I need a good USB soundcard that works fully with CF

[twiglet]

Originally Posted by dark_fraggel

Hi all,

I have been using the Creative Xmod and Yes it works great!! Mixer and line in and everything, one thing thou you must remember, turn off the power saving on that USB port otherwise you can hear funny noices when you turn on your car.

The Creative Audigy 2 NX (PCMCIA) card (using now) is even better, you dont need USB cabeling, a bit better sound quality and more then 2 chanels. One thing to remember here too, dont install all the software included Just the driver and use windows own mixer then it works fine. I havent tried 5.1 sound yet so i dont know how it will be handled in CF.

So in other words i can reccomend both cards!

CF1.47 on a windows XP Home, Dell Lattitude "modified"

You mean the Audigy 2 ZS Notebook, not the NX right?

The NX is a usb card.... does anyone use this?

[dark_fraggel]

Sorry i mean the ZS not NX.
Only USB card i have used is the Xmod.

[thumpinbass]

OK, so let me get this straight, if i want external sound card, it seems I have to good choices so far.

Creative Xmod (USB)
Creative Audigy 2 ZS notebook (PCMCIA)

Any other good ones. I read this thread and saw very few mentioned that are good with the exception of these 2 cards.

Allen

[osvikvi]

a DAC should give supreme quality. I'm not sure if it has been tested with centrafuse. At Xtronic (the producers from HQCT) they have madde one called autobloat. I'm thinking of getting one of those.

[thumpinbass]

I just did a search on the Autobloat. Looks nice and compact. If it does everything it says it can do, it may turn out to be a very nice option. I haven't figured out what the price is in USD, but seems to be on the pricey side depending on conversion.

Guess we need more information on the new product. They won't ship for 4 weeks so you got time to think about it.

Allen

[osvikvi]

I hear now from a colleague that the Trends usb-dac http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/tr...io_ud10_e.htmlis a good option, He also informed me that the windows mixer is disabled with these devices. So I have no idea how to control the volume

[Lum]

If the Windows mixer is completely disabled then none of the volume controls in CF are going to work at all.

Doesn't sound like such a good option to me. :P

[vigilante_xix]

http://www.esi-audio.com/products/gigaportag/

Seems a little pricey at £99 and a little overkilll with 8 channels but if it works it could be worth it.

UberSteve has implemented it... CF 1.47 + Infill G4 + GigaPort AG = Problems :(.

Further testing needs to take place for this device though.

[assault]

So has anyone got an external USB card with the 5.1/7.1 (front, rear and sub) working in CF with the CF rear and sub faders working?

[Lum]

Looks like UberSteve is having the exact same problems as all the other cards in this thread.

Clearly the solution is, as he suggests to David in that thread, to have CF support upmixing to 2.1 4.0 4.1 and 5.1 directly. A lot of the Smart 5.1 stuff is too fancy (eg. Sensaura) and creates to much CPU load for those of us on older systems. A good old fashioned direct copy of the stream output through each speaker would sort it out nicely, plus you could guarantee that the mixer would work then since it'd be done in software.