Help Me Arrange These Sound Cards From Worst to Best

[sheik124]

two entries here are sound chips used in motherboards/sound cards (nVidia SoundStorm and VIA Envy24 HT-S)
these are listed in random order, and i just want to know how they place from worst to best although there probably isn't an accurate way to do that anyhow

Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Sound Blaster Audigy ES
Sound Blaster Audigy LS
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Turtle Beach Riviera
Turtle Beach Catalina
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
nVidia SoundStorm
VIA Envy24 HT-S
C-Media CMI9738

at the moment, i have an nVidia SoundStorm, and will be buying an Audigy 2 ZS for myself, but i want to know whats good for my sisters pc, will be used for gaming 40% of the time but that doesn't mean i need to cheap out, my dad's a doctor and loaded, but i really don't feel it needs an 80 dollar sound card

 

[Moose Jr.]

I have an Audigy and so far it's served me well for all my gaming and music needs. I would say it's the best mid-range card you have listed.

 

[sheik124]

Audigy ES/LS or Audigy 2/2 ZS?

 

[sheik124]

also, i want to add, will i notice a difference between SoundStorm (great IMHO) and an Audigy 2 ZS. when i went from the VIA AC'97 on this old KM133 based system to the SoundStorm, i couldn't listen to music anymore on the old one, i loved SoundStorm. but SoundStorm fucked all my games up whenever i enabled EAX and Hardware Acceleration, Halo even began to crash with faults in vorbis.dll, and sometimes things don't sound, "right".

 

[Clements]

Well, an Audigy 2 ZS is £180 where I'm from, and I'm not willing to spend that amount on a sound card just for the sound on a few games and perhaps a tiny fps boost. My onboard sound is sufficient for my purposes. The on-board on my old comp was sufficient for my purposes.

If I was a media-encoding freak who believes they can tell a difference between 24-Bit/96kHz and 16-Bit/48kHz, then maybe I'd consider one - but all I'm doing is playing a few games and listening to mp3s or whatnot, which does not warrant such a massive expenditure, of which I could purchase either an 5900 XT or Athlon64 3000+ with (and that would boost the fps much more for the same price). My on-board audio doesn't even have EAX, but it already sounds better than your average CD player, so I can't complain. Also, I have no driver issues whatsoever, more than you can say about some Creative cards that people often have to resort to 3rd party drivers.

 

[Gigahurtz]

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card will give you some installation problems for Windows XP, but it does well for its price if you get it installed correctly. However, I don't think it has EAX 2.0 or any later technologies you can find in recent sound cards.

Audigy 2 is what I have and so far it's great (has the latest technologies like latest EAX, CMSS, audio cleaning, etc.). As for the rest of the cards, I have not had them so hopefully this helps in ranging the cards from good to best.

 

[revl8er]

Just go with the Audigy 2 because spending any more for a sound card would not be worth it, plus the Audigy 2 is more than good enough for any game and it has good EAX support.

 

[sheik124]

typed a nice long reply but emutalk went poof when i clicked submit

i am already getting an audigy 2 zs for myself, but the whole question was what to use in the secondary gaming system? i was thinking of putting an Audigy ES in there, as it seems to be an OEM version of the Audigy 1, and for 40 dollars thats kinda good, anyone got a better suggestion