Upgrading to Skylake...has onboard sound improved or stick with my SB Z?

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jnick

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As the title suggests, this weekend I will be upgrading my Sandy Bridge setup to a Skylake build. With that said, I picked up the MSI Gaming M5 board. (Z170A GAMING M5 | MSI USA | Motherboard - The world leader in motherboard design)

About half way down, you will notice they are bragging about "Audio Boost" and a bunch of other sound related "gems". I use my PC for everyday music listening and, primarily, gaming.

Do I just stick with my Sound Blaster Z or do I use the Onboard audio? I'm out of the loop when it comes to PC sound today...they last time I inquired was 5+ years ago!

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks!
 
I have a Gigabyte motherboard and my Z is sitting in a drawer right now.
 
The main issue with on-board codecs is sound mixing with a large number of sound channels.
In my experience, SB cards were okay handing things like WoW raid with 40 people or BF3-4 matches with 64 players. On-board and software codecs were cutting out and/or skipping sound frames under heavy load.
On the other hand SB drivers quality used to vary from shitty to barely acceptable.

Since then I've switched to an HDMI receiver and can't be happier.
 
The only reason I have a sound card is because my $40 motherboard doesn't have optical and an old dac sounded like crap on PC power so I set my sound up for galvanic isolation.
 
SB Z will sound better for games. About the same for music. If you want to upgrade, go with the HDMI out from the gpu into a receiver. That or an external dac will give you the lowest noise floor and best sound.
 
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If you have a stereo setup you may want to consider a USB DAC? I switched to an ODAC and promptly uninstalled my X-Fi Titanium. Sounds great (yes, I realize how silly that sounds when describing a DAC), no extra drivers to install and it doesn't use up a PCI-E slot.
 
King of Heroes said:
If you have a stereo setup you may want to consider a USB DAC? I switched to an ODAC and promptly uninstalled my X-Fi Titanium. Sounds great (yes, I realize how silly that sounds when describing a DAC), no extra drivers to install and it doesn't use up a PCI-E slot.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, this sounds interesting. How does this work? I'm using a set of logitech speakers with a sub and a volume control knob "thingy". I'd assume I would need something like the FiiO DAC and pick up stereo speakers? What about a sub? Or do I have to forfeit that and rely on the speakers to provide enough bass?
 
jnick said:
I'm using a set of logitech speakers with a sub and a volume control knob "thingy"
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to be overly derogatory with this statement, because if you feel that they are good enough for what you use them for, then that is the only thing matters... but those speakers are pieces of shit. There would be little if any purpose to upgrading your DAC at this point, unless you also have a pair of quality headphones and use them a lot also.

If it were me, I'd build off your current system by purchasing a receiver and stereo speakers. You can keep your Logitech speakers hooked to the analog outputs on your soundcard, and have the digital output going to your receiver. Use whichever you feel sounds better for a particular situation. Eventually you could power an entire 7.1 setup from the receiver, at which point you could retire your Logitech speakers. If you decide to go with an external DAC, there is no reason to go with USB. USB just gives you what is basically a cheap USB soundcard sitting in front of the actual DAC. Instead, you can just run a traditional digital output from your soundcard to an external DAC, and get all the benefits of the DAC while retaining all the features of your existing soundcard.
 
Eh. I think that if you run optical out, it negates the sound card. Just turns it into a pass through.

The SBX Pro Studio does have some good benefits for gaming. Just in analogue.

So either use the SB Z with some decent headphones or speakers or toss it and go digital via usb or hdmi. I think the motherboard optical would be ok too but I would prefer usb or hdmi.

HDMI is probably the best bc it is uncompressed aka the fattest pipe.

To the OP.

First, try something like a pair of Samson SR-850 headphones with velour pads in conjunction with your SBZ utilizing the SBX headphone surround. That is the easiest and cheapest way to get good sound. If that is not enough, look into adding a pair of decent speakers with a small amp or receiver and a sub. Big difference in price though. Most people are fine with just the headphones.
 
spaceman said:
Eh. I think that if you run optical out, it negates the sound card. Just turns it into a pass through.
Click to expand...
spaceman said:
So either use the SB Z with some decent headphones or speakers or toss it and go digital via usb or hdmi. I think the motherboard optical would be ok too but I would prefer usb or hdmi.
Click to expand...

You realize that a sound card is more than just a DAC right? Using digital (optical or coax) from your sound card to an external DAC doesn't "negate" anything other than the DAC on the soundcard. In your post even you mention valuable features such as SBX surround. Why would he not want to continue having those features at his disposal if he has a choice?
 
I think the optical does not include the SBX effects. Just look into it. I am going on memory here but am fairly certain it is just pass through.

Now, movies and music will sound better with an external dac.

The only thing I find with SBX is that directional sound in games is better.
 
spaceman said:
I think the optical does not include the SBX effects.
Click to expand...

There is absolutely nothing about using digital output that prevents SBX Pro Studio (SBX Surround) from working. The purpose of the technology is to give you a better experience when the source content does not match the output configuration. If you are listening to a movie or playing a game with 7.1 sound but using stereo speakers or headphones, it will downmix the 7.1 source down to stereo and in most cases give you a better surround experience than you would have had otherwise. This works great even when using digital output. There is no difference between stereo analog output and stereo digital output as far as SBX Pro Studio (or any other sound card feature) is concerned.
 
The headphone surround only works via the headphone analogue out put. Speakers may well be a different story. I found the thread in Head-Fi from a few years back. I used to have a receiver with optical inputs. Now I do not. So I can't retest this. However, I recall testing to see and for headphones the SBX surround only worked via the headphone out from the SBZ. I run a mini rca into an external amp to power my headphones atm.

Not trying to piss you off. Just try it out yourself if you can.

Creative Sound Blaster new series Z, Zx & ZxR - Page 143
 
jnick said:
Hmmm, this sounds interesting. How does this work? I'm using a set of logitech speakers with a sub and a volume control knob "thingy". I'd assume I would need something like the FiiO DAC and pick up stereo speakers? What about a sub? Or do I have to forfeit that and rely on the speakers to provide enough bass?
Click to expand...

If you wanted to get rid of the Logitechs, then yes you would pick up stereo speakers (though you could keep using them if you wanted, you'd just be fed by the DAC instead of your soundcard). You could go with active speakers (e.g. M-Audio AV40s) that have an amp built-in and directly receive the line-level signal the DAC produces, or you could go with passive speakers that rely on an external amp (e.g. Pioneer SP-BS22-LRs). In either case you can attach a subwoofer (which can also be passive or active). Zeos, a Youtube audio equipment reviewer, has some nice recommendation lists on Reddit you can look at for ideas:

[>GUIDE<] - DAC's & Headphone Amplifiers • /r/Zeos <-- Specifically the standalone DAC list
[>Guide<] - Desktop 2.0 Speaker Systems • /r/Zeos <-- Passive speakers and amps
[>GUIDE<] - SUBWOOFERS • /r/Zeos
|[GUIDE]| - Powered Studio Monitors • /r/Zeos
 
Thanks for the links. A ton of information to be read lol. Oddly enough, I'm big into HT, and I have no idea why, but computer audio confuses the hell out of me!

If I was to go with something like the AV40's, how could I hook up a smaller subwoofer to it? Would that be through the DAC? Also, to confirm again, the AV40's with a DAC and small sub would be way better than a Sound Blaster Z and the Logitech speakers?

Thanks!
 
jnick said:
If I was to go with something like the AV40's, how could I hook up a smaller subwoofer to it? Would that be through the DAC? Also, to confirm again, the AV40's with a DAC and small sub would be way better than a Sound Blaster Z and the Logitech speakers?
Click to expand...

You could hook up a subwoofer to the AV40's by using the high-level inputs on the subwoofer, and running the speaker wire output from the left speaker output, to the sub, then to the right speaker input. You could also do it using the low-level inputs on the sub, but that would be before the volume control on the speakers, so you would have to adjust the volume on the sub independently. The high-level inputs would let the volume control on the AV40's control the sub also.

The AV40's would almost certainly sound better than your logitech speakers. There is no need to ditch the Sound Blaster Z though, even if you decided to use an external DAC. Just run the digital output from the Sound Blaster Z to the digital input on the external DAC, and take advantage of the best of both (features of the Z, analog quality of the DAC).
 
Thanks for the info! Which would be better, the AV42 or the Audioengine A2+? I would eventually pair it with a low end sub. I'm just used to having a sub while gaming so something small, I'm not looking to take the house down. I have my Rythmik for that in the HT room :p
 
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