Best USB Sound option

I finally got my CPU working just the way i want it. However i noticed the sound level is not great.. 100% volume is not very loud. I have all of the volumes in windows and in all my audio players at max, yet i am barley pushing any decent volume. I am running off the headphone out of my cpu since it dosent have line outs. My quesiton is will a USB sound card with line out provide a better sound? If not what are my options. I would like to use USB sound to isolate any of the buzz and chatter of the harddrive that one would pick up with the normal sound card.

Thanks
-Jack

Hey,

I cant vouch for this personally because i have no sound at the moment (waiting for my panisonic Surround sound processor) but the generally accepted best USB sound available is the Audigy series from creative.

You still need a good amp to get loud sound.

I think you will have better luck with the Audigy than any onboard sound card but since it is USB you will be using a lot of your USB bandwidth so beware if you have anyother USB bandwidth intensive items such as the DVD player. Also note that you wont get DTS decoding or Prologic with any sound card.

Thanks for the input. I have a bunch of USB devices, but nothing bandwith intensive..

I have the following items:

1. Rf Adaptor for remote
2. DLINK radio
3. Touchscreen
4. XMPCR

i dont see any of these being a hog..

Does the USB bandwidth really come into play if the devices aren't daisychained? Is there only one hub on board to the southbridge that all USB communications go through?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dbzeag

Does the USB bandwidth really come into play if the devices aren't daisychained? Is there only one hub on board to the southbridge that all USB communications go through?

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Why would you provide two busses to the south bridge? 2nd is redundant.

I have Philips Aurilium. I think it sounds awesome!!!! It's buspowered too, so you don't need any external power.
I think the sound is superb.
BUT!!! I have had problems with it using mediacar and WinXP. so I use windows 2000 now. without any problem.
It's something to do with mediacar and the drivers I think.

The only place that i have heard of problems are when you run both an external DVD and Soundcard off of USB. When you tack on all of the other USB resources such NIC, TS, Radio It may be a problem.

Also from what I hear having the sound card external through USB really sucks up CPU when you have any sort of surround sound processing.

I lucked out... my DVD-R drive is firewire.. so i balanced the bandwith..