Best Windows 7 Sound Card

Hi  

You cannot... and WHICH computer...specs ?

All the best Brett  

A driver based sound accelerator isn't going to be worth your time. If you're using the onboard audio to your motherboard, you might be able to expand to a add-in sound card produced by Creative Labs or Turtle Beach. They are both extremely reputable and have good audio device options.

Since Windows Vista(so 7 and 8) most sound work is handled by software anyway. OpenAL and ASIO can still be hardware accelerated, but need each program to be able to take advantage of it. For instance, you can get a plugin for many music players that WILL use hardware acceleration and depending on the card, can sound very good.

Now here is the interesting part. Modern CPU's have WAY more then enough power to get the job done when it comes to sound, but dedicated cards tend to have better quality parts. This applies mostly for analog output as digital will reply on your amp to do the conversion.

Short answer would be depending on your tastes, but it is important to know that software based cards are going to be the future(not good for some users, but most will not notice the difference).

I personally have an X-fi titanium and it works very good and sound great to me. I use hardware plugins when I can.

That's true too. (It's been one of those days...   )

I am using the onboard sound card for the computer I'm on right now which is an HP box PC and it gets great sound quality. I guess it would be in the "eye of the beholder" per say.