Quote Originally Posted by Donnie27 View Post
... It's not the same as playing back Music NO fake EAX doesn't work well enough
Oh, alright, so that DS3D GX2.5 3D that Asus offers has not much to do with harware processing of game effects (like EAX support etc.)? I've never really looked into Asus cards since I figured the Prelude is the best of both wordls (at that point and at least for me)...


A good friend of my who has a little home studio and produces some music just tells me to get firewire audio interface. The thing with them is that I either have to spend a fortune to get a noticeably better perfomance (at least the way I see it) or end up with a product that offers on par sound quality, if not worst, have all the feautures I am not planning to use in the near future (like multiple inputs and outputs, midi support etc.) and just lack that nice interface of X-Fi cards (I just love it heh), crippling gaming feautures in general. So thats my argument towards keeping what I have for now (since I haven't find any audio interface in the range of up to $500 that I think is a worthy upgrade in my case). As I said, headphone amp is one of the things I am likely to get next and... most of those cheaper firewire cards offer a ty one anyway.

I think Z-5500 are good for what they are though - movies and games (especially taking into account their price). I am having my sitting in the corner, looking new with 25m or so of copper wire, that I bought but havent tried using. I dont know if I should sell them or keep, because I think its just a great value for what they are... Well, music wise... its only if you had some cheap 5.1 system before that you can really like it. When speakers are set currectly (especially the sub), then they can produce quite a nice result (for the money) playing some FLAC stuff and having a proper bass level in the control panel. Well, its no stereo of course...

I think somebody should really build a card with feautures similar to this new Asus card, delievering great stereo perfomance and fitting a nice headphone amp into it. Well, as many have already pointed out, for like $250 it might be hard to deliever whats promised (but I keep fingers crossed anyway ). Would be nice if it would have 1/4" outs instead of RCA's too...