Worst soundcard you ever owned and why

Mine's the original Diamond Monster Sound. It was the first sound card I owned that had surround sound. It was deemed a Sound Accelerator card that had a passthru cable to your normal sound card that you would use for older DOS games. I think it used a chipset Diamond made which supported Aureal's A3D standard. The quality of sound was terrible. It also made this popping sound every now and then. When I got Windows 98 and installed it for the first time on my PC, I noticed that the sound quality had improved dramatically. Then I remembered that I hadn't yet installed the drivers for the Monster sound and that my computer was using the old SB AWE 32. After that I pulled the card out and it's been sitting in my desk ever since.

SoundBlaster Live 5.1, believe it or not. Ever since I installed it, I had been getting popping and cracking every few seconds. I tried installing new drivers and playing around with the tools included with the SB Live but it was useless. I returned it for a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and my problem was solved.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

AC97
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Hoged CPU resources and poor audio replication.
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Did you update drivers first, or did you have crackling from the start?

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When I installed All-in-Wonder 128 PRO I get crack too.

Well, It's common knowledge that Creative's drivers are awful!

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

I've seen those. They really do suck. When I first saw that the TB Santa Cruz and the Hercules GTXP used a chipset from Crystal, I shied away from them and purchased a LIVE. Serves me right for not keeping an open mind.

You don't remember the early Crystal soundchips with all their static and so forth.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

I can get all 4 speakers to work under Win2k, but under Winme, only 2 work.

Creative is stingy with their drivers.

That's why I tried both,

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

Easy answer: Philips Seismic Edge

Randomly refused to be recognized under Win2K.

Win2k "drivers" were crippled - many features disabled. This was as of August 2001.

When I upgraded to XP, I tried to run the XP drivers for card - the driver install program crashed the computer each time I ran it (I tried four times)

I finally gave up, and am using AC97 onboard audio.

<b>ßunn¥§troker 0wn§ j00!</b>

SB Live!Value . . . per my post a few days back. I tried <b>silverpig</b>'s recommendations and still have popping and cracking. As one other stated, SB driver support sucks! I was using drivers dated Aug. 99, and even downloading everything since then does not update the core drivers.

I bought mine back in Nov. 98 . . . like <b>upec</b> stated, not many choices at the time. But with all of the fun {cringe} I have been having with it, I am developing <b>FatBurger</b>'s hatred for all things Creative. Like many (or some), I was at first wowed by all of the propagand . . . er . . . promotional literature for the Audigy, but now I am thinking, "Not if you were the last card on Earth!"

VSP

Have sound, will game.

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How did I miss this thread? Hmm...

Worst sound card I ever owned...tough one. Tie between the Live (system instability), and the Seismic Edge (relative sound levels were way off).

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