5 ms·

Yesterday I spent hours trying to find a dedicated sound card. What I found instead is that my pci Audigy SE (one of the weakest soundblaster models) costs here

by speeder 10y ago

Yesterday I spent hours trying to find a dedicated sound card. What I found instead is that my pci Audigy SE (one of the weakest soundblaster models) costs here new 120 usd and used 90 usd. All this pain due to DRM. DVD and HDMI companies (mostly Hollywood, but also directtv and some other subscription tv companies) pressured MS to get rid of all loopholes in Windows that let people ignore DRM. Microsoft complied, removed HAL for audio, killing 3D sound as side effect, and created WDDM with draconian rules to get certified, among them that drivers weren't allowed to setup custom resolutions that weren't in EDID, requiring hacks (like CRU) to be able to use monitors to full capacity, effectively being the final strike against analog video, as most people could not figure how to use their 2560x1600 @80hz screens (on ms forums complaints are usually that they can't go beyond 1280x1024 @75hz even when they were sure it was 85hz in windows xp)

dragontamer 10y ago
PCI Sound card? That sounds like an obsolete and out-of-date model. Why not a PCIe sound card for cheaper? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102062 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102... $35 new. But my understanding is that the ASUS Xonar is getting better reviws recently anyway. And that's $5 cheaper. Neither of these are "Audiophile grade" (which gets into $100+), but that's because Audiophiles demand higher-quality components. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132020 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132...
- speeder 10y ago
  I am from Brazil. Using a search engine that search all online stores, for "sound blaster" 3 models are available: Audigy SE PCI (not PCI-e) for 100 USD Zx for 350 USD. ZxR 550 USD. Xonar in that search engine, or any other, return 0 results. Looking into "sound card" categories, there are lots of PCI sound cards, a incredible amount of USB "sound cards", and a couple different PCI-e 25 USD generic sound cards (with VIA, Realtek, etc... chips). Also from what I've heard Xonar doesn't do OpenAL correctly anymore, because it relied on some Sensaura code in their drivers, and Creative in their typical jerk behaviour bought Sensaura and refused to renew the license.
  - dragontamer 10y ago
    Hmm, I dunno whats going on then. Maybe the market for PCIe cards in your country has dried up, so its not worth selling it. Simultaneously, I don't think that manufacturers are making PCI cards anymore, so naturally supply is going to dwindle and prices would go up. On the other hand, USB DACs are a preferred choice by many audiophiles (many prefer PCIe of course... but a good chunk prefer USB). I wouldn't discount any of the USB DACs, although I'm personally not familiar with that market. I'd say just get a USB one, possibly one that has been verified by that insane audiophile community.
riprowan 10y ago
What's the purpose of a "dedicated" soundcard? I'm an audio professional - from consumer to prosumer to pro, the best soundcards these days use USB (well, except for the Avid stuff). I don't think this has anything to do with DRM. I think it has to do with the logic of building one device that works on everyone's computer and doesn't need drivers. Historically, PCI / PCIe was required because it was the only way to move enough audio data at low latency back and forth to the computer. Historically what has plagued the manufacturers of dedicated devices is the difficulty of finding good driver developers and then getting drivers certified. I watched companies actually fail because they build a great audio device and couldn't get working drivers written for it once it was built (I'm thinking of Gadget Labs but I'm positive there was another one too). Once USB became fast enough to do the job - and once USB Class drivers became a thing - the decision to build devices for USB (instead of for PCI which not all computers even have) became a no-brainer.
- speeder 10y ago
  Dedicated soundcard, and drivers with direct access to hardware have nothing to do with audio professionals. It is about processors on the card (that back then had about half of the amount of transistors that the PC main CPU had, so they could pack quite a punch in processing power) that could do realtime audio calculations. I am not talking just about "effects" from the audio professional sense, I am talking about realtime creation of audio according to the scene geometry and stuff happening, for example A3D could calculate actual reflections, not just simulated reverb/echo. If you want to see an example of this in real life: go near a window that has a barrier in front of it of some kind, in a relatively enclosed space. Then wait for some noise to happen outside, in the direction opposite to the window. Suppose you was facing "forward", the window (and the wall beyond it) is to your left. Then an airplane passes by your right. The naive way to do it (that is what most games today do without a soundcard to do it for them), is play sound from the right speaker (be it in a 5.1 or in the right speaker of a headphone), or to simulate it is "outside", play it muffled. The correct way to do it, is play from the left, because it reflected on the wall, and came inside through the window. Vortex soundcards for example, made by Aureal, could calculate that (back then, only one reflection, so sequences of reflections that could go around corners didn't worked, but back then was 1996, this was already amazing, the Aureal+QSound sound card demo still impresses people to this day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA ) Mind you, these can't be done with USB, the protocol has too high latency (even with USB 3.1, due to the handshakes needed), in fact evne PCIe has too high latency compared to PCI, and when the switch from PCI to PCIe happened, soundcard makers had to put a ARM chip on the PCIe cards to do some calculations that originally were supposed to be done by the PC main CPU, because the latency of PCIe was too high.

by speeder 10y ago

dragontamer 10y ago

PCI Sound card? That sounds like an obsolete and out-of-date model. Why not a PCIe sound card for cheaper? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102062 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102... $35 new. But my understanding is that the ASUS Xonar is getting better reviws recently anyway. And that's $5 cheaper. Neither of these are "Audiophile grade" (which gets into $100+), but that's because Audiophiles demand higher-quality components. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132020 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132...

speeder 10y ago
I am from Brazil. Using a search engine that search all online stores, for "sound blaster" 3 models are available: Audigy SE PCI (not PCI-e) for 100 USD Zx for 350 USD. ZxR 550 USD. Xonar in that search engine, or any other, return 0 results. Looking into "sound card" categories, there are lots of PCI sound cards, a incredible amount of USB "sound cards", and a couple different PCI-e 25 USD generic sound cards (with VIA, Realtek, etc... chips). Also from what I've heard Xonar doesn't do OpenAL correctly anymore, because it relied on some Sensaura code in their drivers, and Creative in their typical jerk behaviour bought Sensaura and refused to renew the license.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  Hmm, I dunno whats going on then. Maybe the market for PCIe cards in your country has dried up, so its not worth selling it. Simultaneously, I don't think that manufacturers are making PCI cards anymore, so naturally supply is going to dwindle and prices would go up. On the other hand, USB DACs are a preferred choice by many audiophiles (many prefer PCIe of course... but a good chunk prefer USB). I wouldn't discount any of the USB DACs, although I'm personally not familiar with that market. I'd say just get a USB one, possibly one that has been verified by that insane audiophile community.

riprowan 10y ago

What's the purpose of a "dedicated" soundcard? I'm an audio professional - from consumer to prosumer to pro, the best soundcards these days use USB (well, except for the Avid stuff). I don't think this has anything to do with DRM. I think it has to do with the logic of building one device that works on everyone's computer and doesn't need drivers. Historically, PCI / PCIe was required because it was the only way to move enough audio data at low latency back and forth to the computer. Historically what has plagued the manufacturers of dedicated devices is the difficulty of finding good driver developers and then getting drivers certified. I watched companies actually fail because they build a great audio device and couldn't get working drivers written for it once it was built (I'm thinking of Gadget Labs but I'm positive there was another one too). Once USB became fast enough to do the job - and once USB Class drivers became a thing - the decision to build devices for USB (instead of for PCI which not all computers even have) became a no-brainer.

speeder 10y ago
Dedicated soundcard, and drivers with direct access to hardware have nothing to do with audio professionals. It is about processors on the card (that back then had about half of the amount of transistors that the PC main CPU had, so they could pack quite a punch in processing power) that could do realtime audio calculations. I am not talking just about "effects" from the audio professional sense, I am talking about realtime creation of audio according to the scene geometry and stuff happening, for example A3D could calculate actual reflections, not just simulated reverb/echo. If you want to see an example of this in real life: go near a window that has a barrier in front of it of some kind, in a relatively enclosed space. Then wait for some noise to happen outside, in the direction opposite to the window. Suppose you was facing "forward", the window (and the wall beyond it) is to your left. Then an airplane passes by your right. The naive way to do it (that is what most games today do without a soundcard to do it for them), is play sound from the right speaker (be it in a 5.1 or in the right speaker of a headphone), or to simulate it is "outside", play it muffled. The correct way to do it, is play from the left, because it reflected on the wall, and came inside through the window. Vortex soundcards for example, made by Aureal, could calculate that (back then, only one reflection, so sequences of reflections that could go around corners didn't worked, but back then was 1996, this was already amazing, the Aureal+QSound sound card demo still impresses people to this day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA ) Mind you, these can't be done with USB, the protocol has too high latency (even with USB 3.1, due to the handshakes needed), in fact evne PCIe has too high latency compared to PCI, and when the switch from PCI to PCIe happened, soundcard makers had to put a ARM chip on the PCIe cards to do some calculations that originally were supposed to be done by the PC main CPU, because the latency of PCIe was too high.