What soundcard is best?

[KingTermite]

I'm about to build a new system and want to get the best sound card for my goals as I can.

I'm not a musician so I really don't care about music editing, etc... type of capabilities. I plan on making my pc a kickin' sound system. I will mainly use its features for playing MP3s and that type of stuff.

What is the best sound card to go with? Give me your opinions.

So far, I'm thinking just the regular Sound Blaster Audigy MP3+, but please inform me if there is better ones in your opinion (and why they're better).

Thanks,
Chris

--
If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking 'til you do suck seed.
--

 

[williamc]

Sounds like your main focus by far is mp3's, if your not planning on playing lots of current games i'd rule out the audigy and go for one of the following 4 options:Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Game Theatre XP, Pillips Acoustic Edge, or a nice Maudio professional sound card. Just for playing music, i understand Maudio is the best by far, but its also significantly the most expensive, after that comes Acoustic Edge being supposedly a hair better than the Santa Cruz and then the Santa Cruz and Game theatre XP are basically the same (same chipset).

If your going to include movies and some games i'd go with the Santa Cruz or the Game Theatre XP. If your heavy into games and forgot to mention it then its a close call between the Santa Cruz, GTXP, and Audigy. But audigy is NOT the best for music, yes, thats a definite.

As to why, oh for gods sake, read all the information thats already posted, i'm tired of typing.



PS. They shalt not contradict me on this Ritesh, I am correct.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by williamc on 06/12/02 12:44 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[MStakem]

I'll throw in my experience, I got an audigy and it refused to intall. Had a nice month long email exchange with creative tech support resulting in me purchasing a turtle ebach santa cruz. I sold my roommate the audigy and when we compared the two's output, I think that the TBSC sounds better when listening to mp3s (and wmas too). In games it's a tossup. You might wanna look at the Game theatre pro from hercules as well, it's based on the same chip as the santa cruz it just comes with an external box and some more connectors.

Is your cpu intel or amd? if it's amd and you have a motherboard with a via chipset beware. To be fair, some people have been able to successfully install creative sound cards with a via chipset, but me personally I would rather not even have to take the chance with it not working. You could get a non via chipset though.

My 2 pennies...
MStakem

 

[williamc]

aye, Creative and Via is a nono.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out