Integrated audio or Sound Card?

S

solaris54

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 14, 2007
Messages
2,216
Just wondering when putting a new system together if integrated audio works well or it is better to get a sound card?
In the past I have always bought computers with sound cards but now with space and pci slots not available if I will notice a difference in the sound going integrated.
 
My personal opinion is that onboard is perfectly fine for everything besides gaming really. If you want things like EAX, you have to go w/ a creative (or creative chipset based) card. But if you're happy without some of the special audio effects in games, then onboard is perfectly passable. Takes some CPU, but on today's dual/quad core machines, its not really a major hit.
 
I always use a sound card. some integrated sounds nice enough, some sounds like absolute crap. nicer mobos usually have cleaner sound
 
I would just get a cheap sound card like a DDlive card or so just to get offf the onboard.I used onboard in the pass so thats why i cant recomand any one using it for any thing.

but if your happy with the sound qualty your onboard gives you then stick with it. But There better options out there if you want better sound qualty or if you want eax3-5.
 
Right now I'm using my onboard which is the realtek HD audio. I'm using the optical out on it and it sounds good.

Now I'm sure if I got a sound card that boasts sound quality I'm sure it would sound even better.

But to minimize cludder in my case, I chose the onboard.

So my advice to you would be, go with the onboard, try it out and see how you like it, if it turns out that you don't like it, go with a sound card.
 
AdmiralFlameberg said:
but if your happy with the sound qualty your onboard gives you then stick with it.
Click to expand...
Bingo. If you're satisfied, you're satisfied.

nas82 said:
I'm using the optical out on it and it sounds good. Now I'm sure if I got a sound card that boasts sound quality I'm sure it would sound even better.
Click to expand...
The beauty of digital interlinks is that there's (realistically) no signal degradation. For all intents and purposes, your on-board's digital out sounds as good as an X-Meridian's digital out. As far as sound quality is concerned, there are no real differences. What impacts the signal, in your case, is what you're feeding that digital signal into.

That being said, a highly accurate clocking source will affect the digital signal, as will the interconnect (as will any active clocking correction/jitter suppression, if applicable), but not in any audible way on any low-end or midrange setup, and probably not on many high-end systems (talking $20k+) either.
 
Yeah, it's pumped into a Dolby digital receiver. Very clear, and I am coming from an audigy 2 zs and a cheaper set of 5.1 analog speakers.

I'm blown away at the clarity of digital.
 
Basically in your case...the integrated is just a transport

to the OP...i really like my soundcard...so if you have the money id spring for one
im a maybe sorta kinda audiophile...so take that into concideration
 
I have always had a separate sound card and video card on all my computers. ALway very careful not to get the integrated sound or video. The problem now is space since SLI takes up 2 slots. I do use my computer for music and gaming. I like good quality music. Even hook my turntable up to the computer every so often.
Im probably going to have to get a sound card.
 
Always used to get sound cards as well. But I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the on-board sound. I use an optical cable and music sounds fairly decent. Mind you, I was somewhat forced into this position due to the Vista-64 issues with Creative. Even though this is no longer an issue, I've become used to on-board sound. I will only upgrade when something clearly better for both games and music, like the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude, comes out.
 
I generally shy away from integrated sound not only because of sound quality but because of sound oddities. I was having system troubles at one point and stopped using my X-Fi because I thought it was the problem (ended up not being) and used the mobo sound instead. It was... problematic. For probably 90-95% of things, I got no surround sound. Things that had worked with surround before just didn't anymore. I'd verified that it was setup properly via their utility and the fact that some stuff worked, but most only saw it as 2 channel. The stuff that did work had problems. Far Cry freaked out sometimes and the sound would get distorted and such.

Now if you are using Vista, this is much less of an issue as everything is handled by Vista itself so there's not such a difference in support (unless you use ALchemy).

Basically, I'd say it depends on what you are doing, and what you care about. If you are playing a lot of games and such, especially in XP, I'd really consider a soundcard as it is likely to work better with things like surround and effects.

If you don't do gaming then it is more or less up to sound quality. If you've got computer speakers, internal is probably fine. It's not like internal sound chips are crap or anything, they just aren't great. Well computer speakers aren't high end so it really isn't a problem, you aren't likely to get much benefit from higher quality sound output. If you've got some home theatre of high end gear, then maybe you want to look at a soundcard as you'll hear the difference.

Remember if you are going the music route, it is easy to get an external soundcard that runs on USB and/or Firewire. Many DACs take USB straight in and thus are a soundcard and companies like M-Audio have external audio interfaces. I wouldn't use them for games, but they'll give nice clean music output for not too many dollars and take up no space in the case.
 
I have the Logitech Z-5500 which I consider one of the best speaker systems for the computer. It might not be that great with the integrated.
 
solaris54 said:
I have the Logitech Z-5500 which I consider one of the best speaker systems for the computer. It might not be that great with the integrated.
Click to expand...

Got the Z-5500. With Vista-64 and my onboard digital sound, it's not bad. I can't say it's great as it's most likely not as good as a dedicated high-end sound card, but there is nothing wrong with it. (I don't know how good it would be with XP though)
 
The thing about digital (optical or coaxial) outputs is that they basically bypass all the analog output crap that usually goes along with onboard audio chipsets. Which isn't a bad thing, in and of itself, if you can get away with it (and if the audio chipset itself isn't a trainwreck, drivers included).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top