Cheap but good Audio Card
Written: Feb 04 '01 (Updated Jul 27 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Works with Windows 98/SE/Me/XP
Cheap-sounds great
Cons: None I have found
The Bottom Line: If you want a good sounding audio and use any of the operating system I mentioned and not a lot of money get this one.
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| dragon1's Full Review: Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI |
I have used this card since the fall of 1998, beta testing of Windows 98SE,ME and now Windows XP.I have excellant quality sound from this card. Of course it helps that I have the card hooked up to a 135watt per channel Stereo System.
With my stereo it has the full range of sounds coming from my speakers. The frequency responce of the audio output is 20-20000 +/- 1db. In fact I can rattle the windows on the other side of the house.
There are 3 input sockets on board for hooking up a cd, modem and tv/fm tuner card besides the microphone input.
It has a 32 voice synthesizer, with the wave table included with this card a guitar sounds like a real guitar and a organ sounds like a organ.
Because it is a PCI card it uses a minimum amount of processor cycles. It is also Sound Blaster compatible which means it works with applications that uses SB settings. So if you want a good,cheap sound card, I highly recommend this card.
Overview of the card from the manual
Synthesizer
Provides up to 32 voices of wavetable synthesis.
Includes two and four megabyte General MIDI/ Roland MT-32 sound sets as well as AdLib/ SoundBlaster Pro I (with OPL2) FM synthesizer emulation.
Because of the high data transfer rates that the PCI bus will allow, AudioPCI™ is able to utilize a flexible method of storing and accessing wavetable sounds. All 128 General MIDI instrument sounds are stored on the PC's hard drive and accessed using the computer's on-board RAM. This technology allows for expandable sound sets.
Digital Audio
Allows the recording of CD-quality stereo sound (up to 16 bits, 48.0 kHz sampling rate) from Aux, CD and TV Tuner Inputs as well as from the internal synthesizer.
Allows the recording of mono sound from the Mic Input with or without 5-volt BIAS power or 30-dB boost.
Allows the recording of mono sound from the Modem/TAD Input/Output.
Playback of stereo wave samples of 8- or 16-bit sound.
Enables playback of standard PC Wave files (.VOC, .WAV, etc.).
MIDI
Provides an MPU-401 compatible MIDI interface, including MIDI In and MIDI Out/Thru (requires external cable, not supplied).
Allows the recording of MIDI events from an external MIDI keyboard controller.
Enables playback of standard PC MIDI files (i.e., .MID, .ROL, etc.) to either the on-board synthesizer or to an external synthesizer.
Mixer
Provided software mixer allows synthesizer and digital audio output to be mixed with signal arriving at the card’s CD, Aux, Mic, Modem and TV Tuner Inputs.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 35
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Epinions.com ID:
dragon1
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 in Computer Hardware, Software |
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Member: Michael L Hereid Sr
Location: Clinton, Iowa
Reviews written: 71
Trusted by: 70 members
About Me:
I'm back-was without for 2 1/2 weeks -will catch up rating asap
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