Recommend a PCI or PCI-E sound card with SPDIF ?

[CanadianEh]

Good evening,

I recently built a new client PC using an Asus A8N5X motherboard with on-board sound. I'm slowly going out of my mind as the on-board Realtek '97 volume out jack emits an annoying hum constantly. I've read up on this issue with some similar motherboards and have disconnected the PC speaker, muted unnecessary ports in Windows, installed the latest drivers, and also tested unplugging non-critical fans and the audio connection to the DVD drive. It's still there

My goal is to be able to use both standard analog output along with SPDIF output from SageTV. Can anyone recommend a good sound card that has a SPDIF-out port?

.. oh ya, and one that doesn't hum non-stop through the analog port

EDIT: Just to add... I believe I need a card that has a fiber output, which is what my receiver is expecting. I do have an older Audigy 2 in the old box that I could swap over - but it does not have a fiber jack.

[phenixdragon]

It really won't matter the brand of card you use if it has digital out. Digital is digital. Check out NewEgg for their cheapest card with SPDIF, it will do what you are looking for. I paid something like $15 for a card awhile back.

[Razillian]

Turtle Beach Montego. I've had one in my Sage box for about a year now and couldn't be happier with it. Of course all I am using is the fiber SPDIF out on it, but it will do 7.1 through the actual analog ports. If you only need 5.1, you can get the Turtle Beach Rivieria for about 20 bucks.

[GbrNole]

depends on what you need. a usually not recommended card that i find great to use with sage tv specifically when you use digital out is the creative soundblaster audigy line.

the reason why i really like these is that they give you decent sound quality from the digi output but what's really nice is they open up the volume control for use in sagetv when using spdif.

[jmiddleton]

Creative Labs makes a digital I/O module for the Audigy 2 Value that has both Toslink (optical) and Coax connections. http://www.soundblaster.com/products...6&product=1780
If your card is one of the models that can use this module, you can purchase in Canada from NCIX.com or VibeComputers.com

Module plugs into the SPDIF jack.

[CanadianEh]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I briefly looked into the Audigy add-on module but was unable to find an actual part (I'm actually not in Canada.. lol). I've ordered a Turtle Beach Montego from Amazon.com (Newegg is out of stock)... hopefully I'll have it mid-week and will be rid of the constant humming. I figured by now that on-board sound would be perfected - apparently not.

Thanks guys for all of the suggestions!!!