Sound Card Suggestions Please

[Stoney]

I am not one of those people who listens to music while using his PC so I don't really need a top of the line sound card. Nevertheless, I certainly don't want to rely on the mobo's onboard audio . I do gaming, so what decent sound cards would you recommend that won't cost me an arm and a leg. Let's say price range is from $50.00 to $75.00 and I am willing to go as high as a $100 to $110. The only company I am familiar with is Creative and my knowledge of today's lineup could be fit on the head of a pin. Thanks.

[pangea33]

Personally, I am most impressed with the signal-to-noise ratios, and overall sound quality of the M-Audio line of cards. They're targeted more toward the engineering/music side of PC audio, but support EAX as well. The Audigy 2 Value seems like a pretty good choice though, considering your requirements. The NewEgg images make it appear that Splinter Cell is included with the retail version, but it's not mentioned anywhere in the description. These are my personal choices within your price range.

$69 - M-AUDIO 9900-40906-00 6 (5.1) Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
Signal to Noise Ratio: 109db
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829121122

$90 - M-AUDIO 9900-40901-00 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
Signal to Noise Ratio: 107db
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829121123

$63 - Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value SB0400 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102175

$70 - Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS SB0350 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - OEM
Signal to Noise Ratio: 107db
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102178

[saphalline]

The M-Audio cards would be excellent for music - both listening to it and composing it. Creative Labs' Sound Blaster series is obviously the choice for gaming. With prices being what they are, the extra $7 for the Audigy2 ZS would be a good investment. Otherwise the M-Audio cards would work fine for gaming, too.

[Stoney]

Great info. Thanks guys. One thing I forgot to mention is that I want to use my rig for video editing, transfer mini-DVD tapes to DVD via burn, etc. Either choice a good option for this?

[pangea33]

Transferring your DV tapes to the PC will be a direct digital transfer via firewire. This will be totally lossless and bypasses the soundcard completely. In order to burn the result to DVD, you will have to do some conversion. You will end up with an avi video component, and an audio component of either PCM, MP2 or AC-3 format.

PCM audio is absolutely huge, because it doesn't utilize any compression. If space is not an issue, including on the final DVD, which will translate into shorter possible playing time, PCM is the right choice. For most practical applications, this leaves you with MP2 or AC-3 as the possible compressed choices.

The standards for NTSC dvds, which is the format used in the US, require AC-3 audio. Editing of your video segments is going to require working with these audio formats. Doing this will require your machine to decode the audio when playing, cutting, and saving the parts. Some dvd players will recognize the mp2 format, but this is hit or miss and depends on the particular player. The $70 M-Audio card has onboard AC-3 decoding hardware, while the Creative cards do not. When your card doesn't have a built in decoder of the appropriate type, the load will instead be placed upon your cpu.

This will translate into much faster edit times when using the M-Audio card. I can't give you a very useful rule of thumb in determining the time difference, but for a full length dvd it will potentially be measured in hours rather than minutes. Audio/Video editing can be a reasonably complicated endeavor, so you'll probably want to do some research on your own. IMHO the M-Audio would be the hands down favorite if you're going to take more than just a passive interest in video work.

This link will give you a little something to chew on when thinking about video editing.

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/dv/guide.html

[Stoney]

pangea33, okay, my head is spinning, but I read through what you said several times, plus the link you provided, and I am beginning to grasp a few things. Nevertheless, I am really out of my element here, so if you are willing to continue to provide advice I am all eyes (and ears). If I choose the M-Audio will gaming be affected? If I choose the Audigy, will I need another hardware component to assist in video editing especially since I do have a ton of family movies on VHS that I need to transfer and burn? I can't even imagine the software I will need! (By the way, my mobo does have firewire port)

By the way, what do you think of this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814144503

[pangea33]

Sorry if I got carried away there, so here is my second draft. You're going to be transferring (not capturing) your digital video/audio in a format that can't be directly burned to a dvd. This will require conversion to supported formats, with the audio component being AC-3.

As far as I know, an onboard decoder does not necessarily mean you'll have hardware encoding capability. Both cards will require offloading that process onto the cpu, so there shouldn't be a discernable advantage to either.

When chopping and reassembling clips of these converted files, some audio cards will natively be able to support the necessary decoding for playback and such. The only real impact that I can envision, would be a potentially longer wait while your cpu does some more of the dirty work. You would not require additional hardware with either of these cards.

Creative is the obvious choice for gaming, and I would hate to see any incompatibilities arise from my suggestions. Bear in mind that my conversion experience was amassed with a 1.2ghz Duron. Offloading work onto that has a much more frustrating impact than with modern machines.

You should probably get the Creative card that you like best, and rest assured in the knowledge that you'll be able to do your conversions with any choice you make. You may not get the conversion right the first time, but at least you'll get to revisit all those memories you've caught on tape.

I'm not familiar with that Plextor device, but it looks like a dream. The compression is real time, and supports pretty much any format you could need. Evidently, you can convert directly to avi format. There are tools to cut and edit these avi files. TMPGenc can generate the video and mp2 audio directly from that. If your DVD player happens to support mp2, you'll be able to burn after just this one conversion. If not, you'll have to reencode the audio into ac-3 before syncing them back together. My earlier link indicates DVDLab to be a good tool for this. It looks to me like that external converter is a really good choice, based solely upon what I've just read.

[Stoney]

pangea33, no apology necessary. Your time is much, much appreciated. And you were very clear in your last post. To let you know I did go with the M-Audio with the AC-3 that you suggested. After reading about it and their own specs that says it works well with EAX it was easy for me to decide. Plus, Zipzoomfly had it for $15.00 cheaper! Now my mobo does have firewire and of course USB 2.0 ports and I am about to hi-jack my own thread:

1. Any other hardward that I will need for video, et. al.? Again, I need to transfer VHS tapes and mini-DVD tapes (home movie kind) and be able to burn them to DVD.

2. What software do you recommend? Keep in mind I am a noobie in this realm so at this point I don't need all the bells and whistles, but I also don't want to go cheap for the sake of cheap because you get what you pay for.

3. Any guides/manuals that you think could help me learn this, besides the Doom9 link (which I will read)?

Thanks so much,
Stoney

[pangea33]

The Plextor device you linked to yesterday, seems pretty much perfect. It will capture your VHS tapes to AVI on the fly. There are a number of free AVI video editors at the following link. One of these will let you cut and combine the various pieces into an AVI of your final movie. http://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=108#108

Convert the final AVI to DVD format with this free tool: http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Avi2Dvd

You can then burn it using the DVD setting in Nero, or one of the free tools available from videohelp.com

Here are a couple tutorials:
http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/article_avi2dvd_page1.html
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/avi_to_dvd_avi2dvd.cfm

You keep referring to mini-dvd tapes. I am making the assumption that you mean DV. That's the format that can be directly transferred to your PC via the FireWire cable. The videohelp site has free tools that will allow you to convert the result to AVI, which you can then manipulate and burn as mentioned above.

There are calculators to help you play with certain options to find the best results. This will allow you to find the right balance of highest quality, and manageable filesize, for working with the video on your particular PC. Then you can convert the files as necessary, to find the balance of quality and filesize for your DVDs.

Be prepared to do a fair amount of experimentation, but eventually you'll find the settings you're most comfortable with. After that the process becomes formulaic and you'll be turning out video like a champ. Good luck and have fun.