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A sound card had better fellate me for $142, Jesus!

How much better is the sound quality from this card compared to on-board AC 97 for listening to music and watching movies? I know it might relieve some processor work.. but honestly, wouldn't 142 dollars be better spent on higher quality speakers than a soundcard? I run my computer through my 5.1 receiver with B&W speakers

#2, which B&Ws? If you have high end B&Ws you should understand why somebody would spend a measly $142 on a sound card. But then I guess you probably don't.

I have the 700 series of B&W speakers running through rotel amplification. I understand why I might spend 142 dollars on a sound card, but I don't understand why someone with 80 dollar computer speakers would.

Anyhow, for listening to lossless encoded music from a PC, I don't really know how much a difference a sound card would make besides maybe a placebo effect. 24 bit audio is pretty rare unless you're listening to DTS encoded DVDs and the 192 KHz sample rate is pretty rare as well. On-board audio has come a long way.

Onboard audio sucks. It has significant jitter in digital out and terrible noise in analog out. Even so, you may not hear the jitter so much and the difference per $$ is nowhere near as high as between low end computer speakers and decent stereo bookshelves or higher.


When they claim XtremeGamer, believe it, all of Creative's audiphile cards are sold under their other label, not "Creative".

#5, what is the effect of jitter on the sound? Is there something specific to look for (ex. distortion, treble roll off, etc).

I am asking because there is a lot of BS involved with high end audio equipment. How else can they justify charging several thousand dollars for a CD player?

#4, I agree with the $142 - $80 comment.

What about if you don't have speakers, but have really good headphones?

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/18/creative_x/index.html

Reviews on the x-fi line of cards. Probably more info then you ever wanted to know, but the overall opinion is if you are into sound quality, you might want to consider a card from the x-fi line.

Why pay for a 7.1 sound card with digital outputs (which you have to use to benefit from most of the card's high end features) when you're plugging in a lone pair of headphones? These cards are made for home-theater and 5.1 setups, listening to 2.0 in your headphones probably won't receive too great of a benefit, perhaps a 5% jump in clarity and detail.. maybe..