Best Sound Card for Vista x64?

I am looking to put in a new sound card, I am currently using the onbaord realtek I have. I am wonder what the current best sound card is for Vista x64? I game, watch movies and o music so my sound is a big deal. My experiences in the past with Creative products have been that they have great hardware but crap for drivers.

Creative Drivers have Improved recently,browse through the Creative forums and then decide.
Would also suggest the ASUS Xonar D2 ,dunno how good/bad it is but supposedly works well under Vista X64.

The Auzentech prelude is just about the best card you can get so far. Check it out. I have the Auzentech Meridian and its superb, but lacks EAX..if thats you thing then get the Prelude. It has the Meridian music quality combined with EAX for games. Well worth the dosh.

I've had really good luck with my Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer. Like Asky said, creative drivers are starting to improve.

I went from a X-fi XtremeMusic soundcard to the Azun X-fi Prelude 7.1 and couldn't be happier.

I was looking for an alternative to Creative products so I chose this for my system: HT Omega - Striker7.1

It's worked flawlessly, so far.

I've had 2 Creative cards die on me in the past 4 years, so I thought I'd give a competitor a chance. I'm glad I did.

M-Audio products are recently Vista compatible. They tend to have very good sound quality and stable drivers. A very common soundcard solution is the Audiophile 2496 (from the Delta family of soundcards). 64 bit drivers are on the way if they aren't already here.

Personally, I usually recommend Creative Labs products. They aren't the cheapest, don't always have the highest audio quality (fine for all but audiophiles jacking into $10,000 stereo systems), and Creative isn't known for high quality software....

But they have one thing going for them that makes their products worthwhile: market support. You can be certain that your audio card will work just fine in whatever OS you're using 5-10 years from now. And you can be sure that whatever driver/software problems crop up for your device, there will be enough other users out there that the developers will fix the problem.

The same simply cannot be said by many other sound-card brands. Although I know nothing of the Auzentech brand that was suggested by another poster, I have seen too many smaller soundcard brands come and go in the past 15 years... When you buy Creative, you're also buying some insurance against your soundcard not working with an OS down the road.


Question of my own: The Auzentech brand seems to be little more than re-branded Creative products, possibly using higher quality DACs and including some extra capability. In fact, from what I'm seeing on their website, even their software tools look the same as the Creative software (which is good from a compatibility perspective, but bad from the perspective that Creative makes shoddy software). If that is the case, do they have any basic driver compatibility with stock Creative drivers? If so, that would mean that Auzentech would also be a nicely future-proof choice.

You make an excellent point for not buying M-Audio products. Hold up before you get too irate!! I'll explain myself:

Vista has been out for over 1 year at this point. Yet there are still no drivers for x64. I wonder: How long did they take to roll out x86 drivers for Vista?

If you had a Creative Labs product, you would have had complete driver support before Vista reached RTM.

I'm not saying that your audio card isn't super-high-quality. But unless you're an audiophile or audio-professional... the extra quality/power is neither noticable or needed. On the other hand, a possibly over-priced lower-quality soundcard from a company like Creative Labs will ensure that your card will work with just about everything. They're just so ubiquitous with computer audio ... you know it will always be supported.

Just my $0.02. I'm not an audiophile or audio-professional, though.

ltwally makes some really good points. You're going to have to decide based on your needs. With Creative, I'm not really sure what's going on. I either have exceptional luck with their products, or other people are making mistakes somewhere. It's hard to tell.