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I use my PC for games and to play movies with Media Center. My setup is a bit weird, I use an Audigy 2 ZS with Windows 7 x64. For games I use the analog output in quad speaker mode (I have an old but still good 4+1-speaker setup), and for Media Center I use the digital out to my stereo to send it AC3 using the Dolby Digital Live encoder option in the SB drivers. The analog and digital are active at the same time so when I use my Media Center I only need to change the display to the TV.
This works great except that the AC3 encoding is kind of flaky. I get occasional cracks and sometimes the sound becomes corrupted when playing surround movies, and it's fixed by restarting Media Center. Everything works fine if I turn off Dolby Digital Live and just send stereo to my receiver, but then I don't get any surround sound in movies. AC3 pass-thru doesn't work either with these drivers and besides, if I use that then I can't hear anything when I want to listen to AC3 sources on my analog speakers.
To make a long story short, I'm thinking of getting a new sound card that can do all this but using good quality supported drivers. So basically I'm looking for a sound card that has:
- Good surround support in games, with EAX and whatever else my Audigy 2 ZS supports
- Has support for analog and digital out right on the card
- Has AC3 encoding so that I can output any surround source as AC3 to my stereo
- Can output the AC3 and analog at the same time
- Ideally PCIe
- Doesn't break the bank
Any recommendations? I'm thinking of either the X-Fi Titanium or the Auzentech X-Plosion 7.1 Cinema. Will I be missing out on anything important if I don't have EAX 5? The Auzentech only has EAX 2.0, and it's also just PCI, but it's cheaper and I heard the drivers may be more stable.
This works great except that the AC3 encoding is kind of flaky. I get occasional cracks and sometimes the sound becomes corrupted when playing surround movies, and it's fixed by restarting Media Center. Everything works fine if I turn off Dolby Digital Live and just send stereo to my receiver, but then I don't get any surround sound in movies. AC3 pass-thru doesn't work either with these drivers and besides, if I use that then I can't hear anything when I want to listen to AC3 sources on my analog speakers.
To make a long story short, I'm thinking of getting a new sound card that can do all this but using good quality supported drivers. So basically I'm looking for a sound card that has:
- Good surround support in games, with EAX and whatever else my Audigy 2 ZS supports
- Has support for analog and digital out right on the card
- Has AC3 encoding so that I can output any surround source as AC3 to my stereo
- Can output the AC3 and analog at the same time
- Ideally PCIe
- Doesn't break the bank
Any recommendations? I'm thinking of either the X-Fi Titanium or the Auzentech X-Plosion 7.1 Cinema. Will I be missing out on anything important if I don't have EAX 5? The Auzentech only has EAX 2.0, and it's also just PCI, but it's cheaper and I heard the drivers may be more stable.