Hola gang,

I didn't buy a sound card when I built my machine last year and I am finally sick and tired of the weak on-board audio.

I am looking to maximize music listening. I am really not concerned with gaming audio needs because I game very very infrequently.

I'd like to stay below $250, ideally get something in the $100 ballpark.

Any recommendations? Cards that you are using yourself or know someone is using? I would go the typical creative soundblaster audigy route but I keep finding reviews of Windows 7 compatibility issues with different cards they have, so I am not sure which ones are really lemons.

Thanks.

 

Unless you bought a total bullshit mobo man, most of the onboard stuff nowadays is more then good enough. I refused to believe it until I actually bothered to install the Realtek drivers for my onboard 750i FTW, and I couldn't tell the difference between that and a Soundblaster Fatal1ty no matter how much I tried.

Your speaker quality influences what your stuff sounds like just as much, if not more then your sound card, make sure your listening devices are up to snuff first. I know plenty of people who buy super high end sound cards, then the dumbfucks are rocking 2.1 systems, or they're running audio out via a 3.5mm cable (headphone jack) from their PC to their surround sound system, not realizing they're just getting basic stero out of it, and then blaming their systems.

 

My friend is guilty of that. He was bragging that he was running 7.1 sound off his laptop. I looked at his setup-He was using "simulated" 7.1 off a 3.5 jack.

He's still using it, he refuses to just buy an external sound card that's capable of 7.1. He's an idiot.

 

/goes and recommends a HD1 card with a lynx aurora 8.

Anything consumer isn't much chop anyway in that price range, they are all pretty much the same, all you'll get with a soundcard is better converters and encoding/decoding which is worth it for some. But make sure your speakers can actually allow you hear the better quality.

 

Thanks, everyone. I'll look around more. I ganked a friend's 'good' speakers to test my system and still wasn't pleased with on-board. I think I will look into some PCI-E cards. Some of them come with headphone amps, I don't know how well those work, but if they work as advertised I'll be pretty happy. I usually listen to music on my headphones.

@ Murton yeaaaaaaaaah I don't have $2,500 for a lynx. Thanks though! -_-

 

NuForce uDac-2 $129 + shipping.

It connects to your PC via usb and I've had 0 issues with one of NuForce's higher models (the icon hdp).

It's got a headphone amp and RCA out for active speakers so you're covered on both fronts there (only stereo output though, so if surround sound is on the horizon you probably want to steer clear of this).

http://www.amazon.com/NuForce-uDAC-2-Silver-Headphone-24bit/dp/B003Y5LY1C

 

FTW
FTW!!!

Middy, that's an awesomely intentional Model designation. I'm just sayin. I hope it really is FTW for you.

 

It actually always has been up until recently (but I'm more inclined to blame my PSU then the mobo at this point) It was a mid tier board 150$ +/-, only lacking 1 PCIE x 16 slot over the top tier 300$+ board. Still had 2 of them, considering I don't SLI it was one more then I needed, lol.