Need a simple sound card with high quality output

M

Matija

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 5, 2008
Messages
244
I currently have a Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96. It's connected to a nice amp (not a receiver - just a plain ol' amplifier).

The card seems to be dying :( I need to replace it with something, but I don't know what.

I couldn't care less about 5.1 and gaming. I don't want fancy sound processing. I don't want drivers that eat 50 MB of RAM because they have a futuristic user interface (in fact, I don't want to open the card's control panel at all). Digital output doesn't interest me, as I'm using an old amplifier. I don't even need any inputs on the card.

I need something that just outputs normal analog sound with a high quality level - at least the level of this card. RCA connectors for L/R channel are a plus. I'm listening to FLACs and my headphones are plugged into the amplifier. 24-bit output would also be nice for certain reasons, but I'm content with 16 as well.

Any suggestions?

EDIT: I think the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 would be exactly the card for me. What do you think?
 
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How much you want to spend?

Xonar Essence STX is probably the best bet if you want great two channel sound - for 5 channel the D2 or D2X is fine.

I went cheaper with a D1 and I think the sound quality is very sweet. I guess some people had issues with the driver but it has worked for me. Dolby Headphone is the bomb.. I swear. Even my reciever for home theatre doesn't have that.. From what I have read (in researching my purpose) most people would be hard pressed to tell any quality difference between the D1 or DX to the D2 or Essence.. Though in theory the more expensive cards do have slightly better DACs (if you research the actual chips used).
 
It's a bit too pricey - more than the double the price of the M-Audio card, to be exact... That said, the Audiophile 2496 is very old now, and "only" on the level of my old Terratec (why did you have to die, damn you, why???)...
 
the A2496 is what I was going to suggest you to buy, if not that, the A192 or one of E-MU's interfaces (something like the 0404)
 
OK, I'm not smart enough anymore...

I had sound problems. It went wobbly, especially when I moved the mouse around rapidly or dragged some windows, then there was some crackling, the computer froze, I even got a couple of BSODs (one of them was PFN something; no minidumps for some reason), and finally there was a short burst of static followed by complete silence.

Dead sound card, right?

About an hour ago, I turned on my computer - with the card still in - and got a BSOD again, IRQL_blah_blah. Opened the case, removed the card, Windows booted normally... Downloaded WinDbg, analyzed the minidump which got created this time, and...

"Probably caused by : ati2mtag.sys ( ati2mtag+44f20a )"

WTF?

I had the wobbly sound once in the past, maybe a month ago. I wrote it off as a random occurrence, simple gremlins in the PC, as it went away after turning off the PC and turning it back on again.

About a week ago, I got crackling during a game; maybe - I'm not sure - after I installed the latest DirectX. After that, nothing again, everything was working great. Today it was the worst ever, and I haven't installed anything before that. After the problems started occurring today, I upgraded to the latest Cats (I think I was at 9.4 before that) and the latest sound drivers, but it didn't help.

At this moment I'm really not sure what's going on. It's still possible that the sound card is dead and managed to interfere with the graphics card, *or* it could be something else. I really have no clue :(

Any ideas what to do next? I'm not convinced that the sound card is dead anymore...
 
Definitely not... It's a 4670, idling at 38C.

Can a faulty sound card make the graphics card BSOD?

Or can a graphics card somehow corrupt the sound?
 
Update: This morning I've opened the computer case, vacuumed the dust (yes, I'm aware vacuuming is dangerous; no, I don't have compressed air), removed the sound card, cleaned the PCI connectors and did my best cleaning the audio connectors, placed it back in, booted Windows, and...

Crackling. But of a different kind. More like stuttering.

I've then opened the Terratec control panel and mysteriously found the DMA buffer size at 15 ms. I could have sworn it was at 10 yesterday when things went bad... I've now dropped it all the way down to 1 ms and so far, everything seems good, but you never know...

Is it possible that all the problems (wobbling, crackling, freezing) were somehow caused by the DMA buffer size in the first place??!?! If so, why did it suddenly happen? I honestly don't remember installing anything recently... Except from getting a LCD to replace my CRT.

I've been dealing with computers for almost three decades, and I can honestly say I hate them with a passion.
 
Matija said:
Update: This morning I've opened the computer case, vacuumed the dust (yes, I'm aware vacuuming is dangerous; no, I don't have compressed air), removed the sound card, cleaned the PCI connectors and did my best cleaning the audio connectors, placed it back in, booted Windows, and...

Crackling. But of a different kind. More like stuttering.

I've then opened the Terratec control panel and mysteriously found the DMA buffer size at 15 ms. I could have sworn it was at 10 yesterday when things went bad... I've now dropped it all the way down to 1 ms and so far, everything seems good, but you never know...

Is it possible that all the problems (wobbling, crackling, freezing) were somehow caused by the DMA buffer size in the first place??!?! If so, why did it suddenly happen? I honestly don't remember installing anything recently... Except from getting a LCD to replace my CRT.

I've been dealing with computers for almost three decades, and I can honestly say I hate them with a passion.
Click to expand...

haha
sometimes theres just gremlins, who knows, windows doesn't have very good event logging, so you'll probably never know unless it happens again

as far as sound destroying graphics -> no, unless you're using the graphics card's sound output (HDMI), but the soundcard could still make the system unstable and the graphics driver or whatever else may fail

as far as a vacuum goes, its only dangerous if you break stuff off or use like hella-beast-vac-XL 5000 that can pull caps and stuff up if it passes near them
 
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