SB Live! 5.1 or Philips Seismic Edge

FatBurger

Illustrious
Ok, I cancelled my order on the SB Live, and bought a Seismic Edge. Then, the SB Live arrived. So my question is, which to keep? I'll keep one and sell the other. I've got a 4.1 speaker setup.

Here's my rig
Abit KT7a-RAID
T-Bird 1.3 (not overclocked...yet)
512meg generic RAM
Hercules GeForce 2 MX 64 meg
2x Maxtor DiamondMAX Plus 30gig on a RAID 0
Afreey 12x DVD
12/10/40 Teac CD-RW
Netgear FA312 NIC
300w PSU (don't remember which brand)

I know not all of that matters, but people always ask for absolutely everything, so I figured I might as well.

Apple? Macintosh? What are these strange words you speak?
 
G

Guest

Guest
go with whatever sounds best.
or you can always keep the cheaper one and sell the more expensive one.

BTW, what speakers are you running???

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FatBurger

Illustrious
They're both basically the same price
I've got some cheap 4.1 speakers, don't know what brand
I don't know how good they are yet

Apple? Macintosh? What are these strange words you speak?
 

arsend

Distinguished
Apr 10, 2001
569
0
18,980
Cheap speakers are never a good thing if you want quality sound, the cheap speakers could case both cards to sound mediocer, but I would stay with the SB card as it has more features and game support.

If it works for you then don't fix it.
 

FatBurger

Illustrious
I know about speakers, I'll get rid of them if they don't sound good. I'm an Audio Engineer (ie Sound Guy), and to put it in perspective, I didn't know Klipsch made computer speakers til a while ago. I just know that their floor monitors suck :)

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Apple? Macintosh? What are these strange words you speak?
 
G

Guest

Guest
Well.... this may be a bit late regarding the date on the post, but I would go with the Philips. That is based on experience with my Asus A7M266. I did have a SBlive Platinum 5.1 when I set up the system and it seemed to work ok with my old vid card. When I upgraded to a Geforce3 (Hercules model) I started having all kinds of DMA problems wherein my harddrive got corrupted (multiple times). After hearing of problems with SBlive and Via chipsets and trying all kinds of patches and BIOS upgrades, I went out and bought an Acoustic Edge. Haven't had a lockup or hard drive corruption problem since. Fortunately I had a friend who was interested in buying SBlive.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
 
G

Guest

Guest
Oh yeah, I should state that the Philips sounds absolutely fantastic. In UT I thought the sounds were better than what the SBlive Platinum 5.1 was putting out. I know lots of people go with Creative because it is pretty much considered the reference standard (I went with them for over ten years) but don't let that stop you. I have had zero compatibility problems. I should also state that some early reviews (November-January) gave the Acoustic Edge very good marks except for CPU utilization (which at around 5% was a bit high). I think the most recent drivers must have gotten rid of the utilization problems because I haven't seen any drop in framerates compared to the SBlive!

Food for thought.


Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
 

FatBurger

Illustrious
Thanks, I'm gonna stick with the Live, though. I'm selling the Seismic Edge to a friend of mine. I can always trade him if I have problems, though.

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My Athlon can beat your Ferrari off the line.