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[tcman41]

I have been bored all week sitting at work not really doing a whole lot because all the jobs that i am scheduled to work on are screwed up or out for questions so i have been keeping myself busy by buying upgrades for my computer, lol.

Last week i got a 300gb hard drive and a new lite on dvd burner and a benq lite scribe dvd burner.

This week i ordered another 1gb of memory (so now i will have 2gb) and a gaming mouse, the logitech g5, my old mouse is giving out.

I am now thinking of upgrading my sound card, i am running a creative audigy (1st generation) 16 bit sound card and i am looking to upgrade to a 24 bit card, i am thinking of turtle beach.

I have left and right channel speakers flanking my computer desk with a big sub woofer on the floor in the middle. I don't have the rear channel speakers so i am not running 5.1 dolby.

Would i see a huge difference between my audigy 16 bit card and a turtle beach 24 bit card? I have about 300 retail cd's which i don't have ripped and very rarely paly on the computer and about 1,000 mp3 albums in my media center 11 collection ranging from 192 bit rate to 320 bit rate which i play all the time.

I am also a avid gamer, playing all the big titles, Doom 3, Half-life 2, Far Cry, Max Payne, etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

TC

[jgreen]

TC--
I am really sorry to pour cold water on this, man, but the Audigy is a darn good card. Easily the best bang for the buck anywhere near the price.   I would not trade it for the turtle beach for any reason.  Newer versions of the Audigy might have some benefit for your games, but I think you need a 5.1 rig. 

If you absolutely MUST upgrade from your Audigy, prepare to spend $500-$700 for the E-mu or RME (the next stop on the way up), and you'll need to buy better speakers just to hear the difference.

I say, buy lottery tickets instead, or take up stamp collecting.  Your current rig sounds just fine.  And start rippin you CDs!

[tcman41]

Yeah, after doing some more research i discovered that 16bit for playback is fine. Apparently 24bit is better for recording but i ain't recording anything.

I also realize that when it ends up on a cd or mp3 it's going to be 16 bit anyway.

I think my audigy 1st generation card can do dolby 5.1 but only through software enhancement which i am not fond of. So the only reason i would go with another card is to get dolby 5.1 for my games, but then of course i would have to upgrade my speaker setup.

Gaming to me and especially the game sound isn't that big of deal so for now i am just going to stay with what i have.

I at one time had ripped all my 350 cd's to 320 bit rate mp3's and had them in media center but for whatever reason at one point i decided that they were ok just setting on my shelve and i deleted them all. My thinking was to keep them seperate, you know, all my digitally bought and found music from the music forums on my computer and my store bought retail cds on the shelf. Now that i look back on the theory it seems a little silly to me. Now that i have a nice new 300gb hard drive and only about 40gb of retail discs to rip  i don't see any reason not to rerip them.

Thanks for reply jgreen.

TC