hey guys since i am using an aftermarket cooler for my video card it seems i dont have much room between my current soundcard and my video card. so now i am in the market for a new soundcard. looks like ill be looking for a PCI-e sound card now also. any good ideas or what i should. now i love clear sound and im kinda a audiophile so i love to hear awesome sound, whatever teh soudn card is its goign ot be paired up with the z-5500. so guys let me know any suggestions on what kind of card i should get. thanks
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Looking for new sound card
- Thread starter vincedea
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jamesrt2004
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audiophile with z-5500? lols...
anyways will you be running them through digital or analog?
if digital it doesnt really matter, if analog.....
what do you do mostly in order gaming/music/movies
I think most people will say something of the auzentech variety, due to using the x-fi chip for gaming, plus better op-amps etc, and also has native pci-e capability which the asus xonar's sadly don't have
imo' i'd go for the forte' as there great cards + even better for headphones
anyways will you be running them through digital or analog?
if digital it doesnt really matter, if analog.....
what do you do mostly in order gaming/music/movies
I think most people will say something of the auzentech variety, due to using the x-fi chip for gaming, plus better op-amps etc, and also has native pci-e capability which the asus xonar's sadly don't have
imo' i'd go for the forte' as there great cards + even better for headphones
LOL so im not really an audiophile. im going to be mostly be gaming, listening to music, and watching movies. yeah right now its between creative x-fi titanium or the auzentech the reason for this is because the creative one is shorter in length since im not sure if the forte one will fit.
Darren
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| System Name | Cheap yet powerful gaming and entertainment rig! |
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| Motherboard | Asrock ALiveNF7G-HD720p Rev v5.0 |
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| Video Card(s) | XFX ATI4830 |
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| Case | Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case |
| Audio Device(s) | Auzentech X-Meridian, Pioneer VSX-516 Receiver 7.1 with DD/DD EX/Prologic II/DTS/DTS-ES//DTS: Neo |
| Power Supply | Cool Master eXtreme Power 460W PSU |
| Software | Vista Ultimate X64 Corporate Edition |
Since you are an audiophile, I'm presuming that you're interested in Dolby Digital and DTS encoding, in which case you'd want an Auzentech, Asus or Auzen X-fi card. The Creative x-Fi Titanium only supports Dolby Digital encoding but lacks DTS encoding, not a big deal considering that is much cheaper than the Auzen X-Fi Forte it is a good choice. You can pick up the Auzentech X-plosion for cheap which also supports both DD/DTS encoding.
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| Processor | Intel Core i9 9900k @ 5.1GHZ all core load (8c 16t) |
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| Storage | 256GB WD Black NVME drive, 4TB across various SSDs/NVMEs, 4TB HDD |
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| Mouse | Logitech G502 Lightspeed on powerplay mousemat |
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I've got the ASUS Xonar D2X (pci-e) hooked up to my Z-5500s through an analogue connection and it sounds really good, so i can reccomend the xonar D2X (especially since i had to get rid of my x-fi titanium (pci-e) because of serious crackling sound issues :shadedshu
Darren
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| System Name | Cheap yet powerful gaming and entertainment rig! |
|---|---|
| Processor | AMD Athlon 3800+ X2 Windsor, 1 MB L2 Cache (512k L2 Per Core), 65W Energy efficient, 2GHz @ 2.78 Ghz |
| Motherboard | Asrock ALiveNF7G-HD720p Rev v5.0 |
| Cooling | Freezer 64, 2x120mm, 1x92mm |
| Memory | 8 GB DDRII PC6400 @ 929 MHz OCZ (2GBx4) timing: 5-5-5-5-16-2T |
| Video Card(s) | XFX ATI4830 |
| Storage | Seagate 320 GB SATA (16 MB Cache) |
| Display(s) | 19' HannsG (1440x900 @ 75hz) |
| Case | Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case |
| Audio Device(s) | Auzentech X-Meridian, Pioneer VSX-516 Receiver 7.1 with DD/DD EX/Prologic II/DTS/DTS-ES//DTS: Neo |
| Power Supply | Cool Master eXtreme Power 460W PSU |
| Software | Vista Ultimate X64 Corporate Edition |
human_error, isn't the entire point of having the ASUS Xonar DX and the Z-5500 is to take advantage of the soundcards Dolby Digital Live encoding? Why use analogue?
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| Motherboard | MSI MEG Z390 ACE |
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| Video Card(s) | Powercolor RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate (XTXH) @ 2.6ghz core, 2.1ghz mem |
| Storage | 256GB WD Black NVME drive, 4TB across various SSDs/NVMEs, 4TB HDD |
| Display(s) | Asus 32" PG32QUX (4k 144hz mini-LED backlit IPS with freesync & gsync & 1400 nit HDR) |
| Case | Corsair 760T |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX850i |
| Mouse | Logitech G502 Lightspeed on powerplay mousemat |
| Keyboard | Logitech G910 |
| VR HMD | Wireless Vive Pro & Valve knuckles |
| Software | Windows 10 Pro |
My pc lacks a blu-ray drive so i use my ps3 with a digital optical cable to play blu-ray, and all the content i play through my pc (downloaded content) doesn't need dolby live encoding.
D
Deleted member 24505
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I'm using a asus xonar dx to my denon amp with a optical(toslink) connection on win7 7100 and it works fine.I went off creative as they dont sem to work very well on vista/win7,and eax is useless on win7/vista too.
I highly recommend a asus card.
I highly recommend a asus card.
MatTheCat
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| Storage | OCZ Vertex 2 240GB SSD / 2*320GB WDC RAID 0 |
| Display(s) | Samsung 226BW 21" 1650*1080 |
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| Audio Device(s) | Creative X-FI Professional PCI |
| Power Supply | OCZ PC Power & Cooling 860W |
| Software | Windows 7 x64 |
Creative X-Fi cards are bugged to hell with Creative never offering no fixes. Save yourself the risk and the hassles of putting up with being an X-Fi owner.
I own a PCI X-Fi Fatal1ty professional and after months of Creative stating things like, 'if you want the card to work properly you will have to underclock your system' or 'you need to increase your IRQ latencies' and various other lies/unacceptable suggestions, Creative came out and said the reason why the PCI X-Fi cards dont work very good (clicking popping sounds in games) is cos you need the PCI-e versions which will run faster! Which bascially means they admit that the PCI one I shelled out £100 for is just a piece of crap.
Ohh, fantastic, merely another £100 just to get what I would more or less get with onboard sound to begin with!
I dont know what catalogue of bugs comes with their latest batch of soundcards but it would be my personal policy to avoid them like the plague.
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| Audio Device(s) | Onboard |
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I got a nice ASUS Xonar DX PCI-E avaliable in the FS section if you're interested. 
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1497974#post1497974
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1497974#post1497974
to matthecat iv never had any issue with creative cards but anywho. yeah looks like it might be the auzentech forte card. but does anyone who if it will fit on a gigabyte ud3p board since i think the card might be a little to long hence i might need the creative card instead.
MatTheCat
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| Memory | 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz 9-10-9-27 |
| Video Card(s) | POWERCOLOR HD 7970 3GB |
| Storage | OCZ Vertex 2 240GB SSD / 2*320GB WDC RAID 0 |
| Display(s) | Samsung 226BW 21" 1650*1080 |
| Case | Lian Li PC B-25 |
| Audio Device(s) | Creative X-FI Professional PCI |
| Power Supply | OCZ PC Power & Cooling 860W |
| Software | Windows 7 x64 |
Well, I believe about 50% of Creative X-Fi users are happy with their product. You must be one of the lucky ones.
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well, your mostly going to be gaming and you have to ask yourself, is it worth it, I hate to say it because I have 2 creative cards in 2 pc's but eax is a dying format, theres gonna be alot of new games that just use xact now because its cheaper, especially with the ports, Crystalizer isn't bad but alot of the other audio cards to compare with have very clean audio to begin with.
If you wanna stick with creative go Auzentech
If you wanna stick with creative go Auzentech