Worthwhile Soundcard?

[nub]

So last night this ancient Turtle Beach Santa Cruz took a shit finally and now it ceases to work completely. Windows won't pick it up at all anymore. I've tried running the diagnostics program the drivers have, but every test failed completely. Reinstalling the drivers didn't work either. The thing's like 9 years old so it's no surprise it died, and it barely worked with Windows 7 32-bit to boot.

Anyway, I need some pointers on getting a reliable, money-worth soundcard. Everything I read up on just makes me so confused. It's like every common card is fucking useless if you have Windows 7, and you have to pay big money for a really nice card that is sure to work.

I'm really unsure about Creative because everyone claims their drivers are horrible and the infamous "squeal of death" thing scares me. This computer came with some custom Audigy model that Dell used for a time; an integrated card, but that thing stopped working after my first reformat and I was never able to get it working again. The drivers weren't by Creative, they were that Sigmatel junk that Dell loves to use.

On top of that, I bought a Turtle Beach Riviera months ago but I was completely unsatisfied with the sound quality so I returned it. I'm not sure if their Montego model is worth the money either, but if someone wants to fill me in, I'd appreciate it.

My budget is around $65, I don't plan on buying some ultra mega $100+ model. The only slots I have available are 1 AGP (I don't know why I have one in the first place) and 2 PCI. No PCI-E slots, so any card that uses them won't be compatible. So far the only reasonable cards I have found are these, but I'm totally unsure of their reliability and the driver stability:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829118109

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102006

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829111002

Those had pretty high ratings and some decent reviews. The Xtreme Gamer card is a little steep on price but if it's the only worthwhile one to get for that price then I'll choose it, but again that "squeal of death" thing scares me from buying it. If the Montego is actually good then I'll buy that instead. I've never heard of Diamond so I don't know how reliable they are, but that card has pretty good ratings from what I can see, and the price is pretty good.

[The Doctor]

Squeal of death? What the hell is that all about. I've only ever had one problem with a creative card and that was due to Windows assigning the same IRQ for the video and sound, causing the sound to crackle when it was loading a game or under heavy graphical strain. Mind you that doesn't happen with my new, much faster machine.

[Dr. Delta]

I bought a 2nd-hand Xtremegamer like a year ago, works fine. Had some issues once with the drivers; but a new windows and different drivers fixed that. I'd say they're pretty decent and well priced audio cards.

[nub]

Someone recommended the Asus Xonar DS, anyone know if that's good?

I'm skeptical about all the bad reviews on Newegg. There's not that many at all and my Uncle told me that most of those people have rare system configs that are just not suitable for the hardware they're bitching about in their review for not working properly or dying or something, so I feel more confident in deciding what to buy.

PS: Doctor, you use your XtremeGamer with WIndows 7, correct? I need to be sure that it's totally compatible with it. I have 32-bit Ultimate Edition.

[Dr. Delta]

Someone recommended the Asus Xonar DS, anyone know if that's good?

I'm skeptical about all the bad reviews on Newegg. There's not that many at all and my Uncle told me that most of those people have rare system configs that are just not suitable for the hardware they're bitching about in their review for not working properly or dying or something, so I feel more confident in deciding what to buy.

PS: Doctor, you use your XtremeGamer with WIndows 7, correct? I need to be sure that it's totally compatible with it. I have 32-bit Ultimate Edition.

Windows 7, Ultimate X64.

You can either download the drivers/suites etc etc from the Creative website, or try out one of the unofficial XFI Support Pack's; they all worked fine in my case.

[nub]

Alright, cool beans. I'll order the X-Fi when I get the chance. Thanks for the help.

[antie]

If you're looking into external soundcards, I picked myself up an Audigy 2 NX USB off ebay a few years ago, has been working brilliantly ever since then. Really good build quality, apart from anything else, e.g. the jacks are unmovable and made of a thick metal perimeter.

The card is obviously located away from other components which can't interfere with it (this happened with my PCI card - after the microphone jack broke, the actual sound became distorted - can't remember why exactly but I'm convinced that this happened because the sound card was too close to the other hardware).

Of course, if you're an audio technition, you'd probably want to go for the PCI card. Although, using this with Reason and such in conjuction with ASIO4ALL drivers, latency is similar to a PCI card.

[nub]

I did look in to USB external cards but I'd prefer to have PCI so it's out of the way. I think laser mice and CD Roms like to interfere with sound cards though.

Anyway, my dad found an unopened, new in the box Creative X-FI XtremeGamer for $40 (versus $70) and free shipping on Ebay and ordered that for me, so I'm just waiting now. Thanks for the tips though.


EDIT: Wow scratch that. The seller on Ebay contacted my dad today and told him he had 4 new and 4 used versions of the card but already sold all the new ones, and asked my dad if he wanted a used one instead, so we disagreed and now the whole deal is dropped so I have no sound card. Then I go to check up on Newegg and not only is the fucking thing out of stock, but they raised the god damn price up to $100 from $70. Do I have like the worst luck or what?

[marks]

I picked up an SB Audigy2 SE for like £10 or something, cheap as hell and it works great for everything eg 7.1 surround sound and such - no fancy high-end features but works great for everything I need.

[Terr]

I'm currently using onboard sound and I'd like to find something that does positional audio very well. Other than that I'm not too interested in super-duper high-fidelity yada yada.