Please recommend a sound card

[GoinAllTheWay]

Since I bought a new rig last summer I've gone through two Xi-Forte sound cards over the same thing. Speakers start to get crackly and buzz and it becomes more frequent until it doesn't stop. I pulled out that sound card and switched to the onboard sound. Thing about this is the interface drives me crazy. I get sound from all 5 speakers (5.1 logitech speaker system) during games but not while playing iTunes.

Went to ME yesterday and grabbed an Asus sound card that was in their clearence bin for like $50. Get sound to all 5 speakers but it's not sending the sound to the speakers properly.

From what I understand, in a 5.1 system most of the sound is meant to come from the front speakers while the rear ones augment the front ones, yes? What I'm getting now is the same amount of signal from the front and rear speakers. I've tried messing with all the adjustments in the sound card interface but it doesn't make any difference. Netflix (for reasons that are beyond me) just screeches at me. Everything else works ok though.

So? Any suggetions on a good quality sound card that automatically handles the sound properly for games, music and the occasional netflix movie? I usually buy from ME but would happily hold out on one coming in from Tiger Direct or something.

PCIe by the way.

[DownInFlames]

What Asus card did you get? I have the Xonar DX and I find it works perfectly with my 5.1 system.

[Hack&Lube]

This is a software problem, not hardware. Stop messing with all these soundcards and figure out how to get your audio setup properly done through the audio configuration for the onboard sound or whatever you have. This should work regardless of your hardware.

5.1 won't work properly if the original audio source is not encoded beyond standard stereo. It will not know how to split it up because the information is not in the audio stream.

To deal with this, you can activate the Dolby or Virtual Surround options in the audio configuration software which simulate 5.1 from a stereo source. Your songs from iTunes are only in stereo so your soundcard is defaulting to the correct setting by outputting through your front left and right only as these sources are not encoded in 5.1 (where center is usually for speech and rear left and right are for rear surround). To change this, you need to override the settings in the speaker and soundcard configuration or using a virtual surround option in software.

[Icon]

I haven't bought a standalone soundcard for the past two machines, so the last one I got was probably ~5yrs ago... it was a Creativelabs Soundblaster ... the step up from the Audigy card, on quick glance looks like it'd be the X-Fi Titanium equivalent now. http://www.memoryexpress.com/Product...8%28ME%29.aspx

Whatever it was, I loved it. I didn't bother with the new machines as I found I was usually using headphones anyway, so the onboard soundcard was sufficient.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

What Asus card did you get? I have the Xonar DX and I find it works perfectly with my 5.1 system.

That's exactly what I bought. It was "refurbished" so maybe I'm getting a tad jumpy but when I heard Netflix doing nothing but screeching, I figured they may never have properly fixed whatever caused the original owner to return it.

I realize most of this is likely software issues but like I said, my old card I never had these issues. I'll be the first to admit I didn't really get the chance to mess around with it in game or anything (this is my gaming rig) but iTunes sounded so different I figured something had to be adjusted. Seems like you can set the sound card to whatever speaker configuration you have (5.1, 7.1) and then set it for games/movies/music but changing these settings didn't seem to produce any results.

[Hack&Lube]

So Netflix just screeches instead of producing proper sound? Is that the only thing that does that?

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

So Netflix just screeches instead of producing proper sound? Is that the only thing that does that?

So far, yes.