I bought my present PC (eMachines W2785) in February 2004, and since then, I've added bits and pieces here and there and turned it into a real Frankenbox. But the only thing I was never successful with was upgrading the onboard sound. I've tried a couple of Creative cards, including an old PCI 16 I used for years, but even with XP drivers, nothing played well with my VIA chipset. For speakers, I use Advent Powered Partners, a cable to my Yamaha's Tape 2 input, or my Sennheiser 'phones.

Monday I was in Staples and spotted a Diamond Multimedia Xtreme 5.1 card for just $20. I popped that in, downloaded and installed fresh drivers, and after a bit of tweaking, this thing sounds magnificent. No more pops, clicks, stuttering, freezes. Just detailed, clear digital music. This sounds so much cleaner than the onboard Realtek audio that it's not funny. No more onboard sound for me!

A real "audiolover" must have a good soundcard in he's comp...and imo the Diamond is a great soundcard.
Congrats for your new gear.
Enjoy!

This is great info. Thanks Tom.

I have never been too interested in getting music from my computer, however, having lost my dedicated listening room I might start focusing more of my attention and resources on computer audio.

Jorge

Both, me and Jimmy have the same soundcard, X-Fi from Creative. IMHO it is a great soundcard, too.
...and easy to find in Portugal.

That might be a great distraction, and you might even be surprised at how good it sounds.

elroy

I agree with elroy! You could look for some small decent speakers, these "T-amps" that I keep hearing about, or you could connect a good headphone amp and use cans. There are quite a few sound cards to research, there's ripping software like EAC, different formats like .mp3 vs .FLAC vs .wma... The list goes on and on.

I did find out why this inexpensive Diamond card sounds so good: the C-Media chipset is the same one used on some expensive Turtle Beach cards! So at least it starts with a good pedigree.

Alvaro, I've heard good things about that Creative card. I'm envious that yours works; I assume you have an Intel chipset!

Here's a pic of the Diamond. The black circuit board was quite a surprise.

I use Philips Aurilium sound card, it is an external card, helps with a laptop. I use it also as an interface between my pc and the Nakamichi Control Preamp I use to run the TT (or any other source I choose) I use to make CD's from Lp's.

Jim

Hhhmmm..., I wonder......

I have this musical Fidelity X-Cans headphone tube amp and a very, very good pair of cans that haven´t seen any use in years.

I´ll miss the bass thump kicking my tummy on drums, but what the heck...

Jorge

Here's my audio-comp. set-up :

Very Nice!

Is that a range expander I see?

Jim

That's why I suggested what I did: I remember that you had that amplifier.

Think of it this way: It's the music that matters, right? I'd listen to music on a 60's pocket transistor radio if I could hear what I wanted, rather than a great stereo playing lousy music. You may have to do something similar for the time being.

The only disadvantage would be that you might not have a turntable unless you did something with a phono stage feeding that X-Cans headphone amplifier. Then you'd have to have a place to put the TT, etc. etc.

As you can see, Alvaro has a setup that I'll bet sounds great... especially with those B&Ws I see! (603's, perhaps?) My setup is just the PC with the speakers flanking the monitor; to rip LPs or cassettes, I have a cable that I connect from my big stereo to the PC. I haven't tried that just yet with this card.

No matter what, you gotta have music, Jorge.

now if only they could make a computer sound card that used tubes.. i'd be all set.

Ah! You better take a look at this :

http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Tube-Soun...YES-45715.shtml

http://soundt.18.forumer.com/index.php?showtopic=3258

A few months ago i had made a little upgrade in my comp, with this little thing :





Jim, the Behringer it's an old model kinda like an expander. It's the Edison Stereo image processor.
The Speakers are B&W CDM1 S.E. and the X-can from MF is completly modded by me, and have two Russian nos-valves.

I tell you this. I have a terrific sound.

It's shocking what detail you can hear with a decent card and adequate headphones.
I'm playing some of Cowboy Junkies' One Soul Now, specifically the track "My Wild Child".
I suddenly realized that I was hearing the guitar pick hitting the strings!
On "No Long Journey Home", I'd swear I can hear brushes hitting cymbals, not just sticks.


It's amazing to really hear music how it should be for the very first time... even after hearing it many times already.


Oh, I need to mention that these are "just" 160kbps .mp3 files that I'd ripped from the original CD!

even modest headphones, of decent quality, can sound pretty darned good. several years ago, i picked up a cheap (i think $12 to my door) Logitech headset with microphone, to use for online multi player games. i was surprised at how good cd's sounded through these things, especially dynamics and in the low end.