The Test

We tested the audio cards in the same board as our Intel solution. When we were testing with an add-in card, we would disable the on-board, and conversely, we would remove add-in cards when testing with onboard audio.

Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition
RAM: 2 x 256MB Samsung DDR2 (4:4:4:11)
Hard Drive(s): Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB PATA
Chipset Drivers: Intel Chipset INF v6.2.1.1001
Video Card(s): NVIDIA Geforce 6600 GT
Audio Card(s): Creative Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Creative Audigy 4 Pro
Echo Audio Gina3G
Realtek Intel HD Audio
Video Drivers: NVIDIA ForceWare 67.66 Beta
Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional SP2
Power Supply: OCZ PowerStream 600 PSU
Motherboards: Intel D925XECV2

The Cards Audio Quality: RightMark Audio Analyzer 24/96
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  • KingofL337 - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link

    All, I want is a review of a sound card that does realtime SPDIF DTS/DD encoding not just a card that only does it in DVD's. You find one and I'm gonna go buy it.
  • leliel - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link

    i'm still using philips seismic edges (philips tbird avenger chipset, PSC705 model) in my boxen because creative can't put out a decent product. i wouldn't mind seeing the new ultimate edge (PSC724) or aurilium (PSC8xx) reviewed. happy with what i have except the latest drivers for these things are about three years old and games like WoW and republic commando aren't happy with them =P
  • EddNog - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link

    MrMarbles; check out the card I have, Echo Audio Mia MIDI. Its sample rate is completely controllable, including full lock to 44.1, with zero resample as long as you bypass Kmixer by either using any of the time critical transports (for example, kernel streaming) or even a special proprietary Kmixer bypass for regular wave audio output that's included in the drivers called Purewave. When I bought it, you could find the card for just $200, and it was over a year ago.

    -Ed
  • MrMarbles - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link

    I'm interested in buying a soundcard for playing back highquality (if you can call MP3's that) MP3 files. I got an Audigy2 now. Very happy with the low distortion, has a very clean sound on my B&W Nautilus 805 speakers. But, they also have a very wellknown problem with 44.1khz 16bit stereo playback. So looking to upgrade. I'm a bit of a audiophile, but I can't spend too much. Gaming is not something do a lot of anymore.
  • Pandamonium - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link

    Missing chipsets:
    Envy 24HT
    nVidia Sounstorm
  • Maleficus - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link

    THANK YOU, seeing audio on the front page again is AWESOME.
  • LocutusX - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link

    Oh, and the ALC850 is pretty horrible. I used a TB Santa Cruz from 2001 to 2004 (3 years) and noticed the difference straight away when I switched to the on-board sound on my new Athlon64 rig.

    Later, when I bought an Audigy 2 ZS for Xmas, I noticed the difference on that the moment I popped the card in. Nah, don't waste your time on an ALC850 when there are more worthy things to review;

    - VIA Envy24HT cards
    - the various Audiophile-ish stuff already mentioned
  • LocutusX - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link

    From what I've read @ Hydrogenaudio, it's impossible to "bypass" the resample stage with an Audigy 2 ZS (when dealing with 44.1KHz source).

    Someone posted a wave file which contained a particular sine wave. When played back on hardware which could natively handle 44.1KHz, it sounds fine.

    When played back on hardware which resamples 44.1KHz to 48KHz, lots of weird distortion could be heard - sirens, alien noises, etc. On the Audigy 2 ZS, even if you used ASIO or Kernel Streaming output, this behaviour was observed. Only when you did a high quality (SSRC) resample to 48KHz did it sound fine.

    BTW I don't see the point in reviewing the TB Santa Cruz. While a good card for its time, that was more than 2 years ago. It's been EOL (end of life) for 2 years now, and there won't be any new drivers made for it. It won't work in future OS's (XP64) and even the most recent XP32 drivers had issues with various games.
  • vmajor - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link

    Question for Derek, why was Audigy 4 judged better than the Audigy 2? It costs more and was just as bad (or worse)as the Audigy 2 in the objective tests.

    Regarding the audiophile incursion into Anandtech - just please beware that Audiophilia nervosa is contageous...

    ...when you start hearing differences between $40 and $4000 cables, power cords, volume knobs (yes, knobs, not pots), 'demagnetised' CDs, etc... take a long holiday.



  • DerekWilson - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link

    #58, PrinceGaz,

    Thanks for the feedback. We will explore some of these options.

    We did, however, use RightMark 3DSound for our CPU Utilization tests. :-) There wasn't much more detail we could have gone into. We could have reported standard deviation for CPU usage, or even shown the graph over time for each card (which looked roughly the same in every case). The only test we really didn't include there was a test of the maximum number of audio channels on each card, though 32 happened to also be the max channels for the Realtek solution (64 channels for soundblaster 128 channels for gina3g).

    There's not much more information that RightMark 3DSound provides than what we showed. Unelss there's something specific you would like us to explore with the program? The effect of custom audio files?

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