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The State of PC Audio
jonesy writes "The Tech Report has put together a pretty decent six-card sound round-up that covers the most popular audio controller chips around. DACs, ADCs, DSPs, and the other important acroymns are explained. One interesting revelation: Creative's Audigy card doesn't do 24-bit/96KHz sound, despite Creative's claims. Gaming benchmarks are provided, and the authors even take a crack at the subjective side of audio, although they seem aware of the difficulties in doing so."
My computer goes "BEEP" when I hit Ctrl-g. What else do I need?
omg, evreyuone knows teh REAL BEST sound cards r the ones that overcl0kc teh BERST.
like, i oc'd my mediavision proaduiuospectrum16 (don't laff its teh BEST) and now i can hear sounds b 4 they happen!
like, omg. this guy was gonan shoot me with rocket launcher but i heard it before hje shooted then i was gonna shoot him first but tehn i heared my shotgun fire b 4 i even press the button!!1!!
HE WAS DEADRESTATED B 4 I EVEN SHOOTED HIM!
I R TEH S0 GLAD I READED THIS REVIEWS.
MY SHOTGUN SOUNDS SO CLEAN AND CRISP AND CLEAR AND BECAUSE I R TEH AUDIOPHILz0RZ I KNOW IT SOUNDS AS BEST AS REALISTIC YES IS.
seriously, sound card reviews like this are a crock, providing little information above the specifications provided by the manufacturers themselves. as evidenced by the previous story about the s00per c00l vacuum t00b sound card, people can't be fooled into thinking these things will provide "audiophilez0rz" quality.
Is good speakers. You can't have one without the other. So what if your Sound Card is 100% buzzword compliant with 128bit 9GHz output, if your 2 cents piezo buzzer is connected to it the its a waste of space. Equally if you are playing Quake 3 and just want surround sound then there isn't much point in the card without the speakers in the right places.
For most people a basic card will, shock horror, do everything they want these days when allied to a decent set of speakers. So much of this is upgrade hype driven rather than actually reality. I've had a creative 5:1 set up for a few years now and why should I upgrade ? I listen to music mostly on the train and at work from my laptop on headphones so what would it get me. And what extra would I _really_ get for a 3D game ? Rather than marketing hype.
Get good speakers, get an okay sound card and buy lots of RAM.
If you want a top of the range sound system, buy seperates don't buy a PC.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The only drawback in my mind is you cannot use the USB interface for 24/96 audio. That, and some issues like jitter and delay, should be solved by the next generation of IEEE-1394 interfaces.
I'll repost (most of) the comment I put on TR this morning. TR's comments don't get much feedback usually, and I'd like to get responses/pointers on the points I bring up.
The review is completely oriented toward gaming though, with only a slight nod toward music listening or DVDs (and the cards reviewed aren't particularly good toward those). With that in mind, the review isn't all that bad. And it brings up several nasty issues with Creative Labs - their drivers continue to suck, they seriously overdo reverb in EAX (uh, guys... you wrote the standard... why can't you do it right?), bloatware on a massive scale, and some of the comments indicate possible spyware.
Anyway, my original comment is now below, sans a few bits that pertained only to over there.
Sigh... well, not what I was hoping for, but still a decent review (as soundcard comparisons go at least). Should've marked this as a review for gamers though - for those looking to build a Home Theater PC it's reviewing the wrong cards (the M-Audio 6-channel is pretty much the standard nowadays, but there are competitors).
It would've been nice to get a few motherboard chipset reviews in with the cards. I know, you were already in review hell. But to whomever is going to try this next, do include a review of the cheapo AC97 codecs, the upgraded ones (such as CT5880), nForce, and such.
There are also sampling/playback issues - CL has long had an issue with automagically resampling from 44.1 KHz to 48 KHz. This introduces errors during playback. Testing to see which cards do this (on either record or playback) would've been nice.
Testing to see if the connectors provided are actually standard conforming would've been nice too. The digital output jack on the SB Live series, for instance, conforms to no standard known to man. It will work with most Dolby Digital decoders, but not all of them - it runs the voltage far, far, FAR too high, has absolutely no noise protection, and a few other issues. CL deciding to label their IEEE1394 connector as a "SB1394" makes me suspicious of it as well.
sorry but the review at Here at pcavtech is dead on.. tests done with audio calibration and testing hardware to give real numbers and real information not this "pull something out of our butt" review.
any review on audio equipment that doesnt use real testing is pure crap and needs to be loudly labelled as such.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Most Audigy users that have looked at any of the sound card forums out there have already discovered their claims are false.
Creative seems to have really dropped the ball with the Audigy line. A look at any audio forums (Creative's own even) will show a large contingent of unhappy customers. Audiophiles that think it's a piece of crap sound-wise, gamers who are pissed off with its driver performance. Calls for people to return their Audigies and get a Game Theatre or Santa Cruz.
Compatibility issues with different hardware configurations, WinXP, etc.. are also popping up. The biggest seems to be an issue where the EEPROM on the card gets scrambled, disabling the rear speakers, and causing the card to be recognized as EMU10K instead of an Audigy, thereby making proper software/driver upgrades impossible for it. The only known solution for this so far is to get the card replaced and hope the new one doesn't get FUBAR as well. There are a lot of very annoyed Audigy owners out there.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
You want quality audio in a PC? Go get a card made by these people, these people, these people, these people, these people, or these people. Then we'll talk.
Get Pro Tools free from Digidesign. Musicians like Beck, Bjork and Aerosmith use it. Of course, they use the version that's tens of thousands of dollars. Basically, the difference is the more money you spend, the more hardware (and thereby processing power) you get.
The best way to learn is to just start doing it. If you have a sound card and Pro Tools free, you should be able to just start laying down tracks with the mic that came with your computer. Experiment with EQ settings. It's all about training your ear to recognise what sounds good and what doesn't. After you've recorded an album's worth of material, you'll find you're able to make much better sounding songs, though you won't be sure how you got there.
If you don't have a sound card, get one that has at least a stereo input and output. Before you get it, make sure it's supported by whatever software program you're using. If you don't have a firewire port, think about getting one. Firewire is useful in so many ways.
If you want to get some higher fidelity, you'll need to get a decent mic. Pick up a Shure SM57 if you're recording mostly instruments or 58 if it's mostly vocals ($80-100). These mics are workhorses of the industry and will remain useful even after you become a famous rock star. You might be able to find a XLR -> 1/8" adapter to plug the mic into the back of the computer, but I recommend either buying a cheap mixer and going mic -> mixer -> soundcard, or getting Digidesign's mBox ($450), a firewire-based audio input system. The good thing about the mBox is you get a more robust version of the software along with it.
Pro Tools isn't the only way to go, though I think it's the only way that's free. Kruder & Dorfmeister use Cubase, and Thievery Corporation use Cakewalk. I've heard lots of great things about Cubase, but the Cakewalk seems to be more amateurish. Thievery has a crapload of hardware, and I think Cakewalk is just a small part of their studio.
If you're broke, you can always pirate plug-in's from p2p networks, but audio programmers are generally non-rich really cool people, so if you ever wind up making decent money off of your music, you should buy the software you use frequently.
If you're into programming, check out MAX/MSP. Autechre uses it.
Also, check out Propellerheads Software:
Reason- Berklee is using this to teach recording concepts.
Rebirth- 303, 808, 909. Kicks ass.
For a reference, my stuff was recorded using Pro Tools with the Audiomedia III sound card (it's pretty old), a Neumann TLM103 mic and a Roland xp-60 synth, both going into a mackie 1202 mixer. I'm completely self-taught.
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