Should You Buy a Sound Card?

I added a sound card, HT Omega Striker, because my mainboard only has 2.0 audio. I wanted 5.1 capability via DDL/DTS to my receiver. If my mainboard had DDL/DTS, I would've just run an optical cable from it to my receiver.
 
Is a sound-card worth it? Depends surely?

If you just want stereo and your on-board has optical/coax out then probably not. Maybe you'd be better served by a decent DAC/Amp.

But what if you want some additional DSP (virtual surround etc.)?
 
As long as you pair it with an accordingly high end headphones, to me it was an out of this world experience. Its like any hi-fi, the bottom line is the good stuff can generate frequencies the cheap stuff just literally doesn't re-create and it'll do so with less distortion across the entire range. High end audio is fantastic.
 
I think I'm pretty much done with soundcards. They've pretty much always been a hassle, from the early days of SB16 when you have to play with IRQ to recently with my X-Fi which was honestly super annoying with it's shared digital out/Mic in, bloated software and all that crap.
Going forward I think I'm totally fine plugging my Logitech G51 directly into the MB in 2.1 and enjoying my average sound.
If I need Hi-Fi I'll just go into the home theater where I have Denon AVR and Paradigm speakers.
 
Drakul said:
I think I'm pretty much done with soundcards. They've pretty much always been a hassle, from the early days of SB16 when you have to play with IRQ to recently with my X-Fi which was honestly super annoying with it's shared digital out/Mic in, bloated software and all that crap.
Going forward I think I'm totally fine plugging my Logitech G51 directly into the MB in 2.1 and enjoying my average sound.
If I need Hi-Fi I'll just go into the home theater where I have Denon AVR and Paradigm speakers.
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What hassle? I have had almost zero issues. Of course, I just run mine in stereo but still. The Z series gives you improved game sound.

How could you stand going from Paradigm to logitech? It would drive me nuts.
 
spaceman said:
What hassle? I have had almost zero issues. Of course, I just run mine in stereo but still. The Z series gives you improved game sound.

How could you stand going from Paradigm to logitech? It would drive me nuts.
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I'm not going from one to the other really I just have Paradigms in my home cinema where I want to be enveloped in sweet sound while I watch movies (and PS3 and 360) and in the office where I care much less I'm fine with my logitech.

As for the hassle like I was mentioning the stupid shared input for the mic line in and the digital out was a pain in the ass for me a several years back and the creative softwares are annoyingly bloated.
I know it may not make sense but I don't expect the same level of fidelity from various places. On my computer I just game, watch anime and listen to mp3s encoded in all over the place bitrate, freq... and having a massive setup to listen to some 8bit NES castlevania music makes no sense to me.
Most of my actual music these days I listen to in the car anyway and honestly I find the basic radio I have in my Elantra has a better sound than the fancier one in my wife's sonata which seems to warp sound no matter how I tweak the EQ.

Make sense?
 
Well, I got from my girlfriend the SteelSeries 9H for Christmas, and have to say - since I started using them, I completely don't need my ZxR. For me, 9H and that little USB soundcard offers much better positioning audio and better effects than ZxR. At first I thought it's headphones issue, as I was using old Aurvana Live, but after I plugged the 9H headphones to ZxR, nothing really changed, it was still worse than SteelSeries soundcard.

Right now, I'm going to sell my ZxR, as for gaming and music my 9H trumps it.
 
Oh the shared out with the mic did suck. THe Z series has fixed that with separate outs now.
 
When using the headphone out on a sound-card as the feed into a headphone amp, what should the Windows volume control be set to?
 
spaceman said:
Oh the shared out with the mic did suck. THe Z series has fixed that with separate outs now.
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I would think so yeah. It's just I can't be bothered to sped the $$ on it when I could spend it on CPU or GPU.
If the sound from my MB really hurts then maybe I'll fork it down.
 
Syphon Filter said:
So that assumes at 100% the sound-card absolutely will not clip?
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I worry about the same thing, although I don't really have any justification for it. I usually leave my system volume around 80% and adjust everything else through reciever/amp. Although this current laptop has surprisingly quiet audio output, so im forced to 100%.
 
My Z arrived today, will install after work and post back with impressions.

A few questions/comments for those that are suggesting the Z needs an amp:

1) If the SB-Z drives my headphones to a sufficient volume why do I need an external amp?

2) What benefit does an amp have when the input to the amp is just the headphone out from the SB-Z?

3) If the headphone out is imperfect (i.e. not a flat response or whatever) how will an external amp resolve that? Surely it will just be amplifying the (imperfect) incoming signal.

Apologies if I am asking stupid questions, I'm just trying to understand.
 
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