Best Sound Card through receiver

I have an old SB Live! card right now going through a decent receiver, however the SB does some strange things at times. I am guessing that the signal just isnt all that great coming from it, so what would you guys recommend. I'm basically looking for the best sound reproduction from DVDs and music, as for games I don't tend to crank those up too high if that matters.

As far as the sound I am getting right now, sometimes the right channel will just stop reproducing sound, so it goes into mono mode for a while, then just pops back in. At other times the sound will skip for a bit, then it pop back to normal playback. It doesnt happen every time, but it is very annoying when watching movies.

So if you have any experience with going through a receiver let me know which card you've had the best luck with.

You need some M-Audio card. Go to WWW.AVSFORUM.COM and see what the experienced guys there seys.

I run my SB live platium through my receiver and it doesn't do any funny things. are you using good cables? Sounds like a cable or connection problem either in the card or the receiver.

Just a thought, what CPU are you using in that system? If you're using ~400Mhz, it may be that the dropouts are due to the CPU load, if you've got something a lot faster I guess that won't be it.

Road Warrior

I use the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz with a line-in to my receiver, no issues whatsoever.

IMHO the old SB live and SB Live value card stink the rotten egg.

Sound Blaster platinum w/ Coxial Digital

My roommate has a Hoontech (korean) he wont use anytihng else.

As mentioned above the M-Audio cards are some of the best there are, specifically the Audiophile 24/96 and the Delta 410, but they are close to $200 each! I have one and I love it,but they are definately not made for gaming though, so if you want to game choose a different card!

I have a HTPC dedicated to running MP3's, MAME, video capture and DVD movies on my home theater.

I use an Aureal SQ1500 card with coax digital output to my Denon DD/DTS receiver. The sound from the card is wonderful and I can't tell a sound difference between it and the old Game Theater XP I had which cost 10 times as much!

All you need to do is set the card to pass SPDIF through and let your receiver decode the bits for you. I can play DD5.1 and DTS movies on my PC without any problems.

Only one negative. The SQ1500 only runs under Win98, there are no 2000/xp drivers for it and there probably wont be anytime soon!

If you are running Win98 and have $10 to spare I suggest just buying one and trying it out before you slap down $150-200 for a sound card!

Oh yeah and my last post assumed you had a digital input on your receiver! Many older receiver don't. If it is a DD/DTS one it probably does, but an older DPL receiver may not.

If you could tell me the brand/model or it I may be able to tell you if it does.

If you don't have one the SQ1500 has all the analog inputs/outputs of the other cards also

yah if you want to listen to music though your PC, you really should get a quality sound card. Live!s and such things etc are all very good but for serious music listening they don't really cut it. The sound quality just isn't up to snuff, and they are very prone to noise and hums.

$200 for a good sound card is a lot, but it isn't so bad compared to a good component stereo system. You spend more than that on your amplifier, heck one of your speakers probably cost more.

I got an old version of the Mona 24/96 at a pawn shop for $300 (no rackmount) a coupla years back, I am really into music and recording and stuff so I think it was worth it. But if I was just gonna listen to MP3s and play games on a card, I would probably go with a Live or Turtle beach. Those have all the cool 3D effects and stuff for gaming anyway- my Mona don't... You gotta decide if it's worth it for yourself.

Buy a good audiophile card and try it for a while, then return it if it isn't worth it!

Thanks for the suggestions....

I have a dobly digital receiver with optical, and it does its job well... and I am using monster cable products even from the soundcard... so even though I also intially thought that was the problem when I had stock cables, upgrading them did not fix the problem.

That is why I believe its the SB Live card that is doing the funky stuff...

This machine is running a PIII 450 with a 32mb Radeon and 256 ram... obvisously not a hardcore maxed out machine, but should be more than enough to run a SB and Dvd without skipping or making sound anomalies.

Thanks again for the suggestions, I'm glad I came to these forums

My machine is my sig.. i used to have an older dragon with the kt266 chipset not the kt266a and it did the same popping and hissing stuff.. my new dragon with the kt266a chipset sounds fine. HOWEVER.. I can't run dolbly digital or dts through my reciever with my computer.. I don't even get true 5.1.. I had a older sb live value and it worked fine in stero but that was it.. I just got a live 5.1 thinking this would rectify the problem.. NOPE.. If i run the digial coax from the digital port on the sb to the digital in on my Harmon/Kardon avr 110 i hear sound but's it's very weak and still hisses.. terible. going to the sight mentioned above to ask a few questions.. good luck.

Well atleast I know I'm not the only one, it must be the SB Live then, I know now that compared to the other cards of that production period it wasnt the best for sound output, but I got it cheap back then. So I guess its time to find a new one if I'm going to make this one an Entertainment PC, well that and some Black spray paint ... beige = ugg!

as mentioned above the avsforums.com is very helpful.. The hole site is all people who are home audio first computer second. There are a ton of people hooking there puters up to a home reciever.. I didn't see anyone running a soundblaster.. Hmm.. weird I always thought that they were the best.. . anyway crusie on over there, loads of info good stuff!!!!.. according to what I have read there so far your going to spend at least 200-300 buks on a quality sound card.. steep i know but they work, the way there suppose to with home a/v Can't wait to pick out a new card..

forgot here's a pic of my setup.

http://www.troyjohns.com/computer.htm