which sound card is better?

[HostileReality]

I have a creative x-fi xtreme music card which i got because my machine was built as a games machine primarily. But I ended up selling my music machine and combining its Hard drive with the gaming one so that i can make music on the best computer. Anyway, i also have an m-audio delta 2496 card.

My question: will the delta have any advantage over the x-fi? im not bothered about inputs, mainly just the quality and convertors etc.
I kind of want to keep the x-fi as its good for games, is it possible to install 2 sound cards in one machine? (btw im pretty good on computers).

[AlexHall74]

Dude, do yourself a favor and use the 2496. It has been voted the best soundcard under $100 a countless number of times. I started out with one and had no issues with it and got alot of use out of it. It's stable and gives you good quality I/O, good drivers, good A/D converters, etc. Use the gaming card on another PC for gaming or just to upgrade it with a better soundcard.

Good luck!

-Alex

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

The M-Audio 2496 soundcard sounds better than the Creative x-fi. The 2496 was the first soundcard I ever bought.....wow I paid about £169 when they first came out....now they go for like £50 new.

The 2496 also works with games and helps to reduce overall CPU usage....atleast that was my experience. Watching DVD's sound nicer also.

I'd go with the 2496 hands down.

DS

[HostileReality]

thanks for the advice, i'll go with the delta then. can i not just have 2 cards in the same machine?

actualy anoter idea: the way it's setup is that i have one hard drive for games, and one for music, and depending on what i need to do i choose which drive to load windows from when the pc starts up. so i guess i could maybe load the drivers for the delta on the music drive, and keep the x-fi loaded on the games drive, and just find a way of stopping it from saying 'new hardware found' all the time (maybe)... anyone know if this might work?

[Timo]

Yep, the 24/96 will also likely have better ASIO drivers for lower latency audio work. Creative have always been little tw*ts regard ASIO and audio recording functionality on their soundcards. Thus, their cards are mainly for gaming, entertainment and audio playback, and they're excellent at what they do in those areas.

I believe you can install two soundcards at once. I know for one I used a consumer SoundBlaster Platinum (PCI + breakout) along with a more professional Motu Traveler (firewire) soundcard together at the same time without any problems.

This is not to say that all soundcards can be used together, though. I guess it's a "suck it and see" scenario, to see if they can sit alongside each other without throwing their toys out the pram.

You can always make an image of your OS drive (using something like Norton Ghost), before installing both soundcards and drivers. And if in the event they don't play ball you can simply re-install the hard-drive image you took to restore the OS back to as it was originally.

[IamEvil]

Ive used the M'audio 2496 card and it's great for the money... but its getting old now and other makes have caught up.

If I was to buy a budget soundcard now I would go for the Emu 0404 card (I still have one laying around as a spare which I wont part with).

The Emu does everything the Maudio card does but (imo) sounds a bit better, it also has onboard DSP effects/compressors/Parametric EQ which sound quite good.

The thing about the Emu is that the software mixer is very flexible and allows you to route lots of different software packages into each other without much fuss and also the DSP effects can be used as VST effects - I think you can get away with about 16 reverbs without using CPU power.

[adrian23]

i was a m-audio solo user for a very long time, and though their audio interface build quality is not bad, i got fed up with their lack of support - half a year into leopard and still no official drivers.
anyway, a few weeks ago i replace it, mainly because i need more ins/outs. initially i got the firestudio, which looks like a nice bargin. but i didn't like it. i can't really put my finger on what i disliked...it just wasn't my cup of tea so i returned it the next day.
to make a long story short. i eventually picked up the apogee ensemble. though expensive as shit, i got it for 1450, about twice the price of presonus firestudio. i also looked at rme fireface, but that was only 50 less then ensemble, and from what i've read the apogee converters are a bit better.
so, i brought it home, plugged it in, and literally was BLOW away by the sound that thing produces. it makes the m-audio stuff sound so freaking cheap it's not even funny. i never realized that converest can make such a big differance. some ppl swear that their audio interface is one of the most important pieces of gear in their setup, and i'm one of them.