[keithwalton]

if you think the soundblaster sounds good just wop in an audigy 2, makes a hughe difference on highq speakers and headphones too.

once upon a time i had a live, then i got a very nice swooshy set of sony 5.1's (600w rms, 100per chan incl sub) and it sounded rather good i thought much better than the primative pc speakers that they replaced. I then splashed out again on an audigy 2 plat for using optical connections.
Boy did i feel the difference (litterally) i could take it rather loud and yet it would remain perfectly defined and balanced.

I then upped my system to a p4 with an epox 4pca3+ mobo (rev 1.0)
Unfortunutly the initial bios had issues with the audigy and so i had to flip onto the onboard c-media chip. Needless to say it was like going back 10 years to using a soundblaster pro it was simply horried compared to the smoothness of the audigy2

It's got somthing to do with the internal sampling rates and stuff i think, it could be the dac's i spose as i had to use analogue on the other two cards. Although i still use analogue on the audigy for 5.1 games as the audigy doesnt support d3dsurround over optical :-( and it still sounds almost as good

K