Please help with sound card dilemma

[jakesnake66]

Looking for suggestions on the following issue:

The rig in question is:
Abit NF-7
AMD M2500 @ 2.4ghz
1gb pc3500 RAM
Radeon 9800Pro 128/128
80gb Samsung hdd
40gb Seagate hdd
CL SB Live 5.1
Winfast XP2000 TV tuner/capture/fm card

As configured, the quality of the cable tv input is below average overall,
downright terrible on certain channels - not nearly the quality I've seen
from the Winfast unit in other builds. I suspected a problem with the SB
Live, and when I pulled it from the system the tv quality improved
dramatically. This is by no means the first time Creative products have
caused me problems. For such a popular product, they simply don't play well
with others. I've grown to hate their driver and compatibility issues,
although to my ears their auido output quality is as good as (if not better
than) can be had for $30, especially considering widespread support for EAX,
which means you often can achieve positional audio with Creative cards
without eating up your system resources. That's very important in this
current rig, because the customer wants to play some games that will stretch
the limits of the cpu and video card. A sound card that depends solely on
software to achieve "3D" or 5.1 will no doubt cause system performance to
suffer.

I'm looking for options. The ones I see now are:
- fix the compatibility issue between the Winfast tv tuner card and the SB
Live! (all suggestions welcome)
- ditch the SB Live and get something different. Turtle Beach? M-Audio?
Philips? Perhaps the Audigy cards will behave better???

thank you,

jakesnake

 

[Alceryes]

Have you tried using the onboard sound? It supports 6-ch audio and some say
is the same quality as any SB Live! card (some even say better, myself
included). I'm using the NF7-S and play most of the latest and greatest
FPS's and RPG's and think the audio is just as good as when I had my SB
Audigy in there.
--


"I don't cheat to survive. I cheat to LIVE!!"

- Alceryes

 

[Fitz]

I just installed an ATI TV Wonder Pro, and am having some issues with it and
my M-Audio Revolution 7.1. With direct monitoring enabled, I get a low
frequency hum which is constant. I'm using RCA inputs, and the video quality
isn't bad, but it's not great either. Full screen there are definite jagged
edges in the video. The self test program on the card says it doesn't pass
the "clock test" which has to do with the timing of the audio input and says
it may affect video frame rates as it tries to sync the two.

I'm not using catalyst drivers, which may be part of the problem (using
Omega) because the self test also says the capture drivers may not be
installed correctly, though I have installed them twice, and the hardware
wizard says they are installed and working properly.

So, the M-Audio card may not be a good option. I'm new at TV capture, so a
little trial and error may improve things, but right now I'm not too
impressed. The M-Audio card works great for gaming and audio playback-
hopefully I'll get the input/direct monitor thing figured out.

Fitz

 

[Shylirin]

I've heard of similar results when the system is low on power resources...
have you tried another more powerful source?

Shy.

 

[kony]

Looking for suggestions on the following issue:

The rig in question is:
Abit NF-7
AMD M2500 @ 2.4ghz
1gb pc3500 RAM
Radeon 9800Pro 128/128
80gb Samsung hdd
40gb Seagate hdd
CL SB Live 5.1
Winfast XP2000 TV tuner/capture/fm card

As configured, the quality of the cable tv input is below average overall,
downright terrible on certain channels - not nearly the quality I've seen
from the Winfast unit in other builds. I suspected a problem with the SB
Live, and when I pulled it from the system the tv quality improved
dramatically.

Is the Winfast card using hardware overlay to the Radeon
9800? It should be a visable setting in the TV application.
ATI's drivers suck (to put it bluntly), I'd wonder if there
was a problem there, that it wasn't really working right
even before the SB Live card was pulled.

Even so, was there IRQ sharing goings on? Perhaps disabling
other unneeded board features, like unused USB or Parallel,
serial ports, MIDI, etc, then removing/reinstalling the
other sharing devices might help?

Also try adjusting PCI latency in the bios.

This is by no means the first time Creative products have
caused me problems. For such a popular product, they simply don't play well
with others. I've grown to hate their driver and compatibility issues,
although to my ears their auido output quality is as good as (if not better
than) can be had for $30, especially considering widespread support for EAX,
which means you often can achieve positional audio with Creative cards
without eating up your system resources.

Their output quality is better than low-end junk, but many
old $10 sound cards will do nearly as well, perhaps slightly
better or worse. For example, Ensoniq, other CL cards, or
Aureal cards... mainly, for the analog it's a matter of
having non-integrated sound and a PCB not severly budgetized
to the point were they stripped away too much of the
filtering.

That's very important in this
current rig, because the customer wants to play some games that will stretch
the limits of the cpu and video card. A sound card that depends solely on
software to achieve "3D" or 5.1 will no doubt cause system performance to
suffer.

This is the main benefit of Creative labs cards, if it
weren't for that, they'd be far less popular. However,
"system resources" doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot,
simply more CPU utilization. If the framerate drop isnt'
substantial, it may not matter so much.

I'm looking for options. The ones I see now are:
- fix the compatibility issue between the Winfast tv tuner card and the SB
Live! (all suggestions welcome)
- ditch the SB Live and get something different. Turtle Beach? M-Audio?
Philips? Perhaps the Audigy cards will behave better???

First of all, does system owner even use 4-5 channel sound
or only 2 channel?

Has the onboard audio actually been tried and seen to be a
performance or feature hit that actually matters to the one
using the system? Sometimes theoretical features don't
matter so much as that it just works.

You might also try different Winfast drivers & app, possibly
the newer/newest but also older versions.

Also recheck the cable input, just in case it's possible the
cable wasn't making a good connection but after system was
"disturbed" to swap out the CL card, it then made better
contact. It also depends on what you mean by "below average
overall, downright terrible on certain channels". That is a
very important distinction as it tends to suggest a cable
problem, not a system problem (even though it might seem
that way).