Good gaming sound card for Vista (cod4)

[odis172]

I recently noticed that in call of duty 4, some people have the edge on me, because they can hear me, though I cant hear them. Think its time to update the good old audigy 2 platinum. I would prefer to purchase something other then creative, after they decided not to fully support my card with vista.

My objective here is to get the best non creative sound card for gaming, though i will of course be using it for watching movies with.
The speakers I will be using are 4 year old z5300 5.1 The front left satellite is emitting some slight distortion as it looks like the cone and dust cap are not fulling attached anymore. I also have a cheap pair of zalmon 5.1 headphones that i use for lans.

Ive been considering the Asus Xonar line, though some people are saying that the audio clarity is excellant for home theatre, but the cards have had issues with some games.
The D2X has a feature that tells the game it is eax capable, but is this really neccesary for the best directional audio ingame? Are games migrating away from solely using EAX since the introduction of vista?

Thanks for any input

[panzerfan]

Why opt opt for Auzentech's cards? By this point, Prelude's got all the driver issues worked out, and Forte's starting to prove itself as a fine card. I am debating with myself lately about going for that card actually.

[DarKStar]

I have a creative card and have no issues at all and the sound is great - the CL cards are great for gaming - no issues here - you are not going to make studio quality recordings with it and the advantage is that you get soundfont, EAX support, etc...... I had an old audigy and audigy 2 card and now I am using X-Fi Fatality Professional series - what a big difference from my audigy ! V-RAM, EAX 5.0 support and Alchemy drivers, with those you can run older DirectSound games in VISTA and get full hardware acceleration since it translates on the fly to OpenAL - I use my X-Fi in both Vista and XP and no problem at all.

[Inik]

I have an Auzentech prelude and I love it!

I went from a X-Fi Xtreme gamer and I can hear the difference. However, I still prefer to play CS:S on xp instead of Vista.. the sound is better in XP IMO. I might be crazy tho lol

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by Inik

I have an Auzentech prelude and I love it!

I went from a X-Fi Xtreme gamer and I can hear the difference. However, I still prefer to play CS:S on xp instead of Vista.. the sound is better in XP IMO. I might be crazy tho lol

Your not.

Vista hacks up the audio subsystem compared to XP

[Inik]

Ahh! Good to hear! I just find the directionnal audio in CS:S better in XP. There was something with a command line in Vista (xx_surround 1..or something like that), but I still find it better in XP.

It's all good in win7/vista with newer games tho

EDIT : Sorry for the hijack

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by Inik

I have an Auzentech prelude and I love it!

I went from a X-Fi Xtreme gamer and I can hear the difference. However, I still prefer to play CS:S on xp instead of Vista.. the sound is better in XP IMO. I might be crazy tho lol

You are stuck with plain 2 channel stereo in VISTA for DirectSound/3D based games - Luckily newer games support OpenAL, so no problem there. This is why Creative came up with Alchemy drivers - CS is supported on the list - alchemy drivers are free for X-FI and Audigy 2 if not mistaken - grab those and install them in Vista, this will bring back your crippled features back to life since it is translating your DirectSound to OpenAL, it does work and it will sound just as good, give it a try.

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by Inik

Ahh! Good to hear! I just find the directionnal audio in CS:S better in XP. There was something with a command line in Vista (xx_surround 1..or something like that), but I still find it better in XP.

It's all good in win7/vista with newer games tho

EDIT : Sorry for the hijack

newer games in vista = OpenAL = no problems with positional audio / hardware 3D sounds etc....

Because of the way Vista works and has gotten rid of the hardware abstract layer, you have no choice but to either use alchemy for those non OpenAL games or play them in XP :D

[Sushi Warrior]

I use an Xonar DX and really there isn't too much of a difference between sound cards. Better headphones help more IMO, you want noise-cancelling so you can hear quiet footsteps (dead silence means nothing!) and good directional. I use Razer Barracuda's and I actually prefer my Razer Moray's to them b/c I can hear quieter noises.

[TC91]

Xonar DX/D1 or Auzentech X-Fi Forte are really good cards for the money.