[xyber233]

Who has a sounblaster card? I want to know your experiences. How is it with Games (deus ex) and DVDs? I might want to buy one when I buy my Powermac.

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[Nimisys]

For Pc they are the top of the line and really the only choice as they are so vastly superior, with the one exception being Phillps aucustic edge. even the lowest end SBLive sounds exceptional, with speaker quality being the limiting factor. For Games, SBlive is what they are programed towards and EAX has tons of support. DVD and other audio has no problems either, easily handling digital audio outport on card for you. only drawback on the PC side is that there have been some minor compatibility issues between it and certain VIA southbridges and win2k combined while transfering large files. i have no problem recommending them though.

[cube-dude]

Transfering to Peripherals

[TheDoctor]

I've got one. The sound is AWESOME! MP3's, CD's, Deus Ex, even the system sounds are great! Two drawbacks, though: no OS X drivers yet and the card does not support deep-sleep mode yet. I haven't watched a DVD on the machine since I've installed the card.

I ordered mine from outpost.com and got it the next day.

I'm not a game player, but a hobbyist musician. Musically, it's a fantastic deal - it's really two cards:

1) a good (not pro-level, but better than the built-in on my BW G3) sound card, w/ front & back analog out, line & mic in, and an electrical, not optical, digital out that works with a small set of speakers (use the analog out for non-digital speakers), and
2) an onboard MIDI synth module that allows you to load many different sound banks - the accompanying CD comes w/ 42, including 3 different General MIDI banks, of okay, good, and even better quality.

Overall, I'm very happy with it - within a week of owning it, I'd made a multitrack demo of a song that uses both Audio (the card comes with a mic that's much better than the PlainTalk mic) and MIDI, just using the bundled software, Cubasis AV. Hey, it's old and limited, but it's reasonably stable, it gets the job done, and it was free.

You can get much better audio cards for the Mac, but you have to pay a lot more than half of $150. MIDI-wise, I'm not sure you can find an internal synth for the Mac that offers what this card does. Of course, if you want to spend $800 on an external Sound Canvas, be my guest.

For a professional musician w/ more money than lots of professional musicians I know have, this card is not worth losing a PCI slot for; for anyone below that level, it's well worth checking out - I got way more than I could reasonably expect for the price.

Evan

PS: yes, it's still a little buggy for some people, and it has no OS X drivers, but to my way of thinking, it's Creative's first card for the Mac OS, and it's version 1.0. If you check out the Audio Forum at XLR8YourMac,com, you'll find that there are Creative engineers answering questions about the card that are clearly passionate about getting this to be insanely great (for the price). I'm very happy with it now, and expect it to get better in the future.

[exa]

For Pc they are the top of the line and really the only choice as they are so vastly superior, with the one exception being Phillps aucustic edge

Heh, talk to my Audiophile 2496

Sure they are for different purposes but the sound quality is vastly superior to the soundblaster... the soundblaster sounds way too unnatural, steely in some cases... just not right. Anyways if you aren't much into games and movies (actually only playback or pro recording) you should consider the audiophile 2496 (like me) but I see you are not, just felt like adding my 2 cents...

[G4ME]

If it is way better than the sound blaster than how much is it and where can you buy it?

Uhhh,
No, your audiophile can talk to my SoundBlaster. No onboard synthesizer--Audiophile is absolutely useless for a midi musician and for any of the Mac's in my schools midi lab. At least SoundBlaster is the only good pioneer in this much needed area. And the synthesizer is VERY decent. DVD's, Games, And System sounds sound better with the sound blaster than with the built in Macintosh Sound system.