I have a creative labs x-gamer fatality pro. The sound is better than my onboard sound but not enough so that I would buy it again. In fact, I took mine out because of driver issues and pain in the ass configuration software. I don't miss it at all.

With most speaker or headset set-ups there is no discernible difference. When you start talking about 200 dollar speaker set-ups, you will want to invest in a good card.

For your typical 2.0, 2.1 speaker configuration, no need to buy a sound card. You will notice noise with surround sound headsets and speakers. Also, for the purposes of voice/recording, there will be noise over the mic, grab a USB mic/headset.

I followed this advice when I built my last system and used the onboard Realtek ALC655 6-channel sound on my last build. It replaced and audigy 2 card, and I noticed more crackling and possibly less quality when FPS gaming w/ headphones.

Then I picked up an X-Fi card (w/ the onboard ram, don't remember model number) and honestly I was really surprised at the massively better sound through my headset. Louder, clearer, with seemingly more depth. It also appears to be easier to connect sounds to space, i.e., locate someone in game by sound rather than sight. I'm very aware that many audio claims are pure hype and I know that my ears are untrained, but even if I can't identify what makes the games and music sound better w/ the X-fi, I can qualitatively say I prefer the sound through the card.

Listening through my old 2.1 speakers, I doubt I could tell the difference between onboard and the X-fi. Listening though my headset (Sennheiser PC-151) it makes all the difference in the world. Audiosurf is MUCH better w/ the phones and card.

Believe folks when they say that the X-Fi is a headache in regards to drivers, vista, and general annoyances. I've had continual problems w/ Lotro and my sound card. I'd just turn it off and use software sound, if only it didn't improve the game experience by a factor of 10 when the card is working properly.

To sum up: I don't know as much about sound as some other folks who have already posted. My personal take is that I find that listening to games, music, and video w/ a good card and semi-decent headset is well worth the $100 - $200 investment I've made. ON the other hand, I honestly can't tell the difference between onboard and the card when I'm listening over my speakers.

The onboard sound will do the 5.1 or 7.1 just fine. What 5.1 means is this: 5 full-range speakers and a subwoofer. 7.1 means 7+1. It's a 'point one' channel because the bandwidth allocated to it is very small, because it's just for bass. With computers, because they're not trying to crowd all that data down one wire like a S/PDIF, you just use full-range analog channels instead. Only bass goes down the channel meant for the sub, but it's an analog sound port like all the other speakers. In essence, instead of '7.1' sound, you have '8' sound.

With typical computer speakers, the crappy Realtek sound is probably okay. You might hear a marginal upgrade with an X-Fi, but it's not going to be that noticeable, because crap speakers put out crap sound, no matter what they're given. Make no mistake: onboard sound is terrible. BUT -- so are most computer speakers. Logitechs are particularly horrible, in my experience.

If, however, you get into real theater gear, even low-end HTIBs, a replacement soundcard could be a real benefit. Something like the Energy Take Classics, combined with an Onkyo 504 receiver ($500 for the speakers, $250 for the receiver), should give you absolutely kickass sound, and you'd definitely benefit from an X-Fi.

Actually, to be honest, the X-Fi doesn't even really do that kind of system true justice; it's still doing a 48khz resample, and you'll get slightly better music driving the receiver's DACs with a bitperfect audio signal. You can get that from an X-Fi, with some work, but you're bypassing most of the card to do it, and you can't both listen to best-quality music and play games at the same time. Overall, that's probably still the best solution. You switch to bitperfect 2-channel for critical music listening, and leave it in multichannel analog for games. Games are mostly in 48Khz anyway, so there's no resample, and things sound quite good. If you play music at the same time, even though it's being resampled, it still sounds good, and it's not like you'll notice the relatively minor quality loss with all the explosions and stuff.

Windows sound, in general, sucks. Getting it to not suck takes real effort. Do you just want multichannel games and a little bit of music, or do you want to get serious and actually get high-quality sound?

stupid question erased-new one added.

If you end up trying it out in Vista can you let me know how it works?

I'm probably starting off with XP at the start, but will be moving to 64bit Vista ASAP.

Sadly, this isn't necessarily true. Many soundcards do a forced resample to 48Khz in hardware, independent of Windows. I don't know how well onboard sound fares here, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Further, most onboard sound has pretty terrible DACs, so even if the proper data gets through, you still may not get very good sound.

In general, for best music reproduction, you want to hook up an external receiver via coax or fiber S/PDIF, and run a soundcard in bitperfect mode to that receiver. You have to bypass Windows sound entirely (using ASIO or kernel streaming), and have a card that will then forward the signal, untouched, to the receiver. Not many cards will do this. The X-Fi will if you set it to Music Creation mode and bit-matched output, and then drive it with either kernel streaming or ASIO... but ASIO will only work through ASIO4ALL, as there's something wonky with the native Creative driver. You can also do it with the cheap Chaintech AV-710. This is a truly terrible card for gaming, with dismal drivers, but you can get bitperfect passthrough easily and cheaply with it.

You can test whether or not you're getting true bitperfect with this compressed 44.1Khz DTS file. If your receiver supports DTS, and if your signal path is perfect, you will get a nice multichannel orchestral piece. If any part of your signal chain is flawed in any way, you'll get a hash. Keep your receiver volume way down, as this kind of hash noise is hard on speakers. (Note that you have to hunt down every volume control you can find in the computer itself and set them all to maximum; if any component in the chain is trying to reduce the volume, you'll get hash.)

Note that all this pain is mostly a Windows misfeature. On the Mac, getting that file to play consists only of disabling crossfade, and setting system and iTunes volumes to maximum.

Post-house will be a year from now. Budget probably better to keep it under $1k. Right now i'm probably ok with what i have from what it sounds like with my old Creative speakers used primarily for gaming.

Ok, the last thing you need to know is that Vista completely screws up multichannel sound, so I'd suggest staying with XP as long as humanly possible.

With a $1K budget, get an X-Fi, a proper receiver (an Onkyo 504 is good), and a small theater set. I'm using an old set of Energy Take2s I bought over a decade ago, and they're great. The Take series has gone very upscale; Take5s are full-size and very expensive now. But, Energy just released the Take Classics, which are very much like my old Take2s, and I'd suggest giving them a listen if you can.

Another option would be an Onkyo HTIB. Just make sure it has a 7.1 analog input. Most of the Onkyo HTIBs have real stereo components, not the butchered ones that many other manufacturers use, so 7.1 is entirely likely on even their lower-end stuff, because their 504 has that. (that's why I'm using one.)

With a normal theater setup, you want to put most of your money into the front L+R pair, but with computer gaming, going for a more balanced approach is often better, since the multichannel speakers get used a lot more.

In general, avoid Bose. Decent sound, but super-premium pricing for not terribly good components. You can get much better sound for the same amount, or equivalent sound for a lot less.

The 'proper' way to buy speakers is to go in and listen critically, to teach yourself what your particular ears are looking for. All speakers make tradeoffs. You're looking for the set of tradeoffs that suit your ears the best. The brain doesn't use very many neurons for hearing, and everyone seems to use different strategies, so you're looking for the speakers that suit your particular ears. One thing to watch for is over-bright speakers; they have a lot of 'wow!' on the showroom floor, but are fatiguing in extended listening. ('bright' means lots of treble; 'warm' means less treble.) Warmer speakers won't jump out at you as much, but you can listen to them for a lot longer without discomfort.

An option you can consider while you're waiting for your good stuff: a really good set of headphones, like the Sennheiser 600s, paired with a combo headphone amp/USB DAC, like the Total Bithead, will you give you absolutely amazing sound for $300-$400. This will, in fact, sound better than your $1k stereo, by a large margin. As a very rough rule of thumb, a headphone/amp combo will sound about as good as speakers that are 10x as expensive.

Does it give bitperfect? Maybe. There's no way to know for sure, because it has no coax out. I know that USB audio devices work a little differently under Windows. I was able to get bitperfect from a USB Sonica Theater, just using standard Windows sound, almost by accident. (it was the startling and enormous difference between the USB Audigy 2NX and the Sonica Theater that got me started on the whole journey of understanding the mess that is Windows sound.: ) )

So it's entirely possible that it will do bitperfect, but all I can tell you is that it sounds really good. I don't like its DAC quite as well as the one in the Squeezebox2; my absolute favorite headphone listening is the Squeezebox headphone out to the analog in on the Bithead, and then to the headphones. (using the Bithead as just an amp, and not a DAC.) I think the Bithead sounds slightly inferior when it's being a DAC. But it's not a difference I can hear with A/B; I have to be listening quietly for a number of minutes before I'll pick out that the Squeezebox is a little smoother. The adjectives I use are 'liquid' and 'floaty', but whether that has any meaning to anyone but me, I don't know.

Short form: it sounds great. It's much better than most Windows sources. But I don't know if it's bitperfect.

Quick question, how is 3d sound in Vista? I do love 5.1 sound in games and I cannot seem to get a simple answer on how it performs on Vista. Does it even work? If not now will it ever?