Help me choose a sound solution

darkbenny · Post by **darkbenny** » Mon May 14, 2007 6:46 pm

Hey guys, I've installed Oblivion on one of my main rigs and have noticed some sound problems that I think are associated with my old Sound Blaster Live card. The problems are mostly just missing or muffled sounds, which are a real pain in the ass and detract from the overall experience. I have tried playing with the Oblivion ini file to turn off hardware sound, but so far no difference.

I am currently using an old Sound Blaster Live! Value (one of many that I have), but I have dug through my box of parts and found a SB Live! 5.1 card as well just now. Would the 5.1 card offer any performance enhancements over the Value (I use just a standard two speaker set-up so I am not concerned about surround sound) ?

I am not so sure swapping two similar card would fix my Oblivion problem (the 5.1 can't be THAT different from the Value), but would it add a few fps or some sound "crispness" to music or other games etc?

My other option is to use my motherboard's onboard audio. The mainboard is an Asus A7V400-MX-UAYZ (budget board) with ....

"SoundMAX Digital Audio System"

The SoundMAX Digital Audio System is the industry's highest performance and most reliable audio solution for business professionals, audiophiles, musicians, and gamers. SoundMAX Digital Audio System can output 5.1 channel surround sound and features state lol

I am assuming SoundMax is just a varient of Ac97 audio? I haven't used onboard audio in years, mainly because I have horrible memories associated with it (music stuttering when loading a web page, overall system slowdown). But maybe my Live cards are so antiquated that today's onboard sound is "better"?

Win XP SP2
AMD Sempron 2600+

Post by **odditude** » Mon May 14, 2007 7:27 pm

The SBLive! Value is a cut-down version of the original Live! card; while the Live! 5.1 is a second-generation part. How significant a difference that will make is arguable, but the Live! 5.1 is definitely a more refined piece of hardware. It's also going to give you better performance (and sound quality) than your motherboard's three-year-old ADI codec. My advice is to stick the 5.1 in there and see how it goes.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon May 14, 2007 7:54 pm

odditude wrote:The SBLive! Value is a cut-down version of the original Live! card; while the Live! 5.1 is a second-generation part. How significant a difference that will make is arguable, but the Live! 5.1 is definitely a more refined piece of hardware.

The value version is not that much different the original.. it's just not using the extra hardware. The refinement is not as significant, as the Dolby Digital stuff is all done in software and the 5.1 revision should take analog and digital signals whereas the original did not IIRC.

It's also going to give you better performance (and sound quality) than your motherboard's three-year-old ADI codec. My advice is to stick the 5.1 in there and see how it goes.

Same here. However, if you are performance conscious in games, then the SB Live (either revision) should be better than onboard sound...

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Mon May 14, 2007 8:01 pm

The Live! 5.1 is definitely the better choice, but you have nothing to lose by trying the onboard audio too, just disable it in your BIOS and uninstall the drivers if you decide to not use it. I've been using the onboard audio on my Abit board (nVIDIA SoundStorm with a Realtec 5.1 AC'97 codec) with Oblivion and it runs fine. The sound is definitely not my bottleneck. It's more likely my CPU and video card (an OC'ed Athlon 2500+ and a GeForce 6600GT).

I'm sure you already know this, but Oblivion is a major resource hog. Make sure you disable every background process you can. Setting your virus scanning software to scan on execution only, rather than on every read, or disabling it completely may help too.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Mon May 14, 2007 10:25 pm

nab a Audigy 2. but before that, make sure your soundcard isn't sharing an IRQ.

unless you are using an nforce2 board with soundstorm on it, you'll get no improvement with the onboard.

darkbenny · Post by **darkbenny** » Tue May 15, 2007 8:30 pm

Thanks for the tips boys, I ended up installing some alternate SB Live! drivers Dr. Z pointed me toward and that fixed things up good and proper.

The onboard sound also was problem free, but I lost Fps that I badly needed. I really will have to upgrade my whole PC to really enjoy this game to its fullest.

DOLLS (J) [!] · Post by **DOLLS (J) [!]** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:37 am

Are those by any chance the kX project ones?... If not, you should try them as well.

whicker · Post by **whicker** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:05 am

Hahaha at your topic title, you pundit!

Post by **Nach** » Thu May 17, 2007 4:59 am

AFAIK, there are two SB cards going under the value name.
The first one (which I have) is identical to the other ones you saw, like the X-Gamer edition or whatever, the only differences is what you got in the box, like certain software, or a front panel add on for all kinds of jacks and knobs.
Getting the value of this card is fine, and can generally be located for a steal.

The second one is a completely different card, and doesn't have as good hardware capabilities as the original SB Live.

If you can find the original SB Live Value, go for it, since who really needs the software or the front panel thing anyway.

Cyrus · Post by **Cyrus** » Tue May 22, 2007 7:41 am

IMO just buy a high quality soundcard once and let that be the end of it, as soundcards aren't exactly something that require frequent updates unless you're an insane audiophile. Even then updates are sparse.

I've been using an X-Fi Xtreme Music card for a while now and I've had 0 problems and the quality increase over regular built-on "high quality" sound cards is quite large. I'm not sure about Vista, but in XP Pro SP2 32 I had no problems with sound in Oblivion.