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Onboard vs discrete

S

Snowpea

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 6, 2011
Messages
357
Using Logitech Z-2300s, will i even benefit from buying a discrete sound card? I feel like nowadays onboard is just as good as any and i won't be able to tell the difference.
 
Do you currently have any issues like hum, buzz or random noises, especially at louder volumes?
 
I'm using the same speakers and installed a xonar DG last night, which of course meant testing out lots of different things. It helps that my wife has the same speakers and is still on the realtek chip.

At normal listening levels, I didn't notice much difference at all in regards to the speakers. I have more options to tweak the EQ to get the sound more to my liking rather than the standard flat sound. Past that, not much difference.

With the Corsair HS1A's, however, it's a completely different opinion (which is given since that is why I bought the card in the first place). These headphones just didn't have any punch until I hooked up the card and tweaked a little in the headphone setup. Now they sound incredible (at least to me, and I'm not an audiophile by any stretch), so much better than the onboard.
 
Jeremy C said:
I'm using the same speakers and installed a xonar DG last night, which of course meant testing out lots of different things. It helps that my wife has the same speakers and is still on the realtek chip.

At normal listening levels, I didn't notice much difference at all in regards to the speakers. I have more options to tweak the EQ to get the sound more to my liking rather than the standard flat sound. Past that, not much difference.

With the Corsair HS1A's, however, it's a completely different opinion (which is given since that is why I bought the card in the first place). These headphones just didn't have any punch until I hooked up the card and tweaked a little in the headphone setup. Now they sound incredible (at least to me, and I'm not an audiophile by any stretch), so much better than the onboard.
Click to expand...

This difference is very likely due to very different headphone amp analog sections, OP will (or should) be using line-out (not amplified at all) - so it shouldn't even make difference you've experienced.
 
With speakers of that quality you will not notice a difference, save up for better speakers.
 
whats your motherboard?

my buddy was running an asus p5e's onboard into his logitech 5.1 and it sounded meh. He grabbed a cheap soundcard and hooked up the optical out and it was a night and day difference for the better.
 
thesecond said:
my buddy was running an asus p5e's onboard into his logitech 5.1 and it sounded meh. He grabbed a cheap soundcard and hooked up the optical out and it was a night and day difference for the better.
Click to expand...
The optical output just uses the DAC build into the speakers, so he could have just used the optical output from the onboard audio and achieved the same results.
 
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