Sound Card Recommendations?

[Callisto]

I'm looking to pick up a PCI sound card(almost 100% for recording from the line in port, rather than for listening to music/games). I really know nothing about audio cards and can't tell what is a normally priced one that will fit my needs and what is super expensive that will be total overkill. Anyone have any they'd recommend?

[orinthia]

What kind of recording?

You don't need to pay much for reasonable cards, almost everything above $30 is overkill for most things unless you need specific ports, like SPDIF, optical, 7.1, etc. Just browse amazon or somewhere and look for cheap ones with high ratings that have the ports you need. Doesn't have to be PCI unless that's a requirement you need, can be USB as well (most are just headphone/mic but a few have line-in/out, 5-7.1, etc).

[dejet]

Speaking of anyone have a decent 7.1 card?

[Callisto]

What kind of recording?

You don't need to pay much for reasonable cards, almost everything above $30 is overkill for most things unless you need specific ports, like SPDIF, optical, 7.1, etc. Just browse amazon or somewhere and look for cheap ones with high ratings that have the ports you need. Doesn't have to be PCI unless that's a requirement you need, can be USB as well (most are just headphone/mic but a few have line-in/out, 5-7.1, etc).

Basically it's for offline gaming tournament streams, I run game audio and mics into a hardware mixer, than the mixer out into the PC line in. I mostly just need something with line in(blue) that processes audio well, preferably on the card itself because every bit of CPU usage saved while streaming is important. Thanks for that feedback, I was looking at a highly-rated $30 one but I wasn't sure how those compare against the $100 ones I saw.

[orinthia]

For hardware processing, you might have to pay more. I do remember my old sound blaster live having hardware processing for sound stuff, but that was over a decade ago lol. Not sure what the new version of that is anymore though. Have you tried it out currently? I just doubt an added sound card would change things too much, unless you're doing some big sound modification/effects while live.

[Callisto]

Oh no, I mean I already have a full hardware mixer, I just want the output from that to sound as good as possible when recorded on the PC

[orinthia]

Oh, then you may as well buy coconut audio cables and ceramic cable risers between your mixer and sound card. lol.

I wouldn't think it matters enough when you're streaming, since it'll be highly compressed anyway, but I've never messed with that so I don't know. You mentioned performance before, and some cards do offload that processing, but your processing is already offloaded and you just want it to come back. Line-in is normal, but there might be some other optical-in or digital-in connection as a step up. Though that depends entirely on what all outputs your mixer has to see if you can match it with something. I think one was TOSLink? Or some other coax/digital connection. It might end up being more expensive to use than its worth though.

[Krandor]

For a stream the quality of the card isn't really going to matter too much, you'd probably be fine just getting the cheap shit as long as it has the basic hardware requirements you need. I use a Sound Blaster card in my desktop, but it's mostly there for music, there's basically no discernible difference in the quality of in game audio.

[Kalmado]

I use a cheap Diamond 5.1 sound card and it gets the job done. I'm not an audiophile so I'm not sure if it's actually better than the onboard card of my Asus Z77 mb, but it fixed an issue I was having with in game sounds.

[Rhayve]

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend going for any Creative sound cards, since their drivers are usually rather bad. Asus is slightly better in that respect (I use an Asus Xonar myself), but not by much. In both cases there are free inofficial drivers available online that will do the job.

In any case, I'd recommend looking into Asus Xonar (DX, DGX or DSX) - reliable, good sound and most of the time not too expensive.

PS: Do you only have a free PCI slot or a PCI-Express one? The former isn't too common anymore, nowadays.

[Callisto]

I think I have one of each free.

[Rhayve]

If the PCI-E slot is not x16 or if you don't need it for another purpose (e.g. extra graphics card) then go for a PCI-E sound card. They're usually more expensive, but also faster. The ASUS Xonar DSX PCIe 7.1 is somewhat pricey, but it's reliable and will serve pretty much all purposes. There are some cheaper 5.1 or 7.1 PCI variants, though, so you might want to browse a bit beforehand.

The unofficial drivers are called UNi Xonar Drivers by MaxedTech, by the way. In most cases the official drivers will work fine, but they do sometimes crash or cause conflicts - plus UNi Xonar offers slightly better sound quality and bass.

[Niya]

Hm, as long as it's "just" for recording "non-hifi" stuff, any onboard sound chip can get the job done with decent quality. The realtek chips that are most commonly used have quite good sound quality, the difference isn't THAT large towards dedicated sound cards that it would justify buying one.

And just for the record: I had an Asus Xonar card in my last PC, the drivers crashed/BSODed every once in a while, but beside that it ran fine. Though, in retrospect i have to say that I couldn't tell any difference in audio quality compared to the onboard chip. And since more recent mainboards sometimes even have 7.1 and optical/TOSlink with the onboard sound, absolutely no reason to buy a soundcard.

[Rhayve]

Hm, as long as it's "just" for recording "non-hifi" stuff, any onboard sound chip can get the job done with decent quality. The realtek chips that are most commonly used have quite good sound quality, the difference isn't THAT large towards dedicated sound cards that it would justify buying one.

And just for the record: I had an Asus Xonar card in my last PC, the drivers crashed/BSODed every once in a while, but beside that it ran fine. Though, in retrospect i have to say that I couldn't tell any difference in audio quality compared to the onboard chip. And since more recent mainboards sometimes even have 7.1 and optical/TOSlink with the onboard sound, absolutely no reason to buy a soundcard.

This is why I recommended the UNi Xonar unofficial drivers. And trust, there's a very noticable difference in sound quality between onboard sound and a dedicated sound card. Whether you can notice the difference depends largely on the quality of your speakers and the source audio, though.

Speaking of drivers: http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

[Krandor]

Personally I haven't experienced any issues with drivers for my Sound Blaster Z under Windows 8, but mileage may vary.

[Gulkeeva]

Personally I haven't experienced any issues with drivers for my Sound Blaster Z under Windows 8, but mileage may vary.

Using a sound blaster Zxr myself, only had issues with the drives that came with the card. Got the ones from their website, haven't had issues at all. I've personally not tried the daughter board that comes with it, which is basically a card dedicated for line-in recording.

the card(s) on newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102050