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milliganp
Has a life
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:14 am
Posts: 2
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This tends to be a perennial question but could anyone recommend a high quality soundcard, internal or USB, to connect a PC to a decent hi-fi system? Although my onboard sound is 24 bit, the quality is not as good as a decent but not exotic CD player.
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| Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:29 am |
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saspro
Site Admin
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:53 pm
Posts: 8603
Location: location, location
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ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe Sound card
Expensive but good
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| Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:32 am |
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dogbert10
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:23 pm
Posts: 638
Location: 3959 miles from the centre of the Earth - give or take a bit
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Budget - the Xonar or X-Fi. E-Mu 1212M if you want a professional sound card.
_________________
i7 860 @ 3.5GHz, GTX275, 4GB DDR3
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| Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:51 am |
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snowyweston
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:28 pm
Posts: 851
Location: EC1 Baby!
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I've read it has awful driver support and is dogged by compatability issues for the upper-end tech..
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| Tue Apr 28, 2009 1:24 pm |
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vdbswong
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:56 pm
Posts: 603
Location: Durham, UK
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Same here... there's a whole thread of issues with it on AVForums  Anyhow, depending on budget, i would probably say the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude or i believe Auzentech are releasing a new high end card that's supposed to be better than the Xonar HDAV thingy.
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| Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:12 pm |
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soddit112
Spends far too much time on here
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:12 pm
Posts: 2020
Location: Mute City
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| Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:14 pm |
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snowyweston
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:28 pm
Posts: 851
Location: EC1 Baby!
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My main beef with the the Xonar, perhaps inappropriately so, is it's attempt to do all - if I want EAX and all that jazz then sell me a multimedia-gaming card, but if I want as close to hifi quality, do a dedicated card.
It's one of the reasons why I've yet to build a dedicated media htpc (foregoing the financing issue) - I want a card with (at least) 5.1 high-quality analogue RCA-outputs that can decode Dolby TrueHD AND DTS-HD Master Audio. I do not need HDMI. I do not need video-passthrough. I just want that hardware/support and powerful, adjustable software.
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| Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:43 pm |
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Angelic
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:16 pm
Posts: 704
Location: Leeds, UK
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X-fi Titanium has transformed my PC's sound capabilities.
However I don't use 5.1 on my PC (space issues) so I can't testify to the effectiveness of it in that situation.
Currently got it connected to a Cambridge A1 amp and sounds awesome - bass is more than I could dream of!
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| Sat May 02, 2009 5:21 pm |
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okenobi
Spends far too much time on here
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:59 pm
Posts: 4932
Location: Sestriere, Piemonte, Italia
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What do you run then? I'm still using onboard shash with my hi-fi and although my CD sounds noticeably better than a FLAC or 320k mp3, it's not a gaping hole of a difference and I can't be assed to put CDs in the tray anymore!
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| Sat May 02, 2009 9:08 pm |
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