# Creative/Asus cards alternatives?



## Octopuss (May 21, 2016)

Are there even any?
I'm sick to my stomach from Creative's driver support. I have the ZxR and during all the time the card has been out, there have been I think 3 driver releases. I don't use any of the extra wannabe fancy features and I only have classical stereo setup, and even then the driver behaves weird at times. Sometimes the sound gets broken and I have to restart. Whenever I install new graphic card drivers, the Creative services go absolutely crazy, start crashing, and I have to reinstall the entire driver. That's just to name some of the crap that I personally have problems with.
Asus is even worse, two years after the release of Phoebus there was only a half arsed borderline malfunctioning driver and still is.
What's the point of great hardware when the drivers suck donkey dick?!

Are there even any alternatives (not for professional use obviously, just gaming and music)? I'm afraid there's nothing. I think there used to be a third party driver written from scratch for some of the old Creative cards, but nothing for modern ones and I bet writing a driver is borderline impossible task anyway.


----------



## Jetster (May 21, 2016)

I capture sound using some pretty expensive hardware. When I'm not using my monitor speakers I play back just with my ASUS Xonar DGX $30 sound card with Unified Drivers and Have never had the issues you describe. I stopped using Creative when 7 came out. Just buy a DAC maybe


----------



## Ebo (May 21, 2016)

I would say go with ASUS, theres lot less driver problems.


----------



## AlienIsGOD (May 21, 2016)

Asus with UNI modified  drivers. DSX owner here and have been using UNI drivers since day of purchase


----------



## Octopuss (May 21, 2016)

In what way are the drivers modded? I don't think it's on the code level? And with the quality of Asus' programming, not much can be achieved, can it?


----------



## Frick (May 21, 2016)

Jetster said:


> Have never had the issues you describe.



Same here, I have an ancient Creative card and it just works in Windows 7.

What about USB low end recording sound cards? Like Focusrite Scarlett 2i2? I honestly have no idea how the sound quality on that stuff competes with other sound cards.


----------



## Octopuss (May 21, 2016)

I have no experience with USB devices of this type and I am not even interested, because I like to have everything contained within the case  Also, I am sure USB sound cards come with some disadvantages too.


----------



## AlienIsGOD (May 21, 2016)

Octopuss said:


> In what way are the drivers modded? I don't think it's on the code level? And with the quality of Asus' programming, not much can be achieved, can it?



http://maxedtech.com/uni-xonar-features/

Asus has quality programming in other areas, sound cards are  other one of them


----------

