PS2 is one of those games that successfully makes me wonder about upgrading hardware. I have a Realtek integrated audio on my motherboard and am interested in getting higher fidelity not just for gaming but also audio mp3 and blu ray playback. Not interested in hooking up my stereo as it's far away. I am no audiophile but I do want better fidelity. Plus, my wife says the sounds from PS2 are driving her bonkers. I love machine gun fire and explosions, she, well, not so much. So if someone wouldn't mind recommending for me a soundcard and a headset, I'd be grateful. This is one area of hardware I don't know much about but I do know it's a good idea to pair a good board with a good headset. Price is an object, and I'd like to keep it at or around $150 if that's possible. I was looking at the Asus XONAR DX card. $80 or so. thanks!
If it helps, we use a combination of Auzentech and HT Omega cards in our PCs here at SOE. Both have the ability to send a Dolby / DTS Live-encoded signal to an AV receiver, or run straight analog outputs similar to the ASUS you're looking at. Our audio programmer uses the HDMI output of his Nvidia video card, sending a straight, un-encoded 5.1 PCM signal to his AV receiver.
I have a Xonar DX card. Very good sound quailty. You can also hook it up to any AV receiver with the connection that comes with the card. Well worth the money.
For headphones I use an optical-out line on my Astro A40s - http://www.astrogaming.com/a40 However, it looks like they upped the cost to $260 since when I bought them. I was patient enough to wait until PAX East last year and bought them for 20% off the old $250 price tag. The circumaural design makes it comfortable since it sits right on my skull. I can use them for 2-4 hours at a time without feeling uncomfortable. I don't regret the decision since they'll likely last me several more years. There's also the Astro A30 headsets - http://www.astrogaming.com/a30 They go for $200-$210. I used them very briefly when testing them out, but they seemed just as comfortable. They don't mute out background sounds as much since they only sit on the ears. Speaking of which... any chance SOE will will release some Planetside 2 tags for them? That'd be totally sweet. I'd love to get the NC emblem on them.
I have a nice realtek integrated SC and a surround sound headset. It is awesome in PS2. Works as it should. Perhaps your issue is: A. Lack of a surround sound headset. B. Budget integrated SC. In the past, I had an ASUS Nvidia chipset motherboard and a SBLive! SC. Supposedly, these had a terrible conflict and many games had crazy interruptions / lag with that combo.
My headset is horrible, a cheap Plantronics pair. But I've seen people talk on both sides of the argument, integrated sound is fine, discrete is better. When I kept reading over and over how much people liked their Asus XONAR DX discrete boards, I got to thinking I should pick one up and that makes getting some decent cans a necessity, otherwise, why get the board in the first place. Getting good headsets seems to be a problem, vs the card. So many expensive sets that break, have a poor mic, aren't comfortable for over an hour's worth of gaming, etc. This is where my main snag is. And I don't want to spend $200+ on them.
