which is the better card ? phoebus/strix soar/sound blaster z

west1980

west1980

west1980

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I am stuck between these cards I know about driver issues with the phoebus but not sure how the soar is doing?

Never had creative sound cards,but the sound blaster z will most likely have better driver support.
 
Strix cards work better now I believe. Not that long ago, the Windows 10 drivers were terrible.

Don't know what the Phoebus is like now, but I remember some people having issues ages ago.

All three have probably had issues at one time or another, but of the three, SB Z probably had fared the better overall.

If you're going to use the headphone surround effects these cards have, then SBX on the SB Z, is probably the best one. Dolby found on the Asus cards is a bit marmite, some like it, some think it sucks.
 
Hey chap....I mostly used the quite basic asus dg 5.1 cards in my systems and they did me fine. I then decided to upgrade and had read some good things about the sound blaster z so I got 1. To be honest I just could not get on with it. I could not get the sound just right to my liking like I could on the dg. After about 2 weeks I ditched the sound blaster and got a Asus u7 zonar. Best thing I ever did ,sounded great out of the box and very easy to use . It might not be everybody's cup of tea but I will not be changing it until it goes bang ...
 
Depends on whether you are talking about HDMI or optical, and if optical whether or not you intend use the receiver and 5.1 speakers for gaming.
 
I got all those cards, and a ton more.

My Strix is back in its box for what its worth. This is a little unfair because I lived and suffered it for so longer and in the end I gave up on it and bought another Creative.

I think taht was a little unfair because at the time, I had not had any issues at all with the Asus, but the dammage had been done.

I used the Z for a short while but I missed the control box that the Creative Recon3D and the Strix gave me, and so I bought the Creative OMNI. That seemed to struggle under extremely heavy gaming, and so I went for the ZXR.

Weirdly, I am now back on my Recon3D because it gave me the volume control and Headphone selector button on the front of the PC and so I have no junk cluttering up my desktop ( If you only knew all the crap thats on there now - I canot see any wood for all the bits of remote controls and USB drives and half a mouse and sopme bits of foam ( WTF? ) and cable ties and a load of biros and some tools... But no room for the sound card control box.

I think your choices are fine and you wont be upset with any of them, but I think the Z is the best choice of those you mention.
 
west1980 said:
It will be optical and 5.1 setup and yeah for gaming
Click to expand...

You need the audio stream to be encoded with Dolby Digital or DTS to get proper 5.1. Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect are real time 5.1 encoders. Without Dolby Digital or DTS encoded stream, optical is only capable of stereo; then the receiver will upmix the stereo to 5.1 using Dolby Pro Logic.

Motherboards with Realtek codecs are capable on a hardware level when it comes to DDL and DTSC, but many manufacturers disable it in the software on all but their top premium boards to avoid paying licensing fees on lower cost boards.

It has been possible to get DDL and DTSC working using cracked drivers. There is a thread which links a guide on how to do this, but after reading some recent pages of that guide, it seems that recent Windows 10 updates at the time caused problems with this, and unless whoever modified the drivers releases updates, that looks like a dead end.

Best really to go with a sound card, at least that's licensed and you don't need to rely on someone cracking the drivers in order for DDL/DTSC to work.

Soundblaster Z is a good choice.
 
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