Greetings,
I have always seen the audiophile spoken of very highly here, i comes from m-audio which make the Delta 1010, so there is a good company behind it. I have also heard some people speak highly of Creative stuff, like the new Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum eX, especially for the price.
Checking these two cards out, they are both around the same price Audiophile ~179$ (US) Audiology ~195, both are 24/94, Creative claims a S/N of 100db, while the audiophile is listed as Dynamic Range: D/A 104.0dB, A/D 100.4dB, both have converters on the box, both have 2 analog imputs, both do midi. Now since I am not springing for my high end setup yet, I am obviously looking for the biggest bang for the buck right now, and maybe a card that will do my midi if my future interface doesn't.
The big difference I see is that the creative stuff has soundfont support, which instantly takes care of buying a hardware snyth/module since soundfont stuff is pretty mainstream these days and at least decent sounding (although not as good as VST stuff? which i hear people use instead of soundfonts)
So its either popular because of its 1) higher quality (creative is, after all, a gaming company), 2) some feature that is not obvious, or 3) just marketing success. I am just starting to look at budget cards, and wondering which it is.
SirRiff
I have always seen the audiophile spoken of very highly here, i comes from m-audio which make the Delta 1010, so there is a good company behind it. I have also heard some people speak highly of Creative stuff, like the new Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum eX, especially for the price.
Checking these two cards out, they are both around the same price Audiophile ~179$ (US) Audiology ~195, both are 24/94, Creative claims a S/N of 100db, while the audiophile is listed as Dynamic Range: D/A 104.0dB, A/D 100.4dB, both have converters on the box, both have 2 analog imputs, both do midi. Now since I am not springing for my high end setup yet, I am obviously looking for the biggest bang for the buck right now, and maybe a card that will do my midi if my future interface doesn't.
The big difference I see is that the creative stuff has soundfont support, which instantly takes care of buying a hardware snyth/module since soundfont stuff is pretty mainstream these days and at least decent sounding (although not as good as VST stuff? which i hear people use instead of soundfonts)
So its either popular because of its 1) higher quality (creative is, after all, a gaming company), 2) some feature that is not obvious, or 3) just marketing success. I am just starting to look at budget cards, and wondering which it is.
SirRiff
