Need opinions on a sound card

[THOF]

Whats up guys I'm lookin for a new sound card to replace my onboard one. I'm running Win 98SE on a AMD 1.3 with 500 MB ram. Just wanna hear some good PCI cards the have no problems in TS2 under Win 98SE

[Cstar_maxim]

I'm lazy maybe but I just stick with CreativeLabs - SoundBlasters

I am not saying you will not have to play with the settings/drivers in order for it to work great. Its just kind of a hit and miss thing. Good Luck

[woutur]

I wish ANY manufacturer would have replied to my emails about this. I asked them to send some soundcards so we could test them. I would have given you the names of the manufacturers that had send them and said:
U should use this one.

None of them did.
Don't go with creative unless Audigy or better. SB Live! is a risk. It can be any of about 5 different cards you get and some produce static noise. Do NOT use turtlebeach cards as they have hardware defects. Do not use onboards sounds because manufacturers LIE about what those chips can do. Don't go cheapass CMedia ....

That's about all I can say :)

[UltraMagnus]

Hercules Gamesound Fortissimo series cards.................period

[etr]

Well, this seems like a good thread to solicit some specific sound card advice...

I am getting audio distortion in TeamSpeak with my main machine. This machine has two sound devices: an nForce MCP (paired with an ALC650 codec) as my primary audio device and an SB Live! as my secondary device (for use with VOIP). I am using these devices on an Abit NV7-133R (an nForce1 board) with an Athalon XP 1800+ (at the stock 1.53 GHz clock), WinXP, and Direct X 9.0a. Here are the relevant drive versions:

nForce MPU: 5.10.2917.0000 (nvapu.sys)
SB Live!: 5.12.0001.0252 (ctaud2k.sys)

I installed the SB Live! specifically for VOIP applications--the only ones in which I use the mic. This move was triggered by my discovery that the mic port on my motherboard would not record at an audible volume. Subsequent research suggests (with insufficient verification to use "reveals") that the original nForce reference boards had mis-wired mic ports, and that Abit (likely among others) carried this bug into the production boards. While I should re-iterate I don't have confirmation of this, Abit has admitted in their support forums that their early nForce 2 boards (NF7S boards before revision 1.2, I believe) had mis-wired mic ports, and allows RMA's for thuis problem. However, I have never had audio output problems with the motherboard, and continue to use the nForce board as my primary output device.

Thus, I originally installed the SB Live! to run the mic and circumvent the problems with the mic port on my motherboard. However, I soon ran a cable from the SB Live! to the line input of my motherboard. This provided an easy way to boost the volume of incoming voice audio relative to the game audio without having to tinker with the audio on all of my games. All this happened well before I ever tried TeamSpeak.

The problem is that I am get a lot of audio distortion on the output voide streams. This distortion is detectable with only one other user on the channel, but renders the program useless when there are two others on the channel. I just use TeamSpeak to game with a couple of friends, so I have not tried it with more than two people in a channel.

The network topography is as follows: my main machine and the server are on the same LAN behind a firewall providing NAT services (for a DSL connection). Two friends can connect to the server (from external addresses) and her both me and each other fine, so the problem does is not in transmissions from them to the server, from the server to them, or from me to the server. I have also played small LAN games using the same box to serve, and these indicate that there is not a problem with transmissions from the server to my main machine. However, there is on added caveat: when my machine and another client on the LAN (incidentally, running on the same machine as the server) are the only ones involved, I do not detect any distorition.

I have searched the forms here a number of times, and have tried the following with the current configuration:

1) Increased the priorty of the TeamSpeak client
2) Adjusted the buffer settings of the TeamSpeak client
3) Use wave output
4) Tried the KX drivers with the SB Live, setting them up as advised in the forums
5) Used the nForce audio for the output device
6) Used the nForce audio for both input and output (temporarily sacrificing the mic to try to alleviate the distortion)

This may look like a short list, but it ingores some of the combinations I have tried and attempts with other drivers. It also ignores some repeat tests done with the prior version of the client, and my substitution of the original SB Live! card for a different one. I should note that these results all occur WITHOUT games running. I also know how to use the mixer, so that's not the problem here, either.

Here is some additional information:

TeamSpeak client on main machine: WinXP, 2.0.29.47 (and some tests with 2.0.28)

TeamSpeak server (PII 350, 440BX, SB Live, RH 9.0): Linux, 201916 (I realize that there is a new server, but am leary of moving to it as a result of the security concerns that have shown up in another thread)

Second (test) TeamSpeak client on LAN (same machine as server): Linux, 2.0.29 (and some tests with 2.0.28)

I would be willing to try a different card for TS if I thought it had a reasonable chance of working. However, while the SB Live! is a known problem, none of the nForce issues I've seen in my forum searches seem related to my problem. Most reported nForce problems have to do with recording, and while I have such problems, they are not my primary issue. The one audio output issue I recall seeing with the nForce involved deteriments to the audio output of a GAME. My case is a bit different because (1) a game is not running, and (2) it is TeamSpeak's audio that is affected. I've also looked at AC97 threads, but, again, most seem to be mic related. One post did describe a problem like mine, but the best guess as to the problem was too much CPU utilization. That doesn't seem likely to be my problem given my system and the load (couple of other users in the channel, server on another box, no game or other heavy software in background).

If someone could point to a known problem in the output, I would probably be pretty amenable to buying and trying a different sound device. However, short of that, I'm not terribly keen on the idea of specutively buying a sound card that may or may not work, much less shelling out $100 or more for a more "premium" model only to relegate it to second-string.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

(For reference my current kludge-of-a-stop-gap is running a client on the server machine, putting the corresponding mic on my desk, and running the audio output cable to the input jack of my main machine. Given the physical arrangement of my hardware, this elminates the possibility of setting up hot keys, using "press to talk", or simply changing the connection state without getting up and walking to another desk. As a result, I would love to get my main machine working properly with TeamSpeak.)

[woutur]

Last night from my own experience I found out that:
The Nforce2 chipset found on a shuttle sn41g2 system has some flaws. The sound is pretty clear BUT nonetheless there is a high pitch sound when you transmit. It's not really annoying but it isnt really nice either. Then the sensitivity setting. It's really really hard to find a good one when you use voice acti. One stripe to the left you will transmit all the time, one to the right you will have to shout. I tinkered around with mic boost and the mic input recording level but had little success in solving this.

My own sb128pci with es 1370 chipset produces a bad soundquality , transmitting a lot of noise when you record. I tested this by unplugging every device (mic, headphones) and did a 8 bit recording at both 11khz and 22khz in the windows soundrecorder. Both produced the same noise I get when using TeamSpeak. Hence i conclude that recording for those specific settings on a sb128 is just bad.

[UltraMagnus]

Can you take this information and make it sticky in a dedicated thread? This is really important information for those trying to endlessly solve their problems. (I have 4 people in my clan with this exact problem.)

Thanks!:cool:

[THOF]

I went with a SB Audigy Gamer installed it and every thing worked fine no problems with TS2. Only problem I had was getting surround sound to work but finaly got it going. But MOH Spearhead dose seem to run a little chopy now with the new card

[Smite[TLD]]

To etr...

your system allowed you to install a second sound card without disabling the onboard sound? This normally causes o/s conflicts unless you modify the port settings (which is hard to do on MS systems).

Just disable the onboard sound in the bios and try your SB card by itself. (lose the patch cable to the mobo too!)

Might fix your problems.

[etr]

Hmm... <strokes beard>

That is something I hadn't considered. I'd be all over it if I had any other sign that the system had problems with a dual-sound card configuration. My system is about a year old now, and I've probably been running with dual sound cards for at least ten months of that. And TeamSpeak isn't the first VOIP package I've used.

I actually started using another package probably 2+ years ago. I got that mostly working, but it was always finicky about recording with my first SB Live!. I would have to start the client, stop it, and then restart it to get it recording. This problem was NOT due to a dual-sound configuration, as the card was first installed on an Abit KT7A (Via KT133A motherboard), and now on a 440BX board. In both cases, the SB Live! was/is the only enabled sound card. (The 440BX has AC97 audio, but I disabled it when installing the SB Live!.) In short, the only other sign of software-related trouble I've seen with this dual configuration has been shared single configurations.

However, while ACPI and the hardware drivers *should* make avoid conflicts (or at least alert me if this was not possible), dual sound configurations are a little unusual, and a variable for which I should run a control test. I'll need to scare up a friend for at some point, but I'll let you know my results!

Thanks for the suggestion!

[Cstar_maxim]

Smite[TLD], That depends on the age make and model of the MoBo and SoundCard and Operating System.

Most systems these days allow more than one soundcard without any problems. (Please note the use of the word most)

[etr]

Well, sorry it's taken so long for me to post test results--it's tough to catch my friends at a reasonable hour. I ran two test with only the SB Live enabled, one using Wave output and one using Direct sound output. Aside from those variables, I opted for conservative settings: buffer size set for quality and high process priority. Again, no games were running in the background.

However, I have took recordings of these tests, and they showed the playback problems I was experiencing. However, the thought did occur to me that the recording is probably done using the raw audio data, rather than looped through the sound card (which would require the sound card to offer a second recording source, which most don't offer, AFAIK). If this my assumption here is correct, the problem would appear to be with the audio stream itself, rather than the sound card or its drivers.

It would be extremely helpful to get confirmation or refutation of my thoughts on recording. If my thinking is correct, it would suggest I need to focus my attention on TeamSpeak settings rather than hardware/driver issues. While that wouldn't be a solution, it would at least leave me a smaller haystack to search for the proverbial needle.

Again, thanks to all for the help!

P.S.: I can post the recordings if desired, but I don't think it makes sense to waste space unless someone wants to hear them.