Hello,
I have been increasingly displeased with what was once a favourite company, Creative Labs. Poor drivers even in W*in, outward hostility towards open-source, and lately they have stooped to unbelievable lows with this kind of attitude:
Custom Drivers are "stealing"
Unfortunately, despite their declining market-share and lack of any innovations in the past couple of years, they still make the (arguably) best sound cards, at least from an enthusiast perspective.
However, it is time to move on. I will purchase a new system soon and I need something better than integrated audio; which one would you recommend? Ideally it would have the following features:
- good drivers with low cpu utilization in both Vista (for games) and Linux (for everything else, movies especially, so working S/PDIF and optical outputs would be appreciated)
- at least some support for EAX/OpenAL without needing a Quad-Core for it
- wavetable support (yes, I like playing MID's and no, timidity doesn't cut it)
- preferably pci-e but I'd settle for pci if no other choice
- no extra "features" like Firewire or extension boxes
What do you think? Any hope or is Creative still the only choice? What about not-yet-released hardware?
Thank you for any ideas...
Regards,
Mihnea
I have been increasingly displeased with what was once a favourite company, Creative Labs. Poor drivers even in W*in, outward hostility towards open-source, and lately they have stooped to unbelievable lows with this kind of attitude:
Custom Drivers are "stealing"
Unfortunately, despite their declining market-share and lack of any innovations in the past couple of years, they still make the (arguably) best sound cards, at least from an enthusiast perspective.
However, it is time to move on. I will purchase a new system soon and I need something better than integrated audio; which one would you recommend? Ideally it would have the following features:
- good drivers with low cpu utilization in both Vista (for games) and Linux (for everything else, movies especially, so working S/PDIF and optical outputs would be appreciated)
- at least some support for EAX/OpenAL without needing a Quad-Core for it
- wavetable support (yes, I like playing MID's and no, timidity doesn't cut it)
- preferably pci-e but I'd settle for pci if no other choice
- no extra "features" like Firewire or extension boxes
What do you think? Any hope or is Creative still the only choice? What about not-yet-released hardware?
Thank you for any ideas...
Regards,
Mihnea
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