Curse

moriz · Jul 11, 2009, 02:55 PM // 14:55

after noticing that my onboard sound can stutter badly in some gaming situations, i've decided to take the plunge and buy myself a good sound card and a surround sound headset. now the question becomes... which ones?

i've been pretty impressed with razer's barracuda sound card and headset. looking at the reviews, they all seem favorable. however, the sound card is only available in PCI format. my motherboard has one free PCI slot: directly beneath my graphic card. i fear the sound card is long enough to partially block the air intake fan. i don't know how long the sound card is, but my graphic card is 9.5" long (HD 4890). without a proper point of reference, i really can't tell if this will be a problem or not.

the same goes for the razer headset. it looks impressive, the reviews are impressive also, but it uses a special connector that only the razer sound card has. it does come with an adapter for standard sound cards, but i don't know if there will be a loss in quality.

and i do admit it, i have no idea about quality sound cards and headsets, so i'm open to suggestions.

KZaske · Jul 11, 2009, 08:38 PM // 20:38

I have a friend that uses the Razer Barracuda sound card, he likes it. However there are some driver issues. Here is a review that covers the sound card itself; http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/cuda_sound/. In reality the Barracuda is a reworked C-Media 8788 (From the review at Phoronix.com; "The sound card itself looks very nice as well for those of you with case windows. Moreover, as we had exposed in this article, at heart the Barracuda AC-1 is the C-Media Oxygen HD CMI8788.") Because he uses XP 64Bit OS, he ended up going to C-Media for a driver. There is now a 64bit driver available for both XP and Vista. Please note that this is an End of Life product, they may or may not be any more updates to drivers.
As for the headset, techpowerup did a revew using a SoundBlaster XFi sound card. Link: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Razer/Barracuda-HP1 They were quite happy with how it performed.
In summary, If I could afford the Barracuda HP1s I would buy them. As for the sound card, I think I would skip it if I were you. There are now better cards out there.

moriz · Jul 12, 2009, 04:11 PM // 16:11

thanks. what's a good sound card that you would recommend? preferably under $100 CDN.

KZaske · Jul 12, 2009, 09:19 PM // 21:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

thanks. what's a good sound card that you would recommend? preferably under $100 CDN.

That is a hard one as almost every "good sound card" is in excess of a hundred bucks and I have no idea what you are looking for. Interface? What OS? ect... I would advise you stay away from Creative's Xtream Audio X-Fi (not really an X-Fi card just a Live! 5.1 with reworked drivers). Of the ones I have heard about the Asus Xonar & AuzenTech AZT-XPCINE are both stand outs and support a wide range of operating systems. NewEgg has both for under a hundred bucks. I really wish I had gotten the AuzenTech when I was looking for a new sound card, but I ended up with an XtreamGamer. The drivers are huge for that card!

moriz · Jul 13, 2009, 12:47 AM // 00:47

i've been looking at this one:

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...=018623&cid=SC

the local shops are very good around here, so i often go there instead of newegg/ncix/tigerdirect. not to mention, newegg is still subjected to import tax, which means that my local shops will often have better prices.

KZaske · Jul 14, 2009, 03:25 AM // 03:25

Nice price for that card. I would go for it, you can't really go wrong with a Xonar. As long as you understnad that it is an older card, future driver support may be spotty.

moriz · Jul 14, 2009, 03:31 AM // 03:31

bought it, and it works quite well with the razer barracuda HP-1. it did manage to BSOD my computer a bunch of times as i fiddle around with drivers though, but i think i've found the stable driver needed.

KZaske · Jul 15, 2009, 04:47 AM // 04:47

Cool, congrats and enjoy. As good if not better sound than an X-Fi at around half the cpu load (from what I have been told).

Brett Kuntz · Jul 15, 2009, 05:10 AM // 05:10

X-Fi Titanium has EAX5, which is the latest EAX available right now. You don't need surround headphones, they are a scam/bullshat, just buy a nice pair of stereo headphones.

moriz · Jul 15, 2009, 11:22 PM // 23:22

strange, mine actually works as advertised. in GW, i can now pinpoint exactly where skills are being used by listening for the sound effects. same with other games like mass effect and COD4.

the only bad part is in fallout 3, where the radio music stutters badly. however, i think all dedicated sound cards have that problem.

Brett Kuntz · Jul 16, 2009, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Surround Headphones "work", but you are overpaying for something that sounds better from stereo headphones. Remember, you only have 2 ears, you only need 2 sources of sound to hear properly. The absolute best available sound starts with an EAX enabled Sound Blaster card.

moriz · Jul 16, 2009, 02:37 AM // 02:37

the barracuda HP-1 cost around $135 CDN when all's said and done. or in other words, about twice as much as a good pair of stereo headset. whether its actually twice as good is questionable, but the combination of headset+sound card has me feverishly going through my music collection; the jump in audio quality is quite large.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14500

^ i used that for my purchase. apparently, while it only support EAX 2.0, there's no noticeable difference between it and a much more costly X-FI.

Brett Kuntz · Jul 16, 2009, 06:32 AM // 06:32

Quote:

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the Oxygen HD audio chip used in the Xonar DX is its relatively pedestrian positional 3D audio credentials. The chip natively supports EAX 2.0—a technology that dates back to the SoundBlaster Live! and is restricted to 32 concurrent 3D voices. Creative's latest X-Fis can handle up to 128 concurrent 3D voices at higher definition sampling rates and resolutions. The X-Fi also performs positional audio calculations in hardware, while the Oxygen HD has to offload them to the host system's CPU.

The popularity of multi-core processors (and more importantly, games that leave multiple cores unused) has lessened the need for hardware-accelerated 3D audio, but there's still a big gap between EAX 2.0 and 5.0. Asus bridges that gap with a software feature it calls DirectSound 3D GX 2.0, which is capable of emulating EAX 5.0 functionality that had previously only been available with Creative's X-Fi cards.

DS3D GX presents the Xonar as an EAX 5.0-compliant audio card, and then intercepts EAX calls, re-routing them to the Xonar's own audio processing engine. That engine does its best to approximate EAX effects, and it can handle up to 128 concurrent 3D voices with enhanced reverb effects for "most" DirectSound 3D games. Positional audio calculations are still performed on the host system's CPU, but DS3D GX at least brings the Xonar beyond EAX 2.0's 32-voice limitation.

Audio quality begins and ends with EAX support, 99% of your quality depends on EAX support. S2N ratios, sample rates, bit-depth, gold connectors, solid caps, etc, have nothing to do with audio quality when gaming. Gamers don't need 100% accurate AK47 gunshot sounds pumping through a $1,500 pair of HQ headphones, because a 99.99% accurate gunshot sounds through $50 headphones accomplishes the exact same effect. I'd rather have the AK47 gunshot's position in 3D space 100% accurate than the sound effect itself.

And, I believe the X-Fi Titanium is around $100 now, pretty affordable considering SB sound cards are "relevant" for 5+ years.

Also, that card isn't PCI-E, it's based on PCI chips using a PCI-E bridge, which increases latencies.

KZaske · Jul 18, 2009, 03:03 AM // 03:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kuntz

Audio quality begins and ends with EAX support, 99% of your quality depends on EAX support. S2N ratios, sample rates, bit-depth, gold connectors, solid caps, etc, have nothing to do with audio quality when gaming. Gamers don't need 100% accurate AK47 gunshot sounds pumping through a $1,500 pair of HQ headphones, because a 99.99% accurate gunshot sounds through $50 headphones accomplishes the exact same effect. I'd rather have the AK47 gunshot's position in 3D space 100% accurate than the sound effect itself.

And, I believe the X-Fi Titanium is around $100 now, pretty affordable considering SB sound cards are "relevant" for 5+ years.

Also, that card isn't PCI-E, it's based on PCI chips using a PCI-E bridge, which increases latencies.

Shesh... Can't you accept that with his budget and given the limits of his system, the sound card he chose is the right one. He is very happy with the choice he made. EAX is not the end all/be all of sound quality, there are a lot of other factors involved that I am sure you will happly trounce so I am not going to address any of them here.
The one HUGE drawback of Creative sound cards (and it pains me to say it as a long time user of creative products) these days is the fantasticly bloated drivers they pretend to write. The driver for my XtreamGamer X-Fi was well over 100MB, WTF? There are so many bugs, memory leaks, bios downgrades and other nice features in them that I don't even want to count them.

I would like you to prove to me that an XFi Tit can be had for less than one hundred dollars Canadian, that includes shipping.

Brett Kuntz · Jul 18, 2009, 03:29 AM // 03:29

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=111117...at ive%20Labs

$105

The non-Fatality ones are around $100 on various sites. Same card, just without the metal casing.

moriz · Jul 18, 2009, 03:30 AM // 03:30

now if i can just get rid of the stupid radio stuttering in fallout 3, i would be a happy camper. editing the ini file and downloading custom mp3 decoders have done nothing (well, if you don't count the time where the radio turned into nothing but white noise).

if anyone's got a good workaround for this, i'm all ears.

Brett Kuntz · Jul 18, 2009, 04:26 AM // 04:26

Radio stutter? Just that game? You should check their support forums for that problem, sounds very weird and isolated.

moriz · Jul 18, 2009, 04:30 AM // 04:30

yep, perfect sound EXCEPT for the radio stutter.

apparently, this is a fallout 3 issue, affecting EVERY modern dedicated sound card. the X-FI's are also affected.

KZaske · Jul 18, 2009, 08:05 PM // 20:05

Glad to hear that it is not your sound card Moriz.