Audigy 2 vs Audigy 4

[Sxotty]

What card has dolby digital encoding?

I have been waiting for that for quite awhile. It was one of many excuses for me not to upgrade. Although my receiver has 6 inputs, so I could anyway

 

[ChrisRay]

Heh.. I'm still using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and I love it..

 

[Chastity]

The HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold is a CMI8768+ card, the + signifying the DD Live support.

 

[_xxx_]

Wait a tic, you mean the Audigy4 is NOT twice as good as the Audigy2? :|

I smell a marketing scam.... :?

Audigy 4 (the chip) IS Audigy2. If you remove the sticker(!) you'll see your well-known A2. The DAC's are much better, though.

 

[Chastity]

More than just the DAC is better. It's a general component improvement.

 

[ANova]

Am I correct in saying the reason for soundstorm's popularity is due to hardware acceleration?

I personally use the onboard sound of my P4P800 and find it perfectly acceptable in both sound quality and cpu usage, which hovers at around only 5%. But then again I'm using a cheapo Altec Lansing 4 speaker set.

 

[Chastity]

The popularity of Soundstorm is that you can do 5.1 gaming on HT rigs, and listen to music using the DACs on the HT receiver, which are generally superior to using the soundcard's. Fortunately, there is a trend in card makers where that is no longer the case, but we need to see how it pans out.

So basically, it's an onboard solution that sounds great.