How do you choose a sound card?

[JohnJSal]

I've been doing all kinds of research on other components but I've completely neglected the sound card so far. Can someone give me some advice on what kinds of things I need to look at when choosing one? For example, which are the best brands, what the different amount of "channels" mean, if I should get PCI or PCIe, etc. I'm clueless.

I'll mainly use it for playing music and games, but even still, I only plan to get a couple of small speakers (probably not even a subwoofer, just left and right). I don't need this to be a big production or anything, but I at least want something that will be good if I choose to expand later with fancier speakers.

Here's my initial find: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102017

Thanks.

 

[PC eye]

I have both the Xtreme Audio and Gamer models here but in pci not PCI-E form. Probably on the next build I'll free up one more pci slot by trying one of that type out. The Creative brand is about the "most popular" brand for a good number of years as far as gamers are concerned due to the Creative monopoly on EAX effects.

Just anyone if they have ever heard of a "Sound Blaster" and they will come back with "are you kidding? you don't know what an SB is?". That model itself is quite adequate for more then you are using there.

One thing to note however if running XP is the auto updater will download Vista not XP drivers! That was why the Gamer was bought after first to find the same thing. Creative's July 2007 update while looking for the latest for XP is actually a Vista set of drivers. The card pci version of that model still had good sound despite the remarks you will probably hear from others.

Availability of brands as well as models will help. You don't see Pine at newegg which was a very popular competitor to Creative like Diamond and Turtle Beach seem to be now. For which slot most boards now only see one or two 1x slots if SLI or Crossfire capable.

A 1x capable card would be expected there. 4x would be backward compatible to 1x anyways while 1x only wouldn't run on a 4x slot. Being a sound card it's not limited by the 1x or 4x video acceleration. It simply utilizes that type of slot.