Sound cards:

[Bikerdude]

Evenin

 

My old Xfi finally gave up the ghost, or should I say I got pissed of with the constant BSOD's it or the driver kept giving me (despite several deinstall/reinstalls of the driver), so it got ceremoniously snapped in two and thrown in the bin. So the exercise is to get a Windows 7 compatible sound card that will as good as a soundblaster at 2 price points, either £25 or £6.

 

So far we have the Asus xonar DG 5.1 PCI at £20-25 or a creative soundblaster titainium 7.1 PCIe @ £60.

[Briareos H]

An old Audigy2 on eBay?

[Bikerdude]

I have an Audigy2 in my media pc should I want to do that, the Audigy in some respects is inferior to the Xonar and my old Xfi which is why I use the SPDIF output from that to my amp. If possible I would like to try a non-creative sound card if at all possible, I would think in this day and age I should be able to do that, have good quality sound and eax either software or hardware emulated.

[Glyph Seeker]

I've got the Xonar and I've had none of the snap crackle and pop I had with my old Audigy.

[Bikerdude]

I've got the Xonar and I've had none of the snap crackle and pop I had with my old Audigy.

Which Xonar have you got and how did it compare Frame rate and EAX wise to your old Audigy..?That said I just read this on a review -

 

Sure it can't compete with the Xonar Essence or Creative Titanium, but it's not priced to do so. It's a stripped-down dedicated headphone soundcard and for that it does its job far better than it has any right to.

 

I have a 5.1 speakers, and I need EAX/OpenAL support for TDM - none of the reviews mention anything about those, so maybe this card is too low end in this instance..?

[Glyph Seeker]

Yes Biker, it is a low end one - (Xonar DS) like the review says. It does support 5.1 but when I try to turn EAX on in TDM it says "no suitable hardware found". I got it as it was a cheap way to avoid on board sound.

 

Sorry, yes it sounds unsuitable for you, I guess I mean to vouch for ASUS over Creative in this instance, even though you probably need the higher end model.

[Bikerdude]

Ok more research then :-)

[Bikerdude]

well Popped my old audigy2 in the main pc and Im still getting bsod's

 

 

On Wed 15/06/2011 01:51:21 GMT your computer crashed

crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\061511-17671-01.dmp

This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x70740)

Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFFFFFBA6B0000, 0x0, 0xFFFFF800032E5690, 0x5)

Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System

company: Microsoft Corporation

description: NT Kernel & System

Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced.

This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.

The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time.

 

On Wed 15/06/2011 01:51:21 GMT your computer crashed

crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp

This was probably caused by the following module: ctoss2k.sys (ctoss2k+0x5D7F)

Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFFFFFBA6B0000, 0x0, 0xFFFFF800032E5690, 0x5)

Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\ctoss2k.sys

product: Creative Audio Product

company: Creative Technology Ltd.

description: Creative OS Services Driver (WDM)

Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced.

This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.

A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: ctoss2k.sys (Creative OS Services Driver (WDM), Creative Technology Ltd.).

Google query: ctoss2k.sys Creative Technology Ltd. PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

 

And the above after I went back to an ghost backup, fucking windows... Win7 is just as prone to crashing as Xp ever was, I potentially threw out my 2yr old Xfi for nothing.

[rich_is_bored]

I've got a Xonar DX and EAX support is limited to 2.0. I can play Halo PC with EAX but not Doom 3 as it requires EAX 4.0. In theory, ASUS may eventually support higher versions of EAX as it's all handled in the software driver but I don't expect it will ever come to pass.

 

The important thing is that with the disappearance of DirectSound, EAX is handled in software even if you buy a Creative card. What that means is there's nothing stopping you from using EAX right now with any sound card except for the fact that Creative has chosen to rest on their laurels rather than innovate. They license out EAX 1 and 2 to hardware vendors while blackmailing game developers with shoddy software patents in order to keep EAX 3, 4, and 5 relevant. Google Carmack's Reverse for an example very close to home.

 

My advice, get the Xonar. It's a quality sound card and Creative doesn't deserve anyone's money. If reverb, echo and all those fancy bells and whistles can be handled in software as they evidently are already, there's no reason TDM has to continue using EAX after the engine goes open source.

[Bikerdude]

I've got a Xonar DX and EAX support is limited to 2.0. My advice, get the Xonar. It's a quality sound card and Creative doesn't deserve anyone's money. If reverb, echo and all those fancy bells and whistles can be handled in software as they evidently are already, there's no reason TDM has to continue using EAX after the engine goes open source.

 

3D Gaming Sound Engines/APIs - DirectSound3D® GX 2.0 & 1.0, EAX®2.0&1.0, DirectSound® HW, DirectSound SW, A3D®1.0, OpenAL generic modes, 128 3D sounds processing capability

Several reviews Ive read state the Xonar DX (£40-50) supports EAX 5, but asus own website says eax 2.0 but then says 128 3D voices which is eax 5. Im gonna call/email Asus today about that. And yeah as you say creative don't deserve any more of my money. Dosent D3/TDM use OpenAL, which creative would have us believe they created but its multi-platform and open source etc.

 

But in the in the meantime I'm am gonna backup all the data from the raid array and test each hard drive individually for errors to rule that out.