Folks, I had a house fire a few years ago in which i lost my beloved audio equipment. Since then i have been building an audio system as money allows. I now have a pair of Anthony Gallo Acoustics 3.1 reference. They are *very* transparent and tell me a lot about what is happening up-stream. I also picked up a Carver TFM-15CB. My aim is a pair of Bel Canto Ref 1000 amps but this will do for now. I run my audio from computer to Carver with no out-board preamp in between. My computer, which was also through the fire, has been having motherboard problems lately (what a surprise!). Since i was replacing the sound card anyway (on board nvidia chipset via an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe), i got a Sound Blaster Extigy on ebay. I knew it was cheep but it's what i can afford now. I'm confused by what i'm hearing. It's very nice not to hear the whir of my fans (especially the damned chipset fan) through my speakers, but things sound shallow in comparison to running my audio straight from the motherboard. I get a little more detail and it's a lot quieter, but the weight of things are gone. Some things sound alright, but when i listen to a track of 4 cellos playing, the feeling of the layered harmonics is gone. Things sound flat. Not flat in a sound-stage sense, but pianos while having the depth don't have the body. They sound like toys or as if i'm playing an MP3. There is a fatiguing bite to things as well. I tested the frequency response with some warble tones and i can hear much deeper bass tones then i could with the motherboard. I presume that is an effect of not having the fan noise smear things. It's just not emotionally engaging and i don't know where to go from here. Would a SB Audity 2 NX help or would it just be more of the same for more money? I don't want to spend a lot as this is just a stop-gap till i can afford something better, but can someone tell me if this is the extigy in particular, all SBs sound like this or is this the nature of all cards at this level? Thank you, Bearcat M. Sandor _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
