In the market for a new soundcard...
 

Possibly, anyway. Right now I have a Soundblaster Audigy 2, but it looks like the thing is crapping out on me after some 2 years of faithful service. I get a really shit sounding cracking/clicking noise from my speakers (5.1 Klipsch) whenever something plays out of them. I'm 90% sure it's the soundcard, since I get the same results with headphones plugged in, plus I hooked my speakers up to my roommates computer and they sounded great, didn't crack once.

So this puts me in the market for a new one, which blows since I was planning on upgrading my video card and RAM first. I'm thinking that I'd like to stick with a Soundblaster card, but I really don't know much about soundcards and that's pretty much all I know. The only things I'll need it for are listening to music and playing games and I'm trying to stay around $100-150.


Anyone else upgrade their's lately?

Have you tested if the soundcard is bad?
could be some corrupted drivers....
try to update your drivers with the newest available
http://www.soundblaster.com/support/
Soundblasters are good cards.
If you have been happy with it so far....
price range is $29.95 for the basic card
up to $349.99 for the professional musician
Yours is $69.99(at compusa)......with the holidays upon us
you may find a good rebate deal somewhere.

Also check to make sure your power cables are not wrapped around your speaker cables. This can cause the exact problems you are describing. If your headphones use the same output cabling as the speaker you would continue to hear crackling when they are plugged in.

Unfortunately it's got nothing to do with my power cables, everything is pretty neat back there. I've been running the diagnostics for my soundcard but it still thinks everything is fine... that would be the only *official* way of deciding whether or not my soundcard is bad that I know of, aside from what I've already done to make sure it's not the speakers.

I've pretty much decided that I'm gonna get another soundblaster if I can't fix this one tonight. Thanks for the suggestions.

If you go for the Audigy 4 or the X-Fi I'd be interested in hearing what you think of them. It seems like all the new SB models will have the drive bay inserts...and I'm not sure I want one of those.

Well after a little bit of screwing around tonight, I'm managing to get good sound out of it using headhphones (can't be bothered to set up my whole 5.1 system right now). There's a wee little bit of crackling occasionally, but it definitly isn't acting up. However, even though I'm using headphones, they only work when my settings are on a surround sound setup, but not at all when I change to the headphone setup. So basically right now my headphones are the left and right rear speakers in a non-existant surround sound system... I think it has something to do with the port I've got them plugged into (this is the only one with little or no crackling).

I've got a bit more screwing around to do before I make any purchases, I think.


What do you have against the XFi/drive bay inserts, port?

I've got the same Klipsch problems lately, too. I've got a Philips Acoustic Edge though.

I'm planning to upgrade to the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic this month.