I would place it near $250ish [cheaper is always better ] as long as the quality is there and is noticeable. Any advice or reccomendations would be gladly appreciated, all I ask is that you give some sound reasoning as to why you believe what would be best.

Hi enigma067

I am no expert in sound cards. I stick to Auzentech cards as they have the best (IMHO) support for SPDIF (the latest card the Prelude supports EAX-5(ish) over SPDIF). Not an issue for you though!!

If you are using analogue then the X-Fi Xtreme Gamer (OEM) or Music should be OK right? I had an Xtreme Gamer card and it looked well built... Didn't use it when I realised it had no optical output (what a joke that is at 50.00 GBP). I presume you are using Windows XP (32-bit version) as I hear the Creative drivers are a bit flaky under Vista). I wouldn't buy anything more fancy as you are using fairly budget speakers... $250 = overkill!!

Bob

Hi

Yeh well I meant to say to balance the poor(ish) speakers vs. decent headphones = budget X-fi as the best compromise. I can't speak from experience. The price isn't that high at the low end of the X-fi food chain though...

Onboard sound is often very good and I often recommend it for folks... Both my flatmates go that route. Its not like the bad old days of hiss and 0dB S/N!!

Bob

bump for more help, please!

first of all ewwww, nobody is flatulating here. I just want a third opinion, if not a fourth, fifth, and so on. So far all this information that has been provided is info. I already knew of, nothing new here has been foretold to me so I am holing out for some more information is all...

OK maybe I'm being a bit opinionated here but you did say earlier you weren't an extreme audiophile and you are running Windows XP then you probably won't hear a massive jump in audio quality between the X-Fi Xtreme Gamer and the Auzentech/Asus Xonar highend cards.

However... If you are looking for the grand-daddy of all cards and it is almost within your budget range then I would buy the Auzentech Prelude. This card hs better drivers than Creative, more features, and better audio quality.
Early reviews from the initial release date back last September... (drivers including Windows/Linux realtime DTS encoding over SPDIF to be added)
http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews [...] lude-71/1/
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/i [...] mitstart=0

I have the Auzentech X-Plosion card for its DTS encoding over SPDIF feature. The Prelude goes further as it supports EAX 5.0 through a licensing agreement with Creative. I am saving up to get the Prelude card both the EAX 5.0 support over SPDIF and the to be released Linux support for realtime DTS encoding. The audio performance of the Auzentech cards is very high. In my experience the driver support is good (but I am just running Windows XP x64 - I gather Vista support is pretty good compared to Creative).

Sorry 'bout my earlier comments (mainly due to missing your rather high budget ceiling - cause it was in USD!!)

Bob