Why Sound Cards Today?

T

Tony Rotten

Weaksauce
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Apr 23, 2008
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I know this question can be old but I would like to know why would I want to buy a sound card today, if I am buying a state of the art MB.

I know that in times past (decades?) the sound card was an integral part of any PC bought by an audiophile like me.

But now? What is the justification for buying a sound card with your modern MB PC?

TIA
 
audiophiles don't use soundcards, they use dacs + amps

I bought an essence stx to amp my headphones though, sounds good and its all built in :cool:
 
Yours may be complete crap as mine is, and have no equalizer.
Generally, on board doesn't support more than 2.0 via digital connector.
You don't get EAX.
You don't get any (good) volume leveling.
I don't know, but I bet a proper card will have considerably lower THD and higher SNR.
You don't get fun stuff, like a crystalizer.
 
Thanks Icor:

An audiophile like me wants the best frequency response with ZERO distortion, ideally.

The best frequency response is flat, as in an oscilloscope (or equivalent; when was the last time you saw an oscilloscope sitting in a concert hall listening to the The Ninth of Beethoven?) records in a musical event.

BTW:
THD = Total Harmonic Distortion
SNR = Signal to Noise ratio.
 
So obviously the answer to my question is don't buy a sound card for my new, state of the art, PC :)

Thanks.

---
Tony Rotten
 
Which you won't. DACs are a finished tech. Differences are in your head for the most part. Sometimes drivers get messed up, or something in the machine gets hit, and you need a replacement, but unless you want an amp or effects, there's no reason to get one.
 
I couldn't notice any different when using the mobo or soundcard out to the amp
 
I got a Xonar ST and it was a big step up over my on board. I bought it for the headphone amp, though I dont use it anyway. You'd have to be crazy to not hear the difference. I'm no audiophile, I can't tell the difference between a decent MP3 rip and a FLAC, but as soon as I plugged my headphones into it everything sounded so much clearer and the bass was better defined. Probably wasn't worth the money though, if I were buying another PC I'd probably go for something other than a high end sound card.

You also have other problems that sound cards can fix, like on my friend's PC (P5E mobo) the onboard had a constant background fuzzy distortion.
 
if you have quality headphones or speakers it will definitely make a difference
there are many features that dedicated cards have over integrated
 
This guy claims to be an "audiophile" but wants to skip a soundcard/DAC? Im not an audiophile and I would NEVER EVER connect my studio monitors to my onboard sound. Once you move past Logitech speakers, you need to start upgrade that onboard sound, as "good enough" as it is.
 
Audigy 2 ZS with Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's.. why? because onboard sounds like shit, period.. Can you tell? No? Then stick with onboard sound. It works better for you! :)

It sucks, I know; I know many people who wear glasses, or are blind, can't focus correctly, have no depth perception, can't tell the difference between SD and HD, and they can't see the difference between mpeg2 and h264 encoding. To them, I say "You're absolutely right, your hometheater is awesome, and I'm glad you like it!".

Unfortunately, the only way to tell if you're 'gifted' in one sense or another is to gamble in such endeavors. "Will I really see much of a difference? We'll, lets see... no? damn.. that sucks... Yes? FUCK YEAH!, NEVER TURNING BACK!"...

It's up to you, "dude". :rolleyes:

* I don't care if you wear glasses, that wasn't the point of my post... it was to get the point across...
 
Tony Rotten said:
I know this question can be old but I would like to know why would I want to buy a sound card today, if I am buying a state of the art MB.

I know that in times past (decades?) the sound card was an integral part of any PC bought by an audiophile like me.

But now? What is the justification for buying a sound card with your modern MB PC?

TIA
Click to expand...

Depends on what you are using in terms of equipment. Mobo soundcards are very cheap. They don't provide a whole lot of advanced functionality and their analogue output stage features economy components. Nothing wrong with that for many uses, but someitmes you need more.

For example at work I had to get a soundcard for two reasons:

1) The mobo soundcard has an audible hiss in my headphones. This is something you often see. They have cheap opamps that don't do so well under the heavy current load some headphones place on them, so you can hear hiss.

2) I use apps like Sony Vegas that use ASIO and the included soundcard doesn't support that. ASIO4ALL worked, but the card had various problems (dropouts, glitches) when using it. I needed something that didn't have trouble.

Also if you play some games, EAX/hardware OpenAL may be a concern. This is getting far less common, but still exists. In that case you need a soundcard that supports it.

Thus it really depends on your audio setup. If you've cheap computer speakers, then the included sound is likely fine. If you've got a better system, maybe something better is called for.

Also largely depends on if you are doing analogue or digital out and what you need in terms of format for that. If you are doing analogue, then the soundcard matters since its DACs will affect sound quality. If it is all digital then it only matters that it can do the encoding or output you need (like HDMI or DTS over S/PDIF) and the features you want.

Personally at home I do HDMI output but I do use a soundcard for two reasons:

1) The videocard had some trouble with HDMI audio. It seemes to shut off the stream if audio doesn't play for a bit. That means when it starts back up, there is a delay as things sync up and you miss stuff. No problems with my soundcard.

2) I'm a big gamer and wanted an X-Fi for hardware OpenAL/EAX and some games (like Mass Effect) need it for 5.1 sound.

If I built a system that did digital out, and I wasn't using any pro audio apps on it, I'd have no reservations at all about using onboard sound. However I'd want a sound card for most analogue situations since I find onboard sound a bit lacking. Not awful, just not as good as I'd like.
 
Sycraft has said it there. I got a new soundcard because i wanted to listen to deeper trance. Probably sound isolating and stuff like that.
wink.gif
 
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