Creative Audigy SE 7.1

[21]

I'm no audiophile but I'm looking for a really basic, affordable sound card upgrade that's hopefully better than the onboard audio I have right now which is the Realtek Azalia on my Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R. I'm getting some Klipsch ProMedia 2.1s pretty soon and I was wondering if the Audigy SE 7.1 would suffice?

 

[TC91]

I dont know what kind of HDA is on that gigabyte board, but I have the sb live! 24bit card, which is the same as the audigy se, and it is slightly better than the realtek 888 on my 680i. The difference isnt huge, so you probably are better off saving your money for a better card like an asus xonar or an auzentech x-fi prelude or something along those lines. I migrated the soundcard from the previous computer i was using (it has ac97 so the difference was huge then), and it sounded a little better than my onboard, so i decided to keep it in the machine.

 

[corkyg]

Actually, the sound source is less important than the output transducers. Top quality sound piped through even good computer speakers can't beat stuff amplified and played through a real sound system.

 

[21]

Thanks for the replies.

I don't expect my audio to improve too much but I ordered it anyway since it's so affordable and I'm getting new speakers soon.