Sound?

[Banger]

When i look at specs of computers what am i looking at for sound quality. I play alot of music and documentary type cd roms. I dont play games or anything but fancy a good quality sound.

So what do i look for in the specs?

Cheers

 

[Tsiklonaut]

All original internal soundcards are complete bullsh*t for a real audiophile.

If you want the digital then get and low noise external Firewire/USB audio card, that's it. It's uses the same 16bit/44kHz as internal stock soundcards do for playing CDs, BUT they have muuuuch more noiseless and pure sound because of better AD/DA converters and components!

I'm a bit audiophile and i use professional Emagic EMI 96kHz/24bit USB card on my mac (same card fits for peecees too) for digital. But still mostly i prefer 12" vinyls via tube-amplification set over any digital.

Mo

 

[cookie]

got an original creative audigy in mine. sound is better than an integrated sound processor on the motherboard, but it's close these days.

sounds *good for a pc* i think. you'll have to go way up market for audiophile quality.

 

[Noel]

I use a Creative audigy platinum, a very good card it has a face unit for fire wire and other outputs and inputs, you can have it as 5.5" bay or external.

 

[Pondboy]

Another vote for the Creative Audigy series. PB

 

[trotsky]

Another vote for the Creative Audigy series. PB

And another. It works well for both inputs and outputs - I've recorded stuff through it to hard disk from various sources, just because it does can do it.

If it is for music and speech, then almost any built in audio will be fine - I've seen 5:1 audio on motherboards which cost less that £80 so that suggests they have managed to get some impressive signal processing onto a single chip.

The speakers will matter more than the sound card when it comes down to quality. these are pretty kinky for the price but are probably overkill if you are not playing games. A good bass bin helps tremendously though, consider something like this rather than just a pair of speakers.

I'm not recommending buying from Morgan in particular, I just new they had these on their site because I was looking for something else yesterday. These are both good buys though.