Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo

[timwhit]

I just ordered this card because I want a card that has an optical out on it. Does anyone know if this card has problems with Via chipsets? I had to pull my SB Live! because my machine kept crashing when playing sounds.

I probably should ask these types of questions before I go and order things at 2 in the morning.

I found that there really aren't many sounds cards out there that have an optical out, does no one use this?

 

[The JoJo]

I use an optional Optical I/O card for my SBLive to get optical out. This is for movies. I had to get the card because my amplifier did *not* have SPDIF .

I use it to get the digital sound from the dvd movies to my home theater.

As I have understood it, that card is ok. Should be quite good drivers available also.

 

[Mercutio]

You can buy a Hoontech addin board that uses an IDE cable to connect SPDIF In/Out (coax and optical) to your existing soundblaster. They work marvelously. I think mine cost about $10 shipped.

The C-media 5.1 cards are a pretty good deal and seem to work pretty well, but I've never hooked one up through TOSLink, either.

 

[Clocker]

I just ordered this card because I want a card that has an optical out on it. Does anyone know if this card has problems with Via chipsets? I had to pull my SB Live! because my machine kept crashing when playing sounds.

I probably should ask these types of questions before I go and order things at 2 in the morning.

I found that there really aren't many sounds cards out there that have an optical out, does no one use this?

I have that card and have had no problems with either my KT266A or my AMD 760MPX boards.

C

 

[timwhit]

It's good to know that it has good drivers and works with Via chipsets. I was using a coax out on my SB Live! and it was working but it kept locking up so I pulled the Live! and hasn't locked up since.

I only paid $31 shipped for this card, so it's not too big of investment...

 

[NRG = mc²]

I had that card for a short while... was OK, but hissed a lot. worked fine with the KT133A board I was using at the time.

 

[Mercutio]

What do you expect when the generic version of the card costs $6???

There wasn't hissing over SPDIF, was there?

timwhit, are you sure that your lockups were coming from just having coax out in use on your live?

 

[NRG = mc²]

I wasnt expecting much, just letting timwhit know. Never used the coax so I wouldnt know.

 

[timwhit]

timwhit, are you sure that your lockups were coming from just having coax out in use on your live?

I'm not saying that the lockups came from using coax out. I am saying that they were coming from the live in general.

And I won't be using Coax anymore, I will be using optical SPDIF.

I'll let you know if there is any hissing when I have it hooked up through SPDIF. But, there better not be any, there isn't a reason that the sound should even pass through a D/A converter in the first place. Which would mean that the first time the sound is converted to analog is when it goes into my crappy Sony receiver, which has a better D/A converter than any internal sound card I know of.

 

[timwhit]

Got the card today, for some reason the driver disk didn't come with the Win2k drivers on it. So I had to download the drivers. The card was picked up fine by windows but the optical out would not work without the Guillemot drivers. The optical out does quite good, I don't know if I can tell the difference between the coax on the Live or not. Either way it sounds better than an analog out.