Sound cards!

I'm vaguely thinking of replacing my sound card with... well, a better sound card. Anyway, I was just wondering if any of you lot had any suggestions for make and model?

Foolishly, I gave away my Diamond Monster Sound MX300 and replaced it with this crap SBLive! POS, due to compatibility issues with some things after upgrading to XP... I still regret that (and of course, found the solution to those issues shortly after this). Why the hell can't Creative make a wavetable that doesn't make me cry blood? (yes yes, SoundFonts... I tried using those once. I can almost figure out a VCR, but... jeezuz. Probably because I got some OEM mutant version or something; Creative's own drivers won't recognize my poor, bastard hardware)

For some reason, this is strangely cool, I think, though not remotely useful for me. How is Turtle Beach these days? Still sunny and warm?

Thanks in advance! Hehe, try not to turn this into a flame war over the econo-political effects of sound quality on the sale of badly scripted land-streaming-audio jukeboxes by wiggling avatars in the Welcome Area, of which half has been sold and turned into a strip-mall, naked. With Tourette's.

Yes.

I have a Planetronic's headset... it has its own built in sound card and is USB 2.0 compatible. It's a pretty penny, I'm not sure which model it is, I'd have to look.

It's worth it though, since it's surround sound and all that good stuff and has the same quality as any Creative sound card in existance.

Check em out .

i have a creative audigy 2, which is one of the doohickeys that you can do live recording onto your pc with. originally cost like.. $250, dunno what its selling for today, comes with remote.. you know, i've never used the damn thing, i don't think... cause i've got an intergrated sound card with my compy.. maybe we can work up a deal if you'd like to buy it- either L or real $

IM me

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy2/

ps- there's more than one edition of my sound card, i have no idea which one i have, but i do know it is the one on this page, at least it sounds like it is.

What the heck is wrong with an SB Live? My SB Live cost me a shitload of money back in the day, and it still works great after 4 years.

The SBLive was actually a break-through in PC sound architecture in it's day. The longest-standing and most affordable audio solution for a computer.

Creative screwed up the original Audigy design, but have since fixed it up with the Audigy 2 ZS series. (Which I have in this box. I also own a pro-audio rig with a far more robust audio card.

The Turtle Beach cards are pretty good, MAudio's are prolly your best bet if you're looking for a high-end amateur audio card.

look to the Computer Music site for some good reviews.

You can't be serious. I ditched my MX300 years ago for a SB Live. That MX300 was ok for a year or so, but for some reason my old VIA based motherboard (was using a K6-2 processor back then) suddenly developed compatibility issues. The VIA miniport driver stopped working, and the damn thing stuttered like Max Headroom. The SB live went in, and there was a very noticable improvement. I got an OEM card for about 60 bucks, and it was, in my opinion, a much better buy than the MX300.

I have since upgraded to a SB Audigy, but the SB Live still lives in my Linux machine, and runs flawlessly. On the other hand, the old MX300 is buried in my spare parts collection. I really wonder how you found drivers for that relic, considering Diamond products haven't been supported for years.

Actually, Diamond is still around, and has recently put a page back up where you can still download the drivers for the card, IIRC. Also, Microsoft is apparently themselves taking over maintaining the drivers, or were. Strange. I liked it better than the Live! that I have now... the features of the card, and to me, it just sounded better. The only time I had compatibility issues was when I switched to XP, but then I found a way to fix them, too late. I agree, though, that Creative drivers are in general more compatible, even if they do implement some things strangely.