analog output,SB16 or soundstorm?

[stratcatprowlin]

Being Im using the analog outputs,

Should my soundblaster 16 Sound better than the AC97 analog soundstorm?

If not,will it really free up cpu usage at least?

Or is the card too old too Be an advantage?

[Turd Furguson]

That card will get blown out of the water by the soundstorm in terms of quality. I find there is little difference b/t CPU usage with my Soundstorm and my Turtle Beach Santa Cruise PCI card but I actually perfer the Soundstorm due to quality.

[Voodoo Rufus]

Definitely sound storm. I get almost no noise out of mine, whereas that old SB16 will pour it out in comparison. The DACs will be of higher quality on the soundstorm as well.

[stratcatprowlin]

TX guys,I could hear the difference real fast.

Plus the graphic eq is great on the soundstorm.

The only reason I wanted to try the soundblaster was because sometimes with alot of applications running,The sound would get choppy for a few seconds.

I read that the new chipset drivers were supposed to fix that but they didnt.So I took out the soundblaster from an old IBM APTIVA I had to give it a shot.Now Im getting alot of hiss and the sound is squashed compared to the soundstorm.

In the morning ill take it out.
TX again.

[james.miller]

i cant believe that it sounds better. the sb live! has far better dac's than those used with soundstorm solutions.


Anything analogue sb live > soundstorm. Soundstorm is only worth the trouble when used with a digital hookup.

Originally posted by Voodoo Rufus
Definitely sound storm. I get almost no noise out of mine, whereas that old SB16 will pour it out in comparison. The DACs will be of higher quality on the soundstorm as well.

thats rubbish. most soundstorm boards use realtek 650's for the dac duties. Would you say realtek onboard sound is better than an sb-live!?

[stratcatprowlin]

Originally posted by james.miller
i cant believe that it sounds better. the sb live! has far better dac's than those used with soundstorm solutions.


Anything analogue sb live > soundstorm. Soundstorm is only worth the trouble when used with a digital hookup.



thats rubbish. most soundstorm boards use realtek 650's for the dac duties. Would you say realtek onboard sound is better than an sb-live!?

It is impossible to do a fast switching comparison between the analog sound of both because i dont have 2 i dentical pc's to do it.

So as for the actual "sound quality" to me was greatly influenced by the Nvidia graphic eq.Even though i had the settings set to flat at first.The Nvidia's volume was automatically set higher when i enabled it,and everybody knows a slightly louder system tends to sound "better" in testing situations.

All in all, knowing now that the soundblaster 16 does not take up less cpu power,my decision is even more biased,so a fair comparison has now been thrown out the window.

I have since taken out the soundblaster and am enjoying the sound of the Nvidia graghic eq.Even though it still getts choppy under high cpu stress.I hate that!

[Voodoo Rufus]

Hey, that's just my experience. I don't have a ton of extra cards in my case, and the noise floor to me is pretty low, more than good enough for tolerable volume levels in the near field.

The noise floor isn't quite as good as my old Acoustic Edge, but it makes up for it in gaming sound quality.

[james.miller]

oh hey im not doubting either of you. but if a different question was asked - "which is better? realtek 650 or soundstorm" you both would have said soundstorm. every time.

Sounds strange, espeically when they both use the same, nastily cheap dac's.

So as for the actual "sound quality" to me was greatly influenced by the Nvidia graphic eq.Even though i had the settings set to flat at first.The Nvidia's volume was automatically set higher when i enabled it,and everybody knows a slightly louder system tends to sound "better" in testing situations.

Personal preference rules over all here, but i never use that e.q. As for being "louder" - i dont know. I always have my volume in windows in full with no e.q enabled and just let my a/v amp handle all the duties. By far the best sounding setup i have managed with the soundstorm:)

a few weeks back i went over every soundstorm option with a fine tooth comb and realised that it was truely at its best with every "enhancement" turned off, even DD encoding when listening to music. Again, thats totally down to preference so i cant tell you what's right and wrong, but here's the thread if you are interested:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=277555

[Voodoo Rufus]

I run no EQ as well. Disable all input or outputs except the mic (I use that for Teamspeak/Vent). I've seen the ALC650 on my board. I know it's there, but if you asked me that question, I would assume the ALC650 was just straight AC97 or something software based. Throw me some more info to absorb if you want.

[james.miller]

http://www.3dss.com/reviews/nForce/nForce.html

there you go:)

unfortunatly, if you use an analogue hookup, then you WILL be using those realtek 650's:(

[Voodoo Rufus]

Hrmm, oh well. I skimmed that article a ways back. I've got dreams for the ultimate sound system, but no one ever builds it.....

DTS-ES hardware encoding (DD pish!), coax output, good dacs. The first two are easy but the first still isn't here.

[stratcatprowlin]

Originally posted by james.miller
oh hey im not doubting either of you. but if a different question was asked - "which is better? realtek 650 or soundstorm" you both would have said soundstorm. every time.

Sounds strange, espeically when they both use the same, nastily cheap dac's.



Personal preference rules over all here, but i never use that e.q. As for being "louder" - i dont know. I always have my volume in windows in full with no e.q enabled and just let my a/v amp handle all the duties. By far the best sounding setup i have managed with the soundstorm:)

a few weeks back i went over every soundstorm option with a fine tooth comb and realised that it was truely at its best with every "enhancement" turned off, even DD encoding when listening to music. Again, thats totally down to preference so i cant tell you what's right and wrong, but here's the thread if you are interested:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=277555

Thank you for insulting my intelligence by answering a hypothetical question for me.

Your answer was wrong to boot,because I could not have answered that question.

The reason for that is,as I explained earlier I found it quite hard to come up with which one sounds better because of how I had to compare them.

With all the variables and time difference between the comparison, I am not yet convinced one has a better quality than
the other.

Indeed there may not be one,like you said.

The ultimate reason I wound up taking out the soundblaster was because the other guy said it offered no real difference in cpu usage.The second reason was because with the graphic eq,I was able to shape the sound to my liking.

[Panzerknacker]

I'm using soundstorm's anolog out and it sounds better than my AC97. Would I get some improvement when using the SPDIF-out? But as I understand I will need a external DAC for that.

[stratcatprowlin]

The digital soundstorm apparently is much better but I never used it yet.

[Panzerknacker]

yeah I wanna try that but a external DAC of some good quality is prolly a little expensive.