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Integrated Vs Discrete Audio.

  • Thread starter Deleted member 88301
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D

Deleted member 88301

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Hi, all.

I've been relying on onboard sound for many years. True, from the 90's to about 2004 or so I used discrete sound cards. But after that integrated sounded fine to me. I never felt the need for 5.1.


Long story short: I had to buy a motherboard on eBay, the onboard audio was broken. Instead of going through the hassle of returning the board I just bought a SB Audigy FX sound card on NE.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102062

The difference is amazing. I'm only running 2.1 Logitech 323 speakers. These are way-low end speakers.

I bought the card to fix a problem. I never thought that it would rejuvenate my love for music.


Wyo
 
Ah. I thought this was going to be a discussion about integrated circuits (ICs) vs Discrete Amps :>
 
Lots of motherboards have crap audio on them, sadly. It isn't that way in all cases, they can have good sound and some do. The really high end ASUS boards tend to have quite good sound setups, for example. However a large amount of boards out there, including pretty much every Dell I've ever encountered, have a really, really cheap onboard setup. They cheap out on, well, everything in the design and that leads to audible sound problems.
 
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by the sound quality after installing the soundcard.
 
I've got built in sound on Asus z170 board and just enabling the Rock equalizer makes a huge difference.

Tweak onboard before replacing.
 
You will feel an even bigger jump by using an external amp! I can't go back to even a sound card anymore after having gone discrete external route.
 
A discrete sound card is usually better than one that's integrated on a motherboard. Integrated audio is miles better than it was ten years ago but still doesn't quite compete with a dedicated internal or external card. They have better headphone amps, SNR and usually good software for emulating 5.1 surround sound.

If you're not too picky about sound then integrated audio gets the job done.
 
The integrated sound on my new Gigabyte 990FX-Gaming motherboard has Realtek ALC1150. To be honest it doesn't sound bad at all with headphones! I really like it. But then when it comes time to blast some bass music, my cheap Monoprice DAC shines because it has more output. Also in BF1 under buggy DX12, the integrated sound will stutter and completely exit when the game bugs out. The Monoprice DAC just keeps playing.

Wonder if I can mod the Monoprice DAC? Hmm...

Oh and this looks like the Monoprice DAC that I have.
http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=11567
 
I absolutely hate onboard audio.. it is ok-ish if that is all that you have available, like in a laptop, but for desktop use, dedicated is leaps and bounds above onboard 99% of the time as long as you don't get a soundcard that is basically the same as the onboard audio - don't cheap out.

I recently went from an X-Fi Fata1ty Champion Edition to a ZxR, and the ZxR is way better in regards to output clarity as well as surround for newer games. It also has a built in headphone amp which allows me to use better headphones.

People like to bash CL stuff, but the drivers for Windows 7/8/8.1/10 have been pretty rock solid for me once they got the kinks worked out. I did have to move the ZxR to a different PCIe slot because of some weird issue with the card not being detected all the time in the slot I originally had it in. Pretty sure it had to do with something in the way the motherboard was designed.
 
Well, I didn't know what I was missing. The onboard sounded fine to me. But adding even a cheap SB Audigy FX made a huge difference. I mean, a really big difference. Big.
 
I only bought the card because the Dell Precision 3500 mobo that I got from eBay had broken sound. I'm very happy.
 
Wyodiver said:
Well, I didn't know what I was missing. The onboard sounded fine to me. But adding even a cheap SB Audigy FX made a huge difference. I mean, a really big difference. Big.
Click to expand...

Wyodiver said:
I only bought the card because the Dell Precision 3500 mobo that I got from eBay had broken sound. I'm very happy.
Click to expand...

Glad you have seen the light!

Only downside is that you will have to have a real soundcard from now on.
 
yeah a stand alone sound card can/will sound better than cheap onboard. when I t comes to analog that is. I always chose SB cards until I started using onboard optical cause...

what aboot onboard optical vs stand alone or a dac? there wouldnt really be any difference, would there? I output from my onboard optical to an onkyo amp, so changing to a better sound card really wouldn't have any benefit. or am I wrong?
 
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