[mythtv-users] Best Soundcard?

[Steve Adeff]

On Wednesday 12 October 2005 14:03, Derek Meek wrote:
> so what sound card (or AMD-CPU motherboard with integrated sound) would you
> recommend - i noticed the ~$80 price for the audigy 2 zs plat. pro was
> 'noise' on pricewatch and the cheapest one is actually $200, which is waay
> too much

I've found the NForce3 and NForce4 boards with built in ALC655 and ALC855 
chips always have at optical if not optical and coax outputs on board. I like 
the ECS, MSI and Gigabyte boards. They're solid, stable, and very well built. 
I also really like the NForce chipsets and have found my Athlon64 NForce4 
system with an ECS board to be rediculously stable and have had no issues 
running myth on it so far.

That said... a few years ago, when the SB Live! was all the rage, i made a 
discovery... it's oft touted digital output and inputs were not truely 
digital. They converted to analog and back within the chips due to hardware 
limitations of the base chip(it didn't support spdif so it output analog 
onboard to another chip that did the spdif conversion) . I know the early 
Audigy's were the same, but don't know if they've since fixed this "flaw", 
but for those looking for true digital I'd suggest looking elsewhere than the 
soundblaster company. I also do not know if these ALC chips have true digital 
either. If your not looking for bit-accurate digital input and output (which 
for general media isn't usually an issue) then don't worry. I just thought 
I'd pass the info along.

Steve