Soundstorm or SB live 5.1 card?

[grimmster]

OK. I have an A7N8X-E Deluxe board that has soundstorm. However, I am not hooking up a digital speaker system, I am only using a pair of headphones. So I am wondering, should I continue to use the onboard sound (which I think, since I'm not using digital out is just AC97?) or should I put in my old SB live 5.1 card and disable the onboard sound option?

[steven975]

you're still able to use the Soundstorm's DSP. Feature-wise it is comparable to the Live.

pick the one that sounds best to you. The Live will have better DACs, btw.

[-=SparX=-]

Same deal here, I picked the sblive for the better onboard amplifier and therefore higher volume for my headphones.
The soundstorm is as good otherwise.

[undersea]

I loved soundstorm when I had it. 5.1 I was never wild about.

Which ever sound better to you is the way to go.

[Brian48]

I would just go with SoundStorm and not bother with another PCI device, especially with a card as old as the SBLive, which doesn't support any of the newer EAX API's anyway (up to EAX 2.0).

[grimmster]

Thanks for the info. I will just use the Soundstorm and not worry about another card in the system.

[toka_mcpot]

Use both, link them with a spdif cable and use the kx drivers.

[grimmster]

Use both, link them with a spdif cable and use the kx drivers.

What? never heard of linking soundcards before.

[steven975]

i think the premise behind linking them is so that you can use the Live's audio engine and the SoundStorm's dolby encoding if you wanted to use digital speakers.

that is what I think. Problem is, the above cannot be done because soundstorm cannot encode the info from the line-in on the fly. Since the line in is part of the ALC650, soundstorm doesn't have direct access to it like it does game audio, for example...the game audio is encoded before the ALC650 even sees it.

If you HAD to use a digital receiver, use soundstorm. In all other cases, the Live is probably better.

[toka_mcpot]

lol, no its got nothing to do with dolby encoding or using digital speakers.
Its to take advantage of the lives rear dac, which has a very good snr (the dac's on most mb's are very poor quality) and still get the benefit of the low cpu usage and 256 hardware channels the soundstorm offers.
The KX drivers are much better than the creative bloatware.

[FranticFinn]

When in question, always go with the add-on card and disable the on-board. This will shift the work load to the cards engine and free up CPU resources.

The Finn

[toka_mcpot]

Soundstorm (onboard) has the lowest cpu usage of any soundcard.
Try reading before posting The Finn