Somnam
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Mullica Hill, NJ
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| reply to ninjatutle
Re: Razer Barracuda sound card, just good for gaming?
i use it primarily for gaming and music. for gaming, it's Razer ESP is more than marketing fluff. it makes a big difference versus other "gaming" cards. it enhances the sound to make determining distance much easier. it does this without encoding it into EAX or similar.
it has basically the best sound quality available for the PC b/c it's based on the top of the line C-Media Oxygen 8788 audio chipset. this same chipset is used in the majority of $150+ MSRP cards, like the Xonor from Asus or series of cards from HT.
regarding music and video playback, it does DTS encoding, DTS NeoPC, Dolby Headphone, and PrologicIIx. these are all 2channel upconverting which (arguably) enhances music and compressed video playback audio significantly. outside of encoding, it support 96 and 192hz output, so the best speakers out there wont be crippled.
i do not own the Razer barracuda headset, but i have hear absolutely amazing things about it when paired with the AC-1 card. i paired mine up with logitech z5500 and Sennheiser HD500 and both sound great. the problem with the Razer headset is that it uses the proprietary DVI-audio connection on the card which means you'd have to go to the back of your case and unscrew the DVI-type connector in favor of the analogue adapter every time you want to output sound via analogue (ie speakers when gaming). if you'd be using the Razer headphones 100% of the time, or 100% of the time when gaming, this is of no concern, and it does have Optical in and outputs on the back of the card to output to digital speakers and Razer headphones without physically swapping the connections.
since analogue output is the only true 5.1 output for games, i have to connect my logitech z5500s both digitally and via analogue and switch outputs depending on what im doing. this is in no way annoying, but with the razer headphones, i'd have to swap out the headphones for the adapter or vice versa every time i go from music to gaming.
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