newbie question

I

its_hey_ma

New Member
I'm thinking of upgrading my sound card and was wondering if there was a budget sound card that would play mp3's well with a 1/8" to dual rca connector going to my home theater reciever. I have cheap little non-powered speakers now and would really like to be able to hook it up to my very powerful home theater setup to get good sound. Also, if there is any other way to output the sound to my reciever besides the 1/8" to rca method, please let me know. Also, I'm using winamp when I play my songs. When I hook it up to the reciever now, I don't get very good control of the way it sounds and it often has a scratching sound to it. Thanks in advance
 
well mp3 is not a great format for sound quality to begin with. Average quality is 128 kbit. Find a card with as high a quality line out as you think necessary. 256 kbit is really the highest you need. If you spend a little more money and go with a better card, you will get slightly better sound quality, but remember 80% of sound quality is in the origional file. If there is static and distortion imbeded in the file, there is little a quality card will be able to do. As for connection, the method you are using now is just fine. I would just upgrade the cable. Go to a shop that has stereo stuff and get a higher grade cable with gold terminals. Also don't use the winamp mixer and equalizer. Use whatever softeware comes with the sound card. The winamp equalizer modifys the actual sound file and is not really all that good. Using the equalizer with the sound card will alter the sound as it's being processed and won't suffer as much distortion.
 
vortmax said:
Find a card with as high a quality line out as you think necessary. 256 kbit is really the highest you need.
Click to expand...
How do I distinguish which cards have which ratings? Is there a special place to look for this info?

vortmax said:
As for connection, the method you are using now is just fine. I would just upgrade the cable. Go to a shop that has stereo stuff and get a higher grade cable with gold terminals.
Click to expand...
I'm a HomeTheater and CarAudio maniac, so I've been in the audio game for a while, just not into computers. I've been making my own cables for a while, so I'm sure I have a decent enough cable

vortmax said:
Also don't use the winamp mixer and equalizer. Use whatever softeware comes with the sound card. The winamp equalizer modifys the actual sound file and is not really all that good. Using the equalizer with the sound card will alter the sound as it's being processed and won't suffer as much distortion.
Click to expand...
I've noticed winamp sucks for eq, but I don't have any software that came with the soundcard I'm using. Back in college (just last year), I had gotten my computer and it only had the integrated sound card which sounded horrible. A friend had a spare card laying around and installed it for me for free, but I didn't get any of the software or anything. And now that I'm trying to integrate it into my home theater system so I don't have to keep burning mix cd's to use in the cd player, I've noticed that the sound isn't as good as I'd like. That has led me here in search of something a little better.

Thanks for the help
 
do you know what sound card you have? if not click start>run, type dxdiag, and then click on the sound tab. it'll be at the top beside of name.

i would recommend foobar2000 over winamp. i used to swear by winamp, however for SQ and functionality i have discovered foobar is much better...

http://www.foobar2000.org/

what kind of speakers do you have?

check this out. it's hard for me to understand exactly what you're talking about doing, but this card may be a candidate for you.

http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?category=505&subcategory=491&product=10447

i don't know if $100 is too much though, however if you're a candidate for it it would definitely be worth it.
 
Beyond said:
do you know what sound card you have? if not click start>run, type dxdiag, and then click on the sound tab. it'll be at the top beside of name.

i would recommend foobar2000 over winamp. i used to swear by winamp, however for SQ and functionality i have discovered foobar is much better...

http://www.foobar2000.org/

what kind of speakers do you have?

check this out. it's hard for me to understand exactly what you're talking about doing, but this card may be a candidate for you.

http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?category=505&subcategory=491&product=10447

i don't know if $100 is too much though, however if you're a candidate for it it would definitely be worth it.
Click to expand...

I'll definatly give foobar2000 a try and see if I like it. I'm trying to hook my computer up to my Home Theater Reciever to get sound out of those speakers. Otherwise I have crappy small non-powered cheapo speakers that at full volume can't be heard over the phone ringing. My music on my computer is encoded in MP3 format and I'd like to be able to hook it up so I can listen to all of it without putting it into cd form and constantly switching cd's. I also listen to alot of streaming radio stations through my computer. Also, I just looked at the sound tab and it says its a Creative Sound Blaster PCI. Like I said, it was free and better than my onboard sound card
 
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its_hey_ma said:
I'll definatly give foobar2000 a try and see if I like it. I'm trying to hook my computer up to my Home Theater Reciever to get sound out of those speakers. Otherwise I have crappy small non-powered cheapo speakers that at full volume can't be heard over the phone ringing. My music on my computer is encoded in MP3 format and I'd like to be able to hook it up so I can listen to all of it without putting it into cd form and constantly switching cd's. I also listen to alot of streaming radio stations through my computer. Also, I just looked at the sound tab and it says its a Creative Sound Blaster PCI. Like I said, it was free and better than my onboard sound card
Click to expand...

what kind of receiver is it?
 
once you find out what soundcard you have, go to the manufacture's website's support section. You may have to open the case and look at the card, but susally if you go into device manager and poke around, you can determine what kind of card it is. You should be able to find documentation, drivers and utilities for it. In the documentation it will list the sound quality for the various line out's. I'm also willing to bet they will have a eq in their latest drivers or utilities.
 
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