Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners DAC: computer Soundcard vs CD Player?

I'm surprised the noise level was so low with the sound card... no good reason but I expected there would be more noise on quiet passages as an unavoidable result of living inside a PC.

One other point is that some sound cards are better for audio, others for gaming. My understanding is that :

- original SB and SB/Live clock at 44 KHz and are good for audio;

- Audigy 1 clocks at 48KHz and is better for gaming but not so good for audio because CD has to be resampled to 48 KHz

- Audigy 2 is essentially "best of both worlds" -- original SB performance for audio (+24 bit) and Audigy performance for gaming

Let us know how the M-Audio works out -- as you say it is supposed to be better than any of the above for audio.