nkarafo
Member
Yeah, my current PC still has a PCI slot and that allowed me to use my trusty old Audigy 2 Platinum with it. The same card i used in my previous builds, so that's 3 PCs in a 15 year period. And yes, it fully works on Windows 10 as long as you use community drivers, the official ones don't make full use of the card.
Sound cards is one area were most people don't give a shit for a long time now. Ever since CPUs were powerful enough to handle sound without a performance hit (that's what, 20 years ago?) sound cards became a niche. All motherboards have sound chips in them so why bother paying more to get something you already have for free? Even Graphics cards have sound now. But the sound quality (another thing people don't give a shit about) is night and day. Despite being so old, the Audigy 2 still sounds so much better than your average modern motherboard chip. And i mean MUCH better. I can immediately tell if you are using a sound card or a MB chip the moment i hear some sound coming from your PC.
The Audigy Platinum even sounds better than some cheaper modern sound cards. This isn't like graphics cards where a cheap modern card can be as powerful as an expensive one 4 years ago. Sound quality is something we perfected a long time ago so an expensive older sound card will still sound just as good as an expensive modern card. The only thing that changes is the different interfaces, slots and features. Which means, if you have a good sound card and you don't care about it having an HDMI slot, you shouldn't need to replace it, ever. But the problem with the Audigy is the PCI interface. Modern PCs don't have that slot anymore so i can't use it. Which means i have to find a card at least as good that i can connect in the new PC.
I was somewhat happy with the Soundblaster Z a friend lent me (which sounds good but still misses a few things the Audigy has like the extra tone slider in the Windows panel) but that card is also somewhat old and i hear a lot of issues with it on Windows 10. And i'm not aware of community drives similar to the ones i'm using for the Audigy. My next choice is an external card with good support, i tried the 5.1 Omni (again, by a friend) but that sounds worse than the Audigy. Remember, the Audigy 2 was a somewhat expensive card back in the day while the Onmi is a mid-tier. So now i have to try one of the more expensive cards that cost 100$+ just to have the same sound quality as i did for 15 years now. And i can't just buy something, i need to have a sample to test and sound cards are hard to find in the wild.
Anyway, that was a rant. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
Edit: The solution was the Audigy Rx. Pretty much the same card as my Audigy 2 (with a few improvements/additions i don't care about), but with a PCI-e interface. Let's hope they won't get rid of that interface anytime soon...
Edit2: Turns out the Rx is not as good as the Audigy 2... If i use the same settings, the sound will crackle if the frequencies are high enough. So i have to turn down the settings a bit, which is not optimal. Guess i'll have to accept the best cards are for old PCs only.
Edit 2024: I finally tried a StarTech PCI-Express to PCI adapter and it works. No need to ever use a different sound card. Happy times ahead.
Sound cards is one area were most people don't give a shit for a long time now. Ever since CPUs were powerful enough to handle sound without a performance hit (that's what, 20 years ago?) sound cards became a niche. All motherboards have sound chips in them so why bother paying more to get something you already have for free? Even Graphics cards have sound now. But the sound quality (another thing people don't give a shit about) is night and day. Despite being so old, the Audigy 2 still sounds so much better than your average modern motherboard chip. And i mean MUCH better. I can immediately tell if you are using a sound card or a MB chip the moment i hear some sound coming from your PC.
The Audigy Platinum even sounds better than some cheaper modern sound cards. This isn't like graphics cards where a cheap modern card can be as powerful as an expensive one 4 years ago. Sound quality is something we perfected a long time ago so an expensive older sound card will still sound just as good as an expensive modern card. The only thing that changes is the different interfaces, slots and features. Which means, if you have a good sound card and you don't care about it having an HDMI slot, you shouldn't need to replace it, ever. But the problem with the Audigy is the PCI interface. Modern PCs don't have that slot anymore so i can't use it. Which means i have to find a card at least as good that i can connect in the new PC.
I was somewhat happy with the Soundblaster Z a friend lent me (which sounds good but still misses a few things the Audigy has like the extra tone slider in the Windows panel) but that card is also somewhat old and i hear a lot of issues with it on Windows 10. And i'm not aware of community drives similar to the ones i'm using for the Audigy. My next choice is an external card with good support, i tried the 5.1 Omni (again, by a friend) but that sounds worse than the Audigy. Remember, the Audigy 2 was a somewhat expensive card back in the day while the Onmi is a mid-tier. So now i have to try one of the more expensive cards that cost 100$+ just to have the same sound quality as i did for 15 years now. And i can't just buy something, i need to have a sample to test and sound cards are hard to find in the wild.
Anyway, that was a rant. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
Edit2: Turns out the Rx is not as good as the Audigy 2... If i use the same settings, the sound will crackle if the frequencies are high enough. So i have to turn down the settings a bit, which is not optimal. Guess i'll have to accept the best cards are for old PCs only.
Edit 2024: I finally tried a StarTech PCI-Express to PCI adapter and it works. No need to ever use a different sound card. Happy times ahead.
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