Pierre Hugonnet wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> not purely mp3, but...
>
> I want to buy a soundcard, and am hesitating between the SoundBlaster 128 (~25$) and
>the SounBlaster 1024 Live (~60$).
>
> Main Usage:
> - playing my mp3 collection (mainly 128kbs quality) on my (very standard) HiFi
>equipement
> - converting my old audio tapes to mp3
>
> Is the SB128 enought (signal/noise, A/C converter quality,...) for these usages or
>is it better to get the SB1024 ?
Note that the under the name soundblaster 128 many different cards are
sold.
Evil voices say the card changes every week while the name stays the
same :-)
There are also SB16PCI and SB512 !
Creative wants you to buy a Live! , everything else it there just to
confuse
the competition ( or the users ). They don't even supply win2000 drivers
for half of
their PCI cards ( except of course the Live! )
Try to get something not soundblaster.
There is a good comparison of sound cards at
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/index.htm
I personally have an Ensoniq AudioPCI ( when I bought it it was packaged
as
soundblaster 64PCI , as Creative bought the card form Ensoniq. It seems
that it is
no more available, was probably too good for with a too low price and
made the Live!
look overpriced and bad )
It has 4 channels and pretty good quality, but the windows drivers have
a few shortcomings :
- can not record sound without also listening to it. Forget using the
computer as an effect
machine
- can not use the rear pair of speakers for playing something
independent of front speakers,
like play a mp3 on front and some other mp3 ( or anything else ) on
the rear. The rear speakers
are always quiet , except in games with 3D sound
> Also, are they equally well supported under Linux ?
SB64PCI works nicely in Linux. For SB128 it depends what model you got.
Some are supported, but I wouldn't guarantee that all of them are.
> Thanks for your advises,
>
> Pierre
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