Sound Card---Worth Upgrading? (Great Deal!!)

Right now Best Buy has a deal for a:
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER Limited Edition Sound Card

for $60 after a mail-in-rebate.

I was thinking about getting this but i was wondering if it was worth upgrading my sound card (Creative Labs Budget 5.1) given the speakers i have (Creative Inspire 5.1 5300).

Is my sound really going to sound a whole lot better?????

 

no it wont sound any better. its all marketing

 

^ Are u being serious?

And if ur being sarcastic ur stupid cuz I know its going to sound better...i just want to know if its going to be substantially better and if my speakers will bottleneck my sound card.

 

how is it possibly going to sound better? the only difference is 24 bit output. and that works only if you output it to a receiver. i heard its a downmixed signal and then upconverted anyway.

 

That is true.

Basicly the biggest difference in sound is when you go from onboard to a card. Going from what you have to the Gamer ZS will not make a difference.



cooked

 

Well I don't have like one the new sb live 5.1 cards...its really about 2 years old. So there are a lot of other features I am missing like Advanced EAX HD...and others.

Other opinions?

 

It has a few features that your present card doesn't have as you mentioned. That is a good deal for that card. What games does it come with? My son's 5.1 died and we replaced it with the ZS and he said it was better than the 5.1, but that is only an opinion. Opinions are what you asked for, but it is ultimayely up to you if you want to spend the money on a card thatyou may not notice any difference with. If the games are worth the money, you can consider the card is free..

 

Pretty sure i can hear the diff between sb audigy 1 and 2; sba 1 sounds a bit more muffled on my klipsch gmx 5.1 speakers; sba2 is more clean.

 

Better quality cards have better line out pre-amps as well as better DAC's (digital to analog convertors).

All the newer live/audigy cards have the same DAC's IIRC, so you won't get a difference

But going from an old SB Live! you will get a difference, depending on your speaker/headphone setup it may be more noticable for some than others.

24 bit is all very well and good, but I know of very few 24bit sources you can get on your machine. Perhaps games in the future, and Audio DVDs. The only reason I'd get a 24-bit card is if it were 96,000Hz sample rate inputs, since I do quite a bit of home recording, this would be useful to me. I doubt a consumer card will have 24-bit 96,000Hz sample rate INPUTS... perhaps outputs but not inputs.

 

you won't probably notice as for the sound quality

cards such as the sblive zs gamer edition have like 105db s/n ratio
cards such as the sblive 5.1 have like 100db s/n ratio

yes they have more features 24bit audio ( you still need a 24bit audio source wich i haven't found yet) , advanced EAX HD and things like firewire, optical and such...but is that worth 60$?

if you're willing to spend on a new soundcard...go ahead...but you'll only notice the difference if you have really good ears...or if you are a musician!!



hope that helps