# recommended "better" PCI sound card



## G4 (Dec 28, 2012)

Hi,

The sound card that comes with the mobo is kind of crap.

Can anyone recommend a PCI one that's decent, has FreeBSD drivers, and optionally supports high-ohm headphones? I see that the Xonars (based on CMI 8786) are not supported...

Thanks.


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## caesius (Jul 29, 2013)

Necro-bump.

Has anyone had any luck making the CMI 8786 chips work?


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## caesius (Oct 9, 2013)

There doesn't seem to be much info on this chipset.

OSS recognises it, but doesn't work. I understand that the Linux driver is seperate from the other CMedia drivers. Could this indicate it would be a much bigger job than just changing the current snd_cmi driver we have?


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## mav@ (Oct 13, 2013)

Probably the best of available now options is to pass digital stream from HDA CODEC to external receiver via SPDIF or HDMI. First works well with most of modern motherboards, second works at least with NVIDIA video cards. I am personally using these setups (previously used SPDIF, now -- HDMI). Works perfect for me.


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## freesbies (Oct 13, 2013)

The best sound card possible at an affordable price is M-Audio 24/96 (if you want one of the best sound cards for recording or listening to music at the best sound quality, then buy a M-Audio Audiophile 192). 
You can buy one of these cheaply on Ebay.
These sound cards are well supported by FreeBSD, they use snd_envy24(4) and snd_envy24ht(4) drivers to provide an astonishing sound quality for your ears.


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