Sager Sound Card

Hi Guys,

I'm just about to seal the deal and to get a NP5792 but i'm not sure on weather to get the better sound card then the default one built in.

I'm after getting some 3D Surround headphone "Sennheiser PC166 USB Gaming Headset" and was wondering if the Standard card would give me great sound and be able to emulate 3d Surround? or If I was to get the "Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi 7.1 Xtreme Audio Notebook Express Card" would I see much difference while playing games and Movies?

Which ones have your guys gone with?

Thanks Bob.

 

The Sager NP5792 comes standard with:

*Built-in Intel Azalia High Definition Surround 3D sound system w/SRS WOW support

*8 Channel Output w/o External Decoder - 4 Multi-function Audio Ports

I would certainly work with that before spending any money on anything else.

 

I agree - try out the integrated sound before you upgrade to something else.

What operating system do you have? For Vista it is rather pointless to get a sound card since Microsoft thoughtfully took out DirectSound support. That means even if you have a dedicated sound card, the CPU is going to do all of the processing anyway so you don't get any of the benefits. For a proper OS like XP it is a different story, because in XP a sound card is used for all the sounds.

 

Whoa, I din't realise that. That realy sux that Vista has no support for extertnal sound cards, and explains my BSOD when I was running vista 32bit with my audigy 2zs on my current HP nc8430, how bizarre that MS took out that feature. Looks like I should've purchased a dual boot config for the XR5 in sig - GGrrrr.. everything in hindsight is a good idea, lol!!

 

so I ordered my 9262 with the external creative card for no reason? I planned on using it as a multi-track recording studio and thought it would help to get the better card because of the ASIO multi-track recording support. If it is in fact useless with Vista then it should be advertised as so. I hope I didn't waste money on something I can't even use.

 

I have the same question as the OP. I just got off the phone with someone at creative, didn't inquire about credentials so I would guess front line sales rep. I asked about three things; analog out, digital out and headphone out. Of course I was told they are all 'better'. This comes as no surprise and I can even believe it concerning the analog & headphone signals. D/A is a big topic in high-end audio and things really do get better and more refined as you move up the price spectrum. So if you're just going to use the analog outs and you care about sound quality you might want to go for it. Then again there's what Chaz said; is there any way around this?

Now however, I was also told that the digital signal was 'better'. I explained that I would be using and external processor (Denon, Bryston, Nad, etc) and all I needed was a digital out that delivered the source signal. I was told that this Creative card would clean up and enhace the signal. I don't know whether to believe this or not. What if the source was an audiophile grade recording of the highest caliber, frankly I wouldn't want the Creative card to mess with the signal. I'll be looking into this and post more info as I get it.

 

From Creative Support (Windows Vista Discussion Forum):

3. The Vista audio architecture disables DirectSound 3D hardware acceleration; resulting in legacy DirectSound based EAX game titles not working as they did in XP.

Issues that may be encountered:
Could range from loss of EAX functionality in EAX enabled games to a complete game incompatibility, depending on how the game title was authored. This would only happen with games that render 3D audio using DirectSound, it should not affect games that render 3D audio using OpenAL.

(Note: There is a known bug due to a change to Vista which confuses an OpenAL component. A proper fix in progress, but a workaround is to copy c:\windows\system32\ct_oal.dll into the doom3 folder and rename it to OpenAL32.dll)


Status:
These issues cannot be addressed by the Creative audio driver, because the functionality was purposely removed by the operating system. We look forward to game titles moving away from DirectSound and toward OpenAL for fully optimized Creative 3D audio hardware and technology support.

I'm not exactly sure what all this means. There's a lot more info over there if anyone's interested. My take is that some things work fine, some problems are being addressed and some will never get figured out.

 

It means M$ screwed all the other audio makers and took away their market in Vista..... For now anyways

 

I`m using the external USB creative live sound card just fine on Vista 64. True, the sound console does not work under vista and sound could be better(listened to it on my HP with XP,same HD audio and wayyy better and louder) but the idea is that it works. But it`s pointless, I got since my audio jack failed and needed sound ASAP.

 

I wish this issue would've been made clear by xoticpc's 9262 order page. Just like the fact that 4 gigs of ram is only recognized by 64-bit windows it should be noted that the sound card should only be purchased with windows xp. I'm sure many more people are aware of the former than the latter.

 

hi, a long time lurker here,

registered as I saw this thing coming up again about sound cards and Vista.
In my desktop I use X-Fi and it does work fine in Vista.

There is a massive confusion about audio in Vista and many people just take DX does not work hence no use for a sound card full stop.

This is rather wrong...

1. DX10 works in Vista and renders audio in software (that will work even with onboard audio)
2. DX9 games work randomly in Vista no matter what sound card you have
3. OpenAL works in Vista and renders audio in hardware. Some new games are OpenAL e.g.:
UT3, Quake 4
4. DX9 can work in Vista with a driver plugin from Creative called ALchemy in that Direct X 9 is translated into OpenAL on-the-fly.

So, to sum up:

Vista removes Direct X 10 backawards compatibility with Direct X 9.
But Direct X 10 is not the only game in town - there are OpenAL games AND DirectX9 game audio can be
processed by sound cards in Vista when e.g. ALchemy software is used (thisis just for X-Fi range)

My wild ass guess is that this is done in order to push people into rather buying new titles then spending too much time playing classics.
A return favour from the gaming industry to Microsoft is that the new games will rather require Vista then XP to run at max... (Vista certifiied logo BS magic...)

so here u go...
But fortunately you can still use sound cards and play both old and new games under Vista.