Free Sound Drivers?

[urr-lord]

My old computer bit the dust ,it was an older(5-6 yrs old) AMD gaming rig with onboard sound and I think sound blaster drivers.5.1 speakers (i think turtle beach,can't find a name on them).Sounded really good while listening to youtube etc. The interface looked like a stereo equalizer and really let me tailor the sound.

I picked up a dell Optiplex gx620 refurb off of Craigslist pentium 2.8 dual ,2 gig ram w/on board sound.A nice upgrade for me.But the sound is below par from what I am used to.I think the Dell uses Sound Blaster drivers.I have updated everything but it still sucketh to a degree.

I would put the output of the new unit to about 80% of the older system and I cannot tailor the sound.Which I need as I have some hearing loss in certain frequencies due to an ear infection years ago.

One friend recommended Foobar 2000.It seems to work w/downloads not real time feeds.So that is out.

Any recommendations?

[napalm]

For internal sound cards I think the most common brand is Realtek. You'll find their drivers for free on their home page. The drivers gives you a nice equalizer that lets you customize quite a few things.
If you have a soundblaster card and the drivers aren't good enough, you could consider getting a creative X-fi card. The drivers that comes with it offers lots of customization. It might cost a bit of money though.

I just got a new computer myself about a week ago. Being a student I don't have a lot of spare money, so me and my buddy decided to try some dumpster diving for fun :P I found an old gaming rig, 4 GB ram, intel quad core and X-fi sound card, everything working perfectly. And my buddy found a 32'' LCD TV in perfect working order. Overall a pretty good day!

[urr-lord]

Whoops ,just looked again.Dell uses SoundMax.Maybe I'll go to their site and look for upgrades instead of Dell's.


A friend of mine used to go dumpster diving.It is amazing what people toss out.That comp sounds like a good score.

[urr-lord]

I downloaded the appropriate driver from the soundmax site...it still sucketh.At high volume I get distortion and crackling.

[smalltank]

make sure your motherboard is COMPATIBLE for what you want it to do..double check with the maker

[Tekka]

You're just going to have to use the drivers for the kind of audio chip used on the motherboard. On board audio chips have improved a lot over the years, but aren't going to be able to match the quality of a real sound card in most cases. If you want to go that route, you'd want to look for a recent sound card that is compatible with newer versions of windows. Apparently when Vista or 7 came along it really screwed a lot of sound card companies because they couldn't make good drivers or drivers that would work newer versions of windows or something. I've used laptops for 4 or so years so I'm kinda out of the loop about that. I have heard decent things about Creatives new Recon 3D sound card being compatible and having decent drivers.

[_JP_]

Since the sound card is built into the motherboard it would be best to use the latest drivers from Dell. If that chip set isn't good enough then consider buying a sound card. You'll need to disable the on board sound when you install it.

If you want to find out exactly what hardware your system has, then a program like Piriform Speccy can give you all the details.