Need Sound Card Advice

[Roark]

I just finished building a new desktop computer, and the last piece of the puzzle has yet to fall into place. My needs are two-fold:

Good 7.1 Sound (I am very picky about listening to music, movies, and I'm a hardcore gamer)

Remixing capabilities

All of the good remixing cards I've seen (e-mu, m-audio) do not have 7.1 sound, and vice versa. My budget is up to $200, what are my options? Would like to order off newegg if possible. Thanks for the help!

[suzumebachi]

what do you mean "remixing capabilities?"

are you going to be recording audio? are you going to be purely sequencing? are you going to be recording midi? please try not to be vague, here.

[Roark]

Sorry for vagueness

I do a fair amount of audio recording (mostly voice and trumpet, occasionally guitar), and use a midi keyboard as well.

[suzumebachi]

well then, if you insist on having 7.1, i suggest you build two boxes. one with a consumer end 7.1 sound card that you use for gaming, watching movies, etc, and the other with a pro audio card. you aren't gonna find one that does both well.

[dannthr]

Do you need XLR inputs? Do you need mic pres?

I think the M-Audio Delta 1010LT is carried by Newegg and offers 8 analog outs which you could set up for 7.1

[suzumebachi]

If the 1010LT is anything like E-MU's 1820M, you can kind of ghetto rig some 7.1 output by using crossovers. BUT there's still no true surround decoding.

[Roark]

What about creative X-Fi?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102014

looks like it has the inputs I would need (don't use XLR), the description is written up mainly for the 7.1 uses though and the rest is pretty ambiguous "AUDIO CREATION MODE: Get advanced audio and music creation features"

[suzumebachi]

creative's consumer level cards suck giant donkey balls when it comes to recording audio.

[Roark]

Alright, the separate setup does sound like the best option if there is no good card for both 7.1 and recording. Thanks for the help

[zircon]

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7681

Don't forget to browse this.

[Roark]

I did, had browsed several such threads on these forums before creating this topic My needs were slightly different though

[dannthr]

Yeah, surround sound monitors don't necessarily utilize surround sound encoding either.

I'm probably going to be looking at this:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Saffire/

It's a bit out of your price range, Roark, but it's got respectable mic pres and 8 outputs for 7.1 surround.