USB Sound Card with full support for Vista?

I've ordered an XPS M1330 laptop, but it doesn't have SPDIF output, so I was thinking about getting an external USB sound card. The "best" one I seem to have found is the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 24-bit, but hardly any of it's features (such as Dolby Digtial) are supported by Vista.

Anyone got any recommendations on a decent external USB sound card? I don't mind paying a little extra for better 2 channel and 5.1 channel sound. I'll primarily be listening to music, watching DVD's and playing games.

Some more info:
My TV accepts HDMI.
My receiver accepts digital and coaxial as input. I'd like the sound card to have digital output that supports dolby digital 5.1 sound.
My receiver doesn't have an HDMI input.
My analogue inputs on the receiver are already taken by my DVD-Audio/SACD player so that rules out using the two headphone and mic output on the laptop.

 

Try the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook, if you have a ExpressCard/54.

 

^^^Thanks, but it doesn't have an optical output. It also requires a speaker docking module for true 5.1 sound.

 

check this out as its had rave reviews and also has hardware acceleration in gaming under vista as well as the creatives usb sound card which unlike the creative card shown above (X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook -audio only..not gaming) doesnt support hardware acceleration in games since it was stripped out of directx 10 in preference to another type. gl something i think.

siberia usb card...

http://www.icemat.com/products/icematsiberia/icemat_siberia_usb_soundcard_

------------------
creative usb soundcard..

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=244&subcategory=718&product=10702

hope that helps

 

The siberia usb sound card doesn't have a digital output and doesn't support
true dolgy digital 5.1 sound.

I've looked at the Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit external before, and currently it looks my best bet even though a lot of features are not supported under Vista.

Thanks.

 

Found one
Callisto Home Theatre Adapter
http://sondigo.com/sondigostore/pro...d=990&osCsid=b48773d1933ddd3682715346708ef19e

 

The successor to the sound blaster live! 24 bit is the "audigy 2 nx" I suggest you look into it, it can be hard to come by today.

Its a shame there isnt one single product that actually suited my needs for a laptop soundcard, not one, but the audigy 2 nx comes closest.

 

When you have firewire you can take the terratec aureon 7.1 firewire

 

^^^^Completely unnecessary (and expensive) for my needs as I already have an A/R receiver, but thanks anyway.

 

wait, so does or does not the creative audigy 2 nx support hardware acceleration? wording confused me

 

Works perfectly, and the sound is very, very good.

 

Not sure about yours but many recent Dell laptops have S/PDIF output from pin 7 of the multimedia connector. I know for sure that is the case with the Inspiron E1405. Haven't bothered to check the voltage, although I think an additional power supply (USB or wall wart) would be needed to drive a laser diode for optical S/PDIF.

If your amp uses digital modulation technology (virtually all new ones with digital inputs and DSP do), you would not want to use analog interconnects. The signal would be converted from digital to analog in the computer and then back to digital in the amp (at which point it is converted from PCM to PWM in the DSP, amplified, and converted to analog in the output filter), causing a major decrease in quality. With S/PDIF, the PCM stream from the computer is transferred digitally into the amp, converted to PWM, amplified, and then converted to analog in the output filter. The result is only one step between digital to analog (which is done at high power levels in passive LC circuitry resulting in high SNR) and very good quality.

 

HEY LEFTSIDE, Are you able to do "passthrough" of 5.1 Dolby digital and DTS with the optical SPDIF on this sondigo callisto card? If so was there any issues or difficulty installing VISTA drivers etc..
I am thinking of getting one of these if it will definitely work for a VISTA HOME premium Notebook laptop. I am looking to use this to play movies mainly to "passthrough" Digital surround sound to an AV reciever.
......I Hope anyone else can help give me any VISTA advice on this sound card and tell if any compatibility issues exist.

 

OK look,

Nobody gives a **** everytime you recommend they hack their box or solder in resistors or this or that when they ask what accessory will help them out. I kept my mouth shut until now - but honestly, I don't think anything you ever tell anyone applies to the real world. If you want to show us how smart you are, stay at whatever university you're at and keep your Tech ***** Syndrome there, not on these boards. Just help the guy out with a simple "You can buy this soundcard", not "you need to influx this into that and jump this cable while twirling that one and then you don't need a new soundcard. NO BODY IN THE REAL WORLD GIVES A **** ABOUT WHAT YOU FOUND OUT WHILE DISMANTLING THE INNER WORKINGS OF YOUR GADGETS TO MAKE THEM DO SOMETHING ELSE.

and nobody will be able to tell if he used digital or analog cables unless his amplifier / speakers are in the $15,000+ range. You wouldn't on almost anybody's system. I guarantee it. And I'll bet he's playing MP3's over the soundcard to boot.

I have the credentials to back up both arguments, but I'm not going to go posting in hopes of impressing anyone on here by flaunting them around. Get a life.

/rant

 

Sean,

What's the big deal? Can't handle someone giving a little insight other than "buy this product" when it's not going to be of use to them, or "refer to this other post...already answered" instead of really helping out? She's trying to give a little more information about a subject than many other users (myself included) are interested in, and she has a few points that may be pertinent to some of us. It may not be useful for the average audiophile out there listening to MP3s, but for some members involved in audio recording or something of a similar use, it kind of comes in handy (I care about my signal quality whether you can tell it's a digital signal or not...). That's what a forum is all about...collectively sharing information from those who know about a subject to those who want to learn about it, not bashing others' intelligence or method of assistance.

Quit hating on people trying to go the extra mile, take an extra dose of whatever meds you forgot to take earlier and go deal with your own anger management/self worth issues...since you seem to know all there is to know about everyting you won't need our help with that. Or here's a thought...post something actually productive (and without swearing or slurs this time...) or get off of this forum and go find one with the rest of your degenerate kind.

 

Ok, i'll do that then....

This is coming from an audio engineer.

Bypass the Soundblaster or other "Mulltimedia soundcard" deals altogether. This includes the Audigy, etc. series. They are lackluster, colour the sound with unneeded and unwanted algorithms, often times providing dreaded latency, and all around not a "hifi" soundcard by any means. The internal SPDIF on any laptop is also going to be riddled with similar problems.

My recommendation to you: spend the little extra money on a true, professional grade external ASIO soundcard. If you're worried about sound quality, that's the way to go (short of refusing to use a computer all together). Professional soundcards with ASIO drivers really do provide the best, most transparent sound. By being external, you eliminate hum from the internals of your computer (unless you create a ground loop), and by being a true professional soundcard, you are sure that there are no unwanted algorithms with the intent of sounding better on $24.99 Best Buy speakers. You are going to get the cleanest sound possible.

And to top it off, most pro-grade ASIO soundcards also have high-quality inputs that are ideal for recording from professional microphones (for home movie dub-overs), converting all that old vinyl into digital media, or recording your band / TV.

There are a handful of great companies that offer pro-grade soundcards. M-Audio tops my list for bang-for-the-buck, and I know you'll be very happy with the output. If you're looking to drive 5.1 surround-sound, you're going to need a card with at least 6 outputs. The M-Audio Firewire 410 will do this job beautifully. Spdif in/out, top-quality preamps, external, 8 channels of outbound sound. I would just double check to make sure that at least 6 channels will simultaneously be routed through the spdif if that's what you want to run the surround sound through. That's not to knock the analog outputs AT ALL. They will still sound wonderful, even with the extra conversion. I know you'll be happy if you're willing to shell out the $325-350 street price on it.

There are other companies that also make pro-grade soundcards, such as Presonus, Digidesign, Apogee, Motu, Focusrite, Lexicon, Native Instruments, a nd a few others. I know if you're serious about sound quality and you're willing to spend the bill or two over what you would have paid for a Soundblaster with all the useless gimmicks, you're going to be a very happy audiophile.

 

I'm not 100% sure if it does passthrough, but it does sound great. You can check out the manual here:
http://www.sondigo.com/callisto/manual

The drivers are only beta for Vista, but I haven't had any problems with them.

 

Please keep this thread under control. There is a lot of great information in this thread and I want this thread to stay open. Thanks.

 

Man really useful...i actually needed some advice on USB soundcards coz 5.1 channel really helps while playing CS....u can make out the approaching direction of the enemy

 

First off, you can buy a premade adapter directly from Dell. No soldering needed and very little electronics experience needed. Just plug it in and it works.

Second of all, even if you don't know what's inside a device, does that really affect how it works? A VGA connection will be worse than a DVI connection whether or not you know why. It helps to know why but it does not change how it works.
Converting from digital to analog and back to digital will degrade the quality. Noise adds with analog. Most sound cards have relatively poor SNR. With digital, noise is almost no issue at all. Digital can also be carried over fiber optics, which eliminates EMI and ground loops.
I switched to an optical digital connection from analog and the quality improved significantly. And the strange interference from the UPS was completely gone.

 

You just nullified any point you might have had (which I disagree with), and proven that you have little grasp of the workings of audio. Noise is very easily introduced when an analog signal is used. Even in a desktop which is generally very well spaced, there are so many high frequency signals causing interference that it's near impossible to get an excellent analog signal from an internal sound card.

Then consider three things:
1) most sound cards use very poor components to begin with
2) onboard sound cards like you'll find in a laptop use absolute bottom of the barrel parts, and don't even have enough opamps and such to do an adequate job if they were high quality
3) onboard sound cards share a circuit board with many other high speed components, crosstalk will be much worse than with even an internal expansion card

I guarantee you could hear the difference between an onboard HD Audio solution, a cheap Chaintech Envy based card, and an HT Omega Claro; all using analog output and my $200 Edirol speakers. Considering that, there's no possible way that switching to a digital connection would be indeterminable.

That said, Zalman has a nice little external card with optical/digital coax output. I think using an ASIO capable card is just overkill. Sure, the sound will be more transparent than a consumer card analog vs. analog, but that's because you're relying on the sound card's DAC. If the OP has a decent receiver, he'll be much better off getting a less expensive card with a digital out and relying on the receiver's high quality DAC with fewer interference issues.

PS: Just because Star's posts are beyond the general level of the forum doesn't mean that some people don't appreciate the input. Either way, please be civil, clearly speaking out of anger doesn't work well.

 

Modern amplifiers also amplify digitally and convert to analog at high power levels using only passive components, resulting in a very high SNR.

 

I've ran across one bad review on this product about loud pops to your AV reciever speakers, when you click an icon on your desktop. Have you experienced this in your setup? I am guessing the only way to counter this is to keep your volume down at the beginning until you are ready to play your movie/game...a few other negatives were mentioned..here is a link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829272001
I've ordered one and will know soon enough if I experience the same negative things or not..hopefully it is only some people having a bad experience and not all...

 

Guys,

Im a new owner of a Toshiba P200/S04 absolutely sick machine so far.

I was a bit disappointed when I found out that the HDMI ouput was only stereo and not 5.1.

I am also after a decent external sound card that has optical output to my Tritton Audio Extreme 5.1 Headphones.

I understand audio quality is always relative, i.e. Im no Audiophile, but I like good quality sound, you engineers obviously have good ears for sound distortion, so for good 5.1 is the soundblaster something to look at or is there something similar that has less gimmics and works with Vista?

 

the popping that that review reported was because of the person's speakers.. i had the same problem.. i used 2.1 for a long time and finally bought a 5.1 system because my sound card supported it.. when i had 2.1, i had the popping too.. it would scare the **** out of me.. but after i upgraded, no more popping..

 

I knew I should have clarified that....

If you read carefully, I never said anything about onboard sound. I was mentioning that he will not be able to tell the difference between a digital or analog output on a good quality external sound card - not between digital/analog outputs on an internal, stock soundcard. There is no comparison between onboard sound and external ones.

I know very well how easy it is to introduce cross-talk into audio. In our studio, I only use balanced cables (which are made in-house) that shield against cross-talk. Any soundcard / input that doesn't have balanced ins/outs gets a DI Box as soon afterwards as possible. All power lines are isolated from audio cables, and when they must come close to each other / cross each other, it's only at 90-degree paths.

I don't use any internal soundcards on any of the equipment. Even the "high-end" M-Audio internal soundcards still pickup interference - there's just too much stuff going on inside a computer not to pick up interference. 95% of the time, an external soundcard will perform better, as I stated.

That said, in 99.5% of home stereos, the quality of amplifiers, speakers, acoustics, etc. etc. etc. will mask the slight cross-talk that you might pick up from an external soundcard - NOT an internal one. It's easy to pick up hum from the internals of a computer. I'm saying that in a good quality card, you won't be able to tell the difference between analog/digital signal unless you do something stupid such as run power lines along the audio lines.

Let me ask you something - You use Monster Cables, right? All your cable connections are "gold-plated"? Even your USB cables because "they provide superior contacts"? All that's a load of crock, by the way.

 

Alright, I withdraw my lecture

But, I think the point is that you can get a much less expensive external card if you use digital and rely on the receivers DACs, than if you require high quality DACs in the card itself.

Actually I use the Velocity line of cable from Impact Acoustics, good quality for not too much $$$. And honestly, it's mostly because the stuff is heavy duty and well shielded.

 

Well I got the callisto up and running with a new Windows Vista notebook and everything is fine after installing the latest vista driver. It's a complete sucess.

I have it hooked up to an AV reciever, and it sounds as good as my desktop soundcard 5.1 sound. Perfect performance to my ears..no complaint at all and a definite keeper. Dolby and DTS pass through just fine with all channels outputing properly. Very useful for any computer without SPDIF. A little pricey, but it does the passthrough function well.

 

Just out of interest, what software do you use for movie playback? Are you playing DVD's or some form of movie file? (mpeg, avi, mkv, etc). What settings do you have to get passthrough?

 

For users who's interest in upgrading a soundcard is for surround sound in games, not only will they not benefit much from a 'pro-audio' ASIO type card intended for audio production, it may actually perform significantly less well than something like a soundblaster.

Higher end consumer cards provide hardware accelleration (via directX or OpenAL, which I believe was briefly alluded to near the start of the thread) of sound spatialisation etc in games, leading to better audio and increased frame rates. Cards oriented towards musicians typically have no capacity for interesting DSP at all AFAICT; they are focussed instead on providing high quality, lots of IO, low latency, stable performance etc.

ASIO is valuable if you are going to be using audio production / performance software. For listening to music or playing games it is not; although there is a strong correlation between good quality gear with clean DACs and gear that has (good) ASIO drivers, I'm sure. I think most Soundblasters have ASIO, fwiw, though almost certainly don't support it as well as pro-audio type gear. Incidentally, anyone interested in getting better performance from Windows music software with bog-standard hardware should try http://www.asio4all.com/ - it won't improve sound quality, of course, but it will probably reduce latency significantly.

 

That card uses USB 1.1

would that be a problem? or disadvantage??

 

I use digital connections so it just has to work. Just regular cables, none of the overpriced stuff. Digital almost always either works perfectly or not at all, very difficult to get in between. (Try loosening an optical connection and be surprised how much it can be loosened before the signal is lost.)

 

I think usb 1.1 is the cause for the sound only outputting as 16bit instead of 24 bit like it is advertised as. Creative usb live only outputs with 16bit sound. The sondigo callisto usb also only outputs at 16bit.

Personally I cannot hear a difference in 16 bit and 24 bit sound..but soundfiles will tell you there is a clear difference. I think you need to have very sound system equipment (digital reciever, speakers,etc.., good sound test) to discern the differences. An internal soundcard like soundblaster etc is supposed to be able to output 24bit..so internal soundcard have that advantage over these USB soundcards. But as I was saying before, It is hard for me to tell the difference, unless my equipment is very poor, which it is not.
But I trust internal soundcards more than usb soundcards, nevertheless..

 

IMO, the main benefit of 24bit is for recording and mixing, rather than listening. For instance, if you have a recording with a lot of dynamic range, and you want to process it so that the quiet bits are louder, while still being good quality.

As a result of the limited USB 1.1 bandwidth, M-Audio Quattro for instance has different configurations you can select: 4in 4out 16bit 44.1khz, but 24bit options are much more limited.

 

Any updates here? Is the X-Fi fully Vista compatible now?

 

http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=16642&nav=3

 

LOL! Let me ask you something, you read that from Engadget right? (I am not disagreeing that expensive cables are a load of crud)

My thoughts exactly...

Lets answer the original question

The Audigy NX is probably the better option in terms of a USB sound card. The X-Fi requires you to buy a extra bit for 5.1/7/1 which is $35...

I have the Soundblaster Live! 24bit external, I know its not the best bit of kit around, but it works, sounds better than integrated solution...and I am happy.

 

Cheap: X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook
Pro: EMU 0404 USB !

 

Most pro audio cards with S/PDIF output only output stereo

I've been using pro audio gear for many years.
I have not used any card on my computer to output 5.1 sound though.
I have yet to run into any pro audio gear with 5.1 S/PDIF

That being said, the MAudio FireWire 1410 has stereo S/PDIF
The lexicon Omega has stereo S/PDIF
The MAudio Delta 1010 has stereo S/PDIF

I work for a pro audio manufacturer and almost all of our current gear includes S/PDIF inputs and outputs.
All of them are stereo.

Even our top of the line reverb processor that has 5 outputs for surround processing only has stereo digital outputs (AES).

Pro audio cards will likely not transmit the type of surround sound digitally that a consumer receiver can decode.
If you want to play 5.1 surround audio out of your computer digitally be very wary of any of the pro audio sound cards.
They were not designed to listen to 5.1 surround sound.

The only times customers have called who tried to connect the S/PDIF output of one of our processors to their consumer receiver's S/PDIF inputs; it did not work.

However, there is an ongoing trend toward this more and more as more people are starting to take an interest in developing surround sound mixes.
So you may start seeing some pro audio cards do the same thing.

 

of course late late late.
just info in fo fo fo

 

Hi leftside,

Try "Turtle Beach - Audio Advantage SRM - USB external sound card". It is totally compatible with "Vista 64 Bit". It has the following features: 5.1 or 7.1 Output, Analog and Digital Outputs, Built-in Stereo Microphones, 10 Band EQ, Ambiance Effects, Optical Digital Adapters.
Hope, you will like my suggestion.