soundcard using alsa

ShweetuH · n00b Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Posts: 14

I'm currently using an onboard sound card using the intel8x0 alsa driver. I wanted to know if anyone could recommend a good sound card to use for Linux. I don't need a high end Creative X-Fi card. I just want something that is a true hardware based card that works very well with alsa without much configuration (besides dmix and so on).

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7020

Soundblaster Audigy 2 or 4 (4 has higher-quality sound). Get one cheap off Ebay. Does not need dmix or pulseaudio, which is a big advantage because Linux's software mixing is far from perfect. Has great audio quality. Only slight potential disadvantage for the average user (or games-player) is that it resamples to 48k. But, every soundcard that could be a competitor to it, has its own weaknesses also, which includes inferior audio quality to the Audigy when in a similar price range, and dmix headaches.

Then, see thread for surround sound in iD Software games, and subwoofer filter for music.

Also continued here, and in second thread, and in third thread.

If you buy a card second-hand, then the manufacturers don't get revenue from you. Creative Labs don't deserve it.

The realistic reasonably-priced alternative is the PCI-Express Asus Xonar DX, which is higher quality than an Audigy4 (signal-to-noise ratio of 116dB vs the Audigy4's 106dB), but does require software mixing.

My recommendation will change to the hardware-mixing X-fi, when ALSA supports it with 5.1 rather than only stereo.

Edit: Last edited 21-Jan-2013, this post is not as old as it looks