Soundcards - Which one?

[UDF2Diablo]

i'm buying a new sound card because my old creative X-Fi packed up about 4 months ago...

i really should stop buying creative cards, every single one i've owned has either died after 1-2 years, or caused my system to crash randomly because it's either dieing/on it's way out or there are some kind of driver problems.

so: i've decided to break the habbit! (i've bought solely creative cards ever since the soundblaster 16) and go for a non creative card...

however i really do/did love the features on my old X-Fi, and so i need some help choosing!:

1.) Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 Sound Card
2.) Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card (or the PCI version, D2)
3.) Razer IAS Barracuda AC-1 Gaming 7.1 Sound Card

which one would you go for?

obviously i want one that will work with the new XAudio 2 codec (though i'd imagine they all do.), but i also want a card that's able to output my 2.0 stereo music through all of my 7.1 speakers like my X-Fi used to do ... and i don't mean the crappy vista way of doing it, which causes the rear and side speakers to sound like quiet ecoes. i mean full 2.0 sound coming out of all speakers. like the css upmixer does on the X-Fi. - ofcourse i'd also like to still be able to use EAX on all my games ;o

for these reasons i'm leaning heavily towards the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude soundcard, as being an X-Fi it should do everything my old X-Fi did... but hopefully work with vista x64 and hopefully not break as fast! being high quality components etc..

what do you think?

[daglesj]

Well if all the current hoohaa with Creative having a pop at a guy who atually got their drivers to work properly on Saturday is anything to go by they might not exist as a company for much longer.

Whilst what they (Creative) said was correct, the way they said it and the fact that they were looking as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo with regards to their poor drivers and hardware support was a big mistake.

Big public relations disaster!

[impar]

Greetings!

You tried your motherboards onboard sound?

[powerarmour]

[UDF2Diablo]