Quality soundcard for listening?

[admin_exported]

Like many people I have gigabytes of my music now ripped onto my PC in high quality MP3 (most of my CD's @ 320, my downloaded music not below 192). As such it is my listening source and I actually haven't owned a working CD player for several years. Unfortunately though my soundcard seems to be poorly as I am hearing distortion coming out the left channel, particularly when songs are busily playing at full tilt. I know the soundcard is the problem as I have tested my speakers and amp with my DVD player, playing several CD's and there is no problem.

I have a Rotel RA-04 amp, that I bought today and (embarassingly) the speakers from my Sony all-in-one system which the Rotel has replaced. I am planning on getting (hopefully) a pair of B&W 685's to replace them in the next few weeks though. So going back to my original question - what good quality soundcard would you recommend to serve as a good listening source. I only want it for use with primarily music and sometimes movies, I'm not big on the PC gaming front.

Any help appreciated.

 

[VoodooDoctor]

The Soundblaster Xi-fi is a very good soundcard. It has some processing technology that enhances MP3 playback too.

 

[Anonymous]

I own an Auzentech X-Meridian and is regarded as one of the top pc soundcards for music and movies but cost about £100.

It has now been replaced by the Auzentech Xi-Fi Prelude which is equally as good. I couldn't believe the difference in sound quality between the X-Meridian and my old Audigy 2. The Asus Zonar is also a good card.

The Creative Xi-Fi Xtreme Music is also quite a good card if your on a budget of £50.

If I were you I would grab a Auzentech Xi-Fi Prelude £117 see www.overclockers.co.uk. This card is just out and Creative and Auzentech have joined forces to make the best soundcard available.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="BennyBoy02"]I know the soundcard is the problem as I have tested my speakers and amp with my DVD player, playing several CD's and there is no problem.[/quote]

It could also be your cable that you are running between the soundcard and the amp. May be you should try changing the cable and see if that makes a difference.

I would also suggest you to look at DENON DCM-290/390 or a similar product.

 

[Anonymous]

I have the Onkyo se200 and it sounds quite good. You can find it on Ebay.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="VoodooDoctor"]The Soundblaster Xi-fi is a very good soundcard. It has some processing technology that enhances MP3 playback too.[/quote]

I'll second that, but if you get the elite-pro model (which is waay more expensive) you also get a drop out box which has external DACs for the headphone output with proper gold plated phono outputs too, which you could use as your stereo input. Why on flying earth death they didn't include ALL of the audio outputs on this drop out box I don't know because the inside of a PC case is a veritable EM intereference minefield. If I turn the volume up full on my system and drag a window around on my desktop, I can hear the graphics card painting each frame. makes a sort of beebebeeebebbebebebebb noise. Getting the 8000C helped reject this noise enourmously over my 8000a though (which was one of the earliest models) and that was an even bigger step over my rotel RA-01.

As for the '24bit crystallizer' on th X-fi. IMHO it's just a gimmick. It certainly isn't upsampling your data to 24 bits and filling in missing data. I was listening to dark side of the moon on dvd audio (x-fi will play dvd audio damn well) and the 96khz, 24bit audio stream was affected in exactly the same way as an mp3 by this '24 bit crystallizer'. I think all it does is boost your treble... probably in a more complicated than turn the treble knob up kind of way that is something to do with mp3s weaknesses.. but ultimately not much different to that. Ultimately though, you cannot get the lost information back. 3Dfx tried a similar thing in their PC 3D graphics cards, using a post filter on their rendered image they created the '22bit colour' affair, which was really fudged 16 bit (when the competition was using 32 bit colour). It did look better than normal 16bit, unless you caught the algorithm with its pants down (i.e. looking at transparent layers) and I imagine this crystallizer will suffer in a similar way.. just havent found what constitutes having 24 bits of crystallized pants around your ankles yet.=D

It'd be nice if creative allowed you to apply the crystallizer as a directx plugin for audio creation programs like cakewalk or fruityloops... I make my own music and.. although I think it's a gimmick.. it does make some things sound better. In particular one song I made it just brings out the upper frequencies and kind of 'separates' it from the bass, making both sound better. So, has uses, but I think it's just gonna add brightness where it might not be needed or wanted.

 

[Alec]

Sorry for the interruption BennyBoy02, but could i just ask Mr_Poletski - if the "gimmicky" enhancements that come with soundcards are'nt really worth having, then what can a soundcard do for me without these enhancements (as you can tell ive never used one and am considering a creative or the M Audio Audiophile external, but already have HD sound an board).

Sorry again to interrupt.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="paulio"]
I have the Onkyo se200 and it sounds quite good. You can find it on Ebay.

[/quote]

Yeah and costs about £100

 

[Anonymous]

I'd recommend the Trends Audio UD-10.

Here's a review: http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/trendsaudio_ud10_e.html

This is not a soundcard, it's an outboard USB dac, but can also output digital to go into another DAC. Added benefit is that you don't have to install it, and you can move it easily between computers.

It's about £100, but Russ Andrews have a pimped up modified version with special power pack and power cord included, at £199, which is what i just got for the office, and it works really well, better than my Meier Audio portable usb headphone amp.