Sick and tired of Creative. Any Alternatives?

I'm tired of creative not releasing good drivers for Vista (32-bit, i know this is vistax64, but its the best vista forum i know of). The problem is that Creative is the only sound card manufacturer that I know of. Could someone please reccomend a different company that has good vista drivers?

I'm looking for a card/usb that had fiber optic 5.1 support on vista 32-bit.

I am running Vista 32 and have Creative Elite Pro. I called Creative and had them mail me the Vista CD. All is fine now.

I installed a Creative XFI gamer last night onto my Vista 64bit system, while i had to use the drivers downloaded from creative site it works fine, only problem is thier control panel locks up intermittantly while in EAX Game mode..

small price to pay for great sound

Ok thanks, but i'm really looking for an alternative. I got mine to work simi well on the windows xp drivers, but not on the vista drivers.

i think diamond do "ok" sound cards, ive just upgraded from the one on my mobo so anythings better for me

One of the best sound cards for reasonable money come from Terratec. Look here: Terratec

No wonder u look for alternative for CL cards. I throw my old Live to trash can and Audigy 2 ZS i still have is just lying in a bag under my bed CL software really is nothing extraordinary. It's a pity, because Audigy 2 has nice output and S/R ratio. But many todays on-board HD codecs can provide nearly the same, with exception of EAX 4 or 5...

Bluegears b-inspirer works great on Vista x64

Auzentech. I've got an X-Plosion 7.1, love the sucker. Cost me $70 months and months ago. More features than Creative, FAR CHEAPER.

NO, I did not say it supports more stupid DSP modes, I said it has more FEATURES.

For example, it will upsample any audio signal to full surround-sound WITHOUT doing iritating delay/echo/processing to the audio. Thus, Winamp stereo audio becomes full DIGITAL COAXIAL and/or DIGITAL OPTICAL 5.1 or 7.1 sound. Plays 96khz, or DTS Interactive, or Dolby Digital Live. One of the ONLY cards ever made that supports DTS-I and DDL upsampling - for example: Left plays through left front and rear, unchanged. Right plays through right front and rear, unchanged. Center is a mix of left and right, as it should be. Subwoofer works as it should. Then, without changing a single setting, one can launch a 3D game, or DVD, or AVI with AC3 audio, and surround left/right will become true surround, separate from the front channel.

This card is beauty in action, I've never had a single problem, and the driver install is a work of ART.

I can honestly say I've never used a more stable, easy-to-operate sound card in my entire life. High quality hardware, high quality documentation, no bulky memory-hog software (does have tray app, but can be disabled, and does not use much of your precious resources) - comes with an optical cable and everything. I'd recommend this card, 10/10. I can't believe I EVER bought a Creative card. $350 for a SOUND CARD? You've GOT to be kidding.

Have a look at the ASUS Sonar DX2 sound card. I'll be replacing my X-Fi Platinum with one of them soon.

I hear turtle beach is still making sound cards too...

I've only had it a few days now, but my Ht-Omega Claro seems to be working fine. It has nice features in the driver allowing you to do things like mix up 2-ch sources to 5.1 or 7.1. The 64-bit driver seems good so far. I would expect it to do okay with games, but it seems like it is more of a multimedia sound card, supporting dts and dolby.

Hey Just thought Id throw this in aby one know of any econonomy el cheapo cards that have x64 drivers that are working with vistax64. For the people that dont want to go out and spend very much to get rid of the "eeek" onboard sound

The older el-cheapo cards probably have generic drivers that Vista would have built in, since they would just use a reference chip.