** I Need a Sound Card **

[Bill Lane]

Hi all:

I've tried three or more sound cards, and each one had a different problem, they either won't let me use the Windows Sndrec32 (Sound Recorder), or the Mike won't work.

The one I have now is a CMI PCI CX3D Positional Audio 4 Channel,
Part #:XERACMI8738, Chipset: CMI 8738-SX, this card won't let me record with the Sndrec32, nor will it play the sound from a movie CD, DVD Player. I have to run a jumper from the Line-Out plug on the RealMagic Hollywood Plus card to the Line-In on the CMI PCI CX3D sound card, now my speaker phone won't work.

My question is, does anyone know of a simple easy to install PCI 4 channel card that I won't have to install their software other than the basic drivers so I can hear the DVD movies, record with the Sndrec32, and use the speaker phone?

System: Win98 with all the latest updates, IE 6.0, Meda Player 6.4, 512MB Ram, Mobo Abit KG7RAID, CPU: Athlon 1.2MHz, DVD Lite-On 16X Max, Modem: USR 2976, Decoder Card: RealMagic Hollywood Plus, Video Card: Chaintech 64Mb GeForce Pro AGP.

Your input will be very much appreciated, and thanks ahead of time,

Bill Lane

[Floppyman]

Is there no way of hooking the two (souncard/decoder) up internally? How much are you looking to spend on a new soundcard? HTH

[glc]

I'd give a Soundblaster Live 5.1 OEM a shot at $33 from Newegg.

[Bill Lane]

Hi Floppyman & glc:

I do have an audio plug not being used two pin (DG) is this for the decoder or sound cards? I don't have a cable rght now, but I guess Radio Shack sould have one.

But even if that solved my DVD sound, I would still have the problem with the Sndrec32, and I use this all the time, I need to be able to reduce the Sound Attributes of wave files down to 48,000 8bits for use in e-mail, and web pages.

Right now I have to hold the mike to my mouth and yell in it to record anything.

The software that came with the sound card don't work very well, and I can't record using it at all, Ive updated the drivers to the latest one, but whenever I go to the Windows Update site it tells me that there's an update for my sound card drivers, If I download it, it screws up their software even more than it already is.

Anyway, If that Soundblaster Live will solve my problem, I'll send for one.

Thanks,

Bill Lane

[Bill Lane]

Good Morning:

I took your suggestion and ordered the Soundblaster Live from Newegg, and they had a SPDIF cable there for a $1.00, so I got that coming too. I guess that 2 Pin (GD) plug on th DVD is for this cable? and I guess it plugs into the sound card?

Let me know.

Thanks,

Bill Lane

[glc]

Not necessary - the existing analog cable you have is sufficient for playing audio CD's, everything else is going to go through the PCI bus as digital. A SP/DIF is used to interface the sound card with professional external equipment.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG...cs/sp-dif.html

[Bill Lane]

Hi glc:

That's what I needed to know, the other thing I need to know is, should I connect the audio cable from the DVD to the sound card, or the MPEG decoder card?

I don't know why I was fooling around with those cheap sound cards anyway :-(

Thanks again,

Bill Lane

[glc]

I believe you connect the analog audio cable to the Hollywood, then there should be another cable of the same type to go from the Hollywood to the sound card.

With those system specs, you really don't need the Hollywood, you have more than enough horsepower to software decode DVD's.

[Xayd]

Well, if you're outputting the DVD to a TV you'll get better visual quality with the H+ than with the Geforce card, but otherwise Glc is right you don't really need it.

You're seeing the same problem that I have with my DVD/capture compter.

You can get a crappy sound card to pass digital sound through to an external device and just say screw the rest, or you can get a "professional" sound card to get good quality analog input/output but with that option you lose alot of fuctionality since professional sound cards by design will bypass the windows mixer (so you'll have to manually control your output/input and none of your other "consumer" cards and software will be able to control the sound input or output levels). You could sacrifice some input quality and go with a high end "consumer" sound card such as an Audigy or Turtle Beach, but you're then stuck with single channel inputs of iffy quality.

The obvious solution is...that there isn't an obvious solution. PC sound is behind the times.

The best compromise at the moment is between the Audigy 2 and the M-Audio Revolution imo. Be warned that the Revolution is a new product, only released this month. Initial reports are saying that the output quality is very good, which is to be expected from a maker of professional sound cards, but the DirectX support isn't that great yet since they're still on driver release 1.0 and this is M-Audio's first shot at a "consumer" sound card.

If you're ONLY concerned with the quality of your recordings and output, you might wanna give the Revolution a try. I would suggest buying from a reputable dealer in case you need to exchange it, however, you might find limitations with it's current driver set that you can't overcome.

Otherwise, I'd say go for an Audigy 2.

[Bill Lane]

Hi glc & Xayd:

That's what I thought glc, here's a picture of what I figure the hookup will be when the soundblaster card gets here...

http://home.att.net/~zoe5/hookup.html[/URL][/URL]

And I'll try it without the decoder card too, to see how it runs, if I don't need it, all the better!

Xayd that's a little more than I want to get into right now, I'm hoping to make this as simple as possible, but thanks for the input.

Thanks again,

Bill Lane

[Tuf]

DVDs should play just fine on the monitor with just the video card you have. I don't know about if you are playing them on a TV. I know my notebook doesn't have as good of video as your desktop and it will pay DVDs really well on the cheap TV's in Hotels. Never tried it on a good TV at my house.

[Bill Lane]

Hi Tuf:

Like I said above, I'll try it without the decoder card, if it look okay, I'll leave it out.

Thanks for the input,

Bill Lane

[Xayd]

That was the selling point of the H+ cards even after software decoding was enough to play DVDs. The video quality on a TV that you'd get from the video cards at the time wasn't good at all, the H+ cards were far superior.

With the Radeon line ATI has gotten much better with TV out quality, so the H+ cards aren't as necessary as they once were for TV out (although the Geforce cards as of the Geforce 3s were still pretty bad too ).

[Bill Lane]

Hi Xayd:

Thanks for the information !

Bill Lane