I have the Santa Cruz, its an older card but works well. Does anyone know if there is someting better out there, i've read lots of SB problems, and am wondering if its just certain cards.

Cheers

Better for games or for music? You won't find a better card for games than Audigy2 or X-Fi, if it's music sound quality you want then there are a number of choices depending on your budget. Any card using the VIA Envy processor is really good for music listening purposes, but get a card with decent drivers too. A good souncard can be ruined by bad drivers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_envy The cheapest card with this chipset is the Chaintech AV710 (it should cost you only about $20.00 USD). If you want a decent card that uses the same Envy processor but has bet DAC's (digital to analog converters) then the M-Audio Revolution is a good choice. Another card you might consider that is fairly current, but I don't believe will sound as good as the two I already mentioned for music, is the Turtle Beach Montego. It doesn't use the Envy processor and I don't even know which chipset it uses. I've just read people saying it's a decent alternative to Creative cards and it does Dolby Surround sound.

Thanks for the response. I really only game so thats what i'm after. Would the cards you mentioned be alot better than my current one?

I've always been a fan of Turtle Beach, and the Santa Cruz is a very capable card. However, the Creative Audigy line is the de facto standard for gaming (best supported by game developers). Given that fact, I've used various Audigy 1 and 2 boards, but was never that impressed with them. I currently have their X-Fi and am Very impressed. More dollars, but worth it imho.

Thanks for the heads up, I really like the SC too, its been great. I've been looking at the X-Fi and think i'll go the route.

Cheers

I have a Santa Cruz in my other PC and have Monsoon Planar speakers hooked up to it. It's great for music listening but it's not so great for games compared to my Audigy2 in this PC. I might pick up an X-Fi one of these days though.
I realy want a card like the M-Audio Revolution but one that also does hardware acceleration for games. They realy dropped the ball by not having that card do directsound hardware acceleration. They have a semi-pro card that does do hardware acceleration but it is more than I want to spend on a soundcard. I believe it's the Delta series that does hardware acceleration in games. Here's M-Audio's catalogue of soundcards.
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=pciinterfaces

Hammer3246,

I can back up Bill above, in that I was Anti-Creative for the longest, but this new X-Fi card is far superior to previous and current cards, IMO, and worth the extra change.

I've owned a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card and went from that to an Audigy 2 ZS. Just to clarify and maybe add a little to what has already been said here...

1) The Audigy 1,2,4 and I believe the new X type cards all have their own APU (Audio Processing Unit) that relieves the CPU of some duties and allows full hardware acceleration for sound with little or no loss in performance. They have fairly robust, especially from a PC standpoint, amping circuits and depending on the model you choose, will support differing levels of sound formats like THX etc. Also, fairly or not, it seems to me that Creative does a much better job of working with game developers to make sure sound is best when set to the Audigy settings.

Take my combined install of Forgotten Battles/Ace Expansion Pack/Pacific Fighters. With the latest driver, my Audigy 2 ZS card sounds far and away better in the game than the Santa cruz ever did. I purchased the Audigy 2 ZS to gain a few frames per second, especially at the low end where it really counts these days and kept the card because it not only did that, but it also gave me sound that... it's not an overstatement to say it totally changed the game experience! Now, I've been told recently that with some of the very newest and most capable CPU's, this frame rate thing is less of a consideration, but seeings how the Audigy card will migrate nicely into your next build, why give up a single frame when it simply is not needed and of no benefit as far as I can tell?

Most people who report to me an unfavorable impression of their Audigy 1 or 2 card have made a couple of mistakes when dealing with Creative.

a) For gamers and even most of the high fidelity crowd, there is no reason to do anything other than download the latest driver up date from Creative and install the drivers only. The latest driver update from Creative will include the entire driver. Let all the other stuff install and you may end up with processes running that you don't need or can't even use.

b) Not every time, but sometimes, Creative gives you a gift of spyware that keeps on giving with the driver updates. It's not so bad and a simple updating of your Ad-Aware and Spyboy and then running them both in safe mode (F8 as you boot) with system restore turned off will easily rid you of all that.

For most gamers at this point, the sound formats supported by the new X cards are not in games we play... yet! So it's a judgement call as to whether or not to go with what I have vs. the newer cards.

2) Soundblaster Live cards DO NOT have their own APU. I've installed a Sounblaster Live card and was simply not impressed! They in general do not sound as good as a Santa Cruz Turtle Beach sound card, so going from a Turtle Beach to a Soundblaster is in some ways, a step backwards.

3) Santa Cruz cards do not have their own APU. They have good sound, but not great sound at full hardware acceleration and I can tell you from direct experience that the card does suck up more than a few CPU cycles at full hardware acceleration. You should be using the latest driver version offered directly from Santa Cruz and I've got it if you want it, but it is pretty old.

4) Some versions of the Soundstorm motherboards have their own APU, but from the reports I've heard, most of these configurations do not have as good of amping circuits as the Audigy cards and from what I'm told, you can't get Soundstorm anymore anyways, so that's out as an option if you don't already have it.

I hope this information helps!

If the spec for the M-Audio Revolution 5.1 reads like this "game support with Sensaura, EAX, DirectSound and A3D" then how would that not be hardware accelerated support? They say this card is the best choice for gamers.

They did :

EMU10K1 processor, a 2.44 million transistor DSP capable of 1000 MIPS. The EMU10K1 featured DirectSound acceleration, General MIDI wavetable output, EAX 1.0 and 2.0 (environmental audio extensions, which competed with A3D before the demise of the latter), a high-quality 64-voice wavetable synthesizer, and integrated the FX8010 DSP chip for real-time digital audio effects processing.


the driver could be getting the cpu to do all the processing


ps: i remember a benchmark from unreal tournament

no sound : 52 fps
a3d hardware 3d(aureal vortex chip) : 32fps
eax hardware 3d (sblive) : 44fps

edit: luckyboy you may of had a Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit which was not the same as a standard live

Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit
The Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit was not actually a member of the Sound Blaster Live! family, because it lacked the EMU10k1/10k2 processor. It was a stripped down version of the Audigy 2 Value, with an SNR of 100 dB, software based EAX, no advanced resolution DVD-Audio Playback, and no Dolby Digital 5.1 or Dolby Digital EX 6.1 playback.

Thanks for the explanation. I'm just about convinced there is no other choice than Creative for a gaming card. The M-Audio site had this in their FAQ.

Q: When I am playing a computer game while using EAX or EAX2 with 3D Hardware Acceleration on my Revolution 5.1 or 7.1, I get crackling in the audio. What can I do about this?

A: Please use Software Acceleration for audio with the Revolution 5.1 and/or Revolution 7.1.