I am building a new rig but I am having trouble getting to grips with the current state of play in the sound card market.
I absolutely do not want to use a motherboards on-board sound except as an emergency backup.
I will be using a Videologic Sirocco Crossfire 4.1 sound system running off the sound card, though due to space limitations I am only using the 2 front channel satellite speakers with the sub woofer in a 2.1 configuration. This is unlikely to change in the short to medium term.
I am increasingly using headphones and have a halfway decent set of stereo headphone - old Sennheiser 540 Reference Golds. It is important the souncard gives good headphone reproduction - decent surroundsound in games would be nice.
Usage is primarily games, sometimes a bit of music, occasionally watch a film.
I have a collection of well over 300 games going back to 1988. Backwards compatibility is THE major issue for me. Realistically I don't expect to play games written in the pre windows DOS days on the new card - but I expect any new soundcard to be backwards compatible to about 10 years ago.
I have always gone for Creative cards due to the compatibility issue up tp now- but I hate loath and despise creative for their appalling driver support over the years.
One real area of doubt for me is the change to the soundcard market after Vista came out. My machines at home use XP and Win2K. I am vaguely aware of hearing about Vista causing problems with old sound cards. What was that all about? Does it also apply to Win7. I will be using XP and Win7 on the new rig.
Cost isn't an issue but if I was going to spend more than £100 I would want to understand the reasons.
Thanks in advance
I absolutely do not want to use a motherboards on-board sound except as an emergency backup.
I will be using a Videologic Sirocco Crossfire 4.1 sound system running off the sound card, though due to space limitations I am only using the 2 front channel satellite speakers with the sub woofer in a 2.1 configuration. This is unlikely to change in the short to medium term.
I am increasingly using headphones and have a halfway decent set of stereo headphone - old Sennheiser 540 Reference Golds. It is important the souncard gives good headphone reproduction - decent surroundsound in games would be nice.
Usage is primarily games, sometimes a bit of music, occasionally watch a film.
I have a collection of well over 300 games going back to 1988. Backwards compatibility is THE major issue for me. Realistically I don't expect to play games written in the pre windows DOS days on the new card - but I expect any new soundcard to be backwards compatible to about 10 years ago.
I have always gone for Creative cards due to the compatibility issue up tp now- but I hate loath and despise creative for their appalling driver support over the years.
One real area of doubt for me is the change to the soundcard market after Vista came out. My machines at home use XP and Win2K. I am vaguely aware of hearing about Vista causing problems with old sound cards. What was that all about? Does it also apply to Win7. I will be using XP and Win7 on the new rig.
Cost isn't an issue but if I was going to spend more than £100 I would want to understand the reasons.
Thanks in advance