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Author Topic: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?  (Read 38531 times)

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Offline guily6669

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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #120 on: Monday, April 16, 2012, 01:25:28 AM »
Damn you guys don't joke around. "Sennheiser"...

About the audio not synching, I don't think it is because of the response time of the hardware, since they are values that no one notice. Probably more like a software problem or something.

ps: I will search more on the usb cards, If I find something good for 30$ better than the creative X-FI, I may buy it ;)
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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #121 on: Monday, April 16, 2012, 02:38:04 AM »
The audio not syncing is the ms offset which could be called added latency. My point is that if USB had a serious issue with audio being slow to process, I would see it because with Reclock, it's synced when it leaves the CPU, before it's processed by the USB chip and DAC.

Sennheiser makes great headphones... so I've heard. If I were to get a new pair, it would be Sennheisers. HD 5xx series or higher. I had a pair of Beyerdynamic headphones but I sold them as my speaker setup has better quality and I didn't use the headphones much. There's other high end headphone manufacturers like Grado and... I'm drawing a blank. Certainly not Skull Candy or Beats by Dre, those are junk brands.

For absolute budget, there's this: (with the 12mhz clock, it would be mathematically best to output 48KHz audio)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MINI-PCM2704-HI-FI-USB-DAC-SOUND-CARD-BOARD-hi-fi-ELNA-Capacitance-for-it-/260994381452?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cc47a368c#ht_4211wt_1396
Otherwise you can go with a branded unit with a warranty and resale-ability: (I'm not 100% sure it's USB audio in, analog out or if it just uses USB for power...)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MUSE-HIFI-USB-to-S-PDIF-Converter-USB-DAC-PCM2704-/320726112511?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aacc418ff#ht_3378wt_1163

Aside from that, I think the one I linked to mans is the next step up as it has a great USB chip and low jitter digital receiver chip, both of which are used in high end $300+ DAC's:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SMSL-High-end-MINI-DAC-SD-1955-AD1955-DIR9001-TE7022L-Optical-coaxial-S-/120795055322?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c1ff244da
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Offline guily6669

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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #122 on: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 18:25:16 PM »
I only like the last DAC, but that's already something for heavy duty. The little and cheap one, doesn't look much good (I really liked the hardware of the best DAC).
get the headphones I got
http://headphones.com.au/psingle?productID=178
they cradle the balls and come in sporty purple
If I would go buy some expensive headphones, I think I would buy from Schneider.

I really like the schneider in-ear phones I bought. It's not even the quality of it, it's even more the high efficiency. I had some in-hear phones from Philips that cost around 40€, they really sounded like a subwoofer. But the volume was pretty low, specially in my crappy MP3.

With the Schneider in fact I use my mp3 at 1\30 of volume (1 of 30) and for me it's at a good volume, and it's pretty impressive, since the mp3 is really very low on volume and crappy quality (It's not enough for my taste  :(), but the hearphones really have some crazy efficiency, they are pretty damn low on just 1 bar of volume and the mp3 goes to 30, and they still do pretty good bass (Though I preferred the old expensive philips I had that had higher bass, but their efficiency was pretty bad, had to hear on 8 volume to be almost the same as shneider on 1 or 2).
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« Last Edit: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 18:47:29 PM by guily6669 »

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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #123 on: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 18:31:07 PM »
I just gave the little one as a cheap solution. You could encase it in hot glue or epoxy to make it sturdy.
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Offline Archeh

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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #124 on: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 20:33:37 PM »
The more bass the better. I trust guily.
Hi I'm Archeh I like too have fun online playing shoot-'em-up video games

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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #125 on: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 20:46:55 PM »
The more bass the better. I trust guily.

Anything to disagree with me amirite?
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Offline guily6669

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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #126 on: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 21:32:29 PM »
LOL whateva dog...

Anyway wi-fi is wi-fi, dirty power is dirty power. On dirty power the bigger the bass the bigger the quality... In fact you can even trow away all the speakers and tweeters and use only subwoofers making bass with no sound, and Most will be happy with it and going crazy like YEAAAAHHHH the windows gonna break :)

About the in-earphones from schneider, they really have better quality than the Philips I had (In terms of hi-fidelity and overall quality), but I still preferred the philips in-ear phones, cause they really had the biggest bass I ever heard on little phones (Tried lot's and lot's of them from friends, and I had lot's too), they really make the bass like a subwoofer, but they were expensive too back then (now they'r screwed).

On my MP3 I use 3D BASS effect, it's way better than the normal, but the quality is pretty bad, because this mp3 is pure garbage, but I always wanted the creative X-FI, I bet in there we could use the 3D BASS effects pretty well with their X-FI chip, without having glitches\artifacts in the music like my cheap mp3...
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« Last Edit: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 21:37:45 PM by guily6669 »

Offline guily6669

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Re: What Makes an Excellent Sound Card?
« Reply #127 on: Wednesday, May 23, 2012, 17:15:32 PM »
I finally bought the external usb sound card for my laptop.

Creative X-FI GO PRO! (couldn't buy anything bigger, as it must be very portable and cheap).

For music is nothing big, and if you use high sensivity in-ear phones like SCHNEIDER CX-300 and others... you will kinda hear a very litle static noise (There's no way to hear it in the headphones or speakers at all), it may also be because of the USB port, since there's lot's of things that can make noise on usb, they recommend disabling Spread spectrum, HT................

The quality in games is pretty good, it's just like I was thinking "Hear enemies before they hear you", on AA2.8.5, I could hear the enemy climbing the middle bridge ladders from like almost spawn.

And now I can use full volume and Thank god I don't get distortions like the crap onboard realshit soundcard I have from the ASUS Saberthooth P67 board.


Pretty good for it's very little size and price, also new creative software really works, and AA can really have the good sound effects back on wind7 with no problems, also I can use all the other features on all other non eax games, to make me hear enemies before they hear me :), and the crystalizer is really good, it really makes music to almost sound as good as the original source (it works pretty good, depending on the music).

Also other good thing is you can adjust the crossover frequency, which is something I never seen on any onboard soundcards...
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