Should You Buy A Sound Card?

Jovian said:
Been using onboard sound for close to 10 years now. Im no audiophile so its met or exceeded all my expectations.

Especially today with USB headsets my onboard doesnt even get used that much.
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It's funny, the term "Audiophile" gets tossed around a lot and for as long as I was in the business I never did figure it out.

That said I do know what a Hammond B-3 organ sounds like in person and I know what a Steinway Grand piano sounds like in person and I'd like my home system to reproduce that sound as close as possible to the original sound.

Maybe that qualifies, maybe not.
 
BillR said:
It's funny, the term "Audiophile" gets tossed around a lot and for as long as I was in the business I never did figure it out.

That said I do know what a Hammond B-3 organ sounds like in person and I know what a Steinway Grand piano sounds like in person and I'd like my home system to reproduce that sound as close as possible to the original sound.

Maybe that qualifies, maybe not.
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That's mostly what an audiophile is, just wants something to match what they heard IRL.

That said, most "Experts" don't even use proper gear, analog sound systems are not as "Clean" as ppl say they are.

Hell its the whole "VINYL SOUNDS BETTER!" crap you got going on right now, what ppl confuse "Clarity" and "Warmth" for is actually muffling and static.
 
Also fun fact, a brand new Stereo cassette tape actually sounds FAR better than vinyl does, only after 100+ playback sessions does the magnetic head cause enough damage to make it sound worse.
 
DukenukemX said:
Buy a sound card? No.. You should buy a DAC.
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This video wasn't especially helpful since they're just dismissing the notion that a soundcard will sound better than onboard sound. The first thing I did when I got my Xonar DX was to listen to songs I knew REALLY well (after listening to them for a few weeks on motherboard sound, 970 chipset) and for songs I knew well, the difference was fairly obvious, I'm certain I could pick it out in a blind test as there were subtle details in the songs that simply weren't present before, at any volume. Now it wasn't an "oh my god every single sound is so much better" difference, but it was too obvious and quantifiable for me to be able to consider it as placebo. The fact that they dismiss this as impossibility makes it difficult to accept everything they're saying. That said, driver problems ARE rather notorious with many soundcards.
 
BillR said:
It's funny, the term "Audiophile" gets tossed around a lot and for as long as I was in the business I never did figure it out.

That said I do know what a Hammond B-3 organ sounds like in person and I know what a Steinway Grand piano sounds like in person and I'd like my home system to reproduce that sound as close as possible to the original sound.

Maybe that qualifies, maybe not.
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But a lot of people do not, me included. I'm not a big audio person myself. I bought a pair of M50x headphones and can't tell the difference with them than I can my $40 Klipsch S4i in ear earphones. That's not to say there isn't a difference, but I've never been taught the difference, so I guess ignorance is bliss, as is said sometimes.

Frankly, I'm glad I don't know the difference and think I need to spend tons of money on audio equipment. As long as it doesn't sounds like it's in a can, or box, and it's not obvious popping/static I'm usually just fine. In my apparent state of ignorance, music tends to sounds like music to me /shrug
 
I have no regrets investing in the Creative ZxR sound card. It provides the virtual surround effect I need for gaming, and it comes with decent DAC and headphone amp hardware.

As for FLAC vs mp3, I'm not concern about it as with today's HDD capacity, we can easily store 1000 albums in FLAC format anyway if we have that many. Might as well go with lossless format.
 
Audiophile just means they love audio. Nothing more.

As for the vinyl sound better argument. It's just a medium. The reason people like them is cause they are mastered better ( usually ). But put a lossless audio format next to a vinyl from the same master. Well sorry lossless digital audio will win everytime.
 
ShamisOMally said:
Also fun fact, a brand new Stereo cassette tape actually sounds FAR better than vinyl does, only after 100+ playback sessions does the magnetic head cause enough damage to make it sound worse.
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You may be right.... but I've never heard a cassette that has exhibited ANYTHING actually close to this. They have all sounded like trash. When CD's came out the quality was so far superior it wasn't even comparable.
 
1kw isn't very hard to do if you spend a lot of money and have a large/heavy 15" subwoofer, especially if you're just talking peak watts.
 
Just ordered three Aureal Vortex 2 cards to build my retro gamming systems. Will also be buying dreamaster wave table addon to give me better midi sound than any roland device


This article is pure disgusting
 
QwertyJuan said:
You may be right.... but I've never heard a cassette that has exhibited ANYTHING actually close to this. They have all sounded like trash. When CD's came out the quality was so far superior it wasn't even comparable.
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I agree, CD's have always been superior.

What ppl confuse "Warmth" and "Clarity" for is actually muffling and static.
 
kzaske said:
In my experience, sound cards (creative cards specifically) have such bad drivers and so many compatibility issues that I can not advise anyone to buy a sound card unless their on-board sound sub-system fails (rare but it happens).
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In all the years I have had Creative cards.... all the way back to the Sound Blaster Pro, I have really only had one instance of real issues, and that wasn't even driver related, and that was fixed by switching to a different slot that wasn't using the same IRQ.

As for driver issues, the X-Fi Windows 8/8.1 drivers had the issue of not saving settings properly. Now that the official Windows 10 drivers are out, everything just works as it should.

But as for compatibility with games and whatnot.. never had a single issue.
 
QwertyJuan said:
OMG, I remember buying my first sound card in 1992... I saved up for MONTHS and bought it at Radio Shack for $120. $120 in 1992 was a LOT of money.

ct1350b_a.jpg


I remember all those old Sierra games coming to life... I remember loading up Robin Hood for the first time - going from a PC speaker to the SB2... when that Sierra logo popped up on the screen and that little Sierra "ditty" played, it is what I would call nothing short of an EARgasm! :D

For those who never experienced this, I feel bad for them. It's something that if I live to be 90 I will never forget. It was a life altering experience. No lie. :)
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Those were the days. My first card was an Adlib knockoff. Wow.. the music.. but the sound still sucked.

So then I had a Sound Blaster Pro that I got used for cheap.
Then I moved to an Opti 930 card that had a 4MB wavetable built in. I still have that card.

Next card I upgraded to was a Sound Blaster PCI 64 because my new board didn't have any ISA slots. That was the same card that I used to hack together the PCI 64 and PCI 128 driver packs together and then posted about it on the Creative forums.

The only difference between the two cards was an ID chip that let the PCI 128 drivers work.

A couple months later, Creative released updated drivers for the PCI 64 that turned it into a PCI 128. :D

Then after that, I have a Sound Blaster Live!, then an Audigy, and then an X-Fi Extreme Gamer.

When I went to a board that didn't have PCI slots, I moved up to an X-Fi Titanium Fatality Champion Edition.

Somewhere in there I had a card made by Philips... still have it, but the drivers were horrendous and they basically abandoned the card before ever fixing the last few major bugs.

But the first couple were the major game changers.

PC speaker to Adlib, to full on sound card was just.. mind blown moments. I was soooo happy to have a sound card rocking away in my 386sx-25 computer.
 
I play console games late at night while watching netflix or whatever at the same time. the only way I could get both sound signals into a headset was to feed console analog into the onboard Line In port. Sounded ok on my Corsair headset but completely awful when I got a Beyerdnamic headphones. I bought a used Recon3D on ebay for the following reasons:

• Better software for virtual surround, and a software switch for speaker/headphone
• Optical input for connecting game console

I know those two bullet points don't answer "does sound card sound better" (I believe yes) but for the features alone it was worth it to me.
 
I remember getting into gaming and always strived to get better graphics. When I got hooked on eq what I had essentially gave me max graphics in the game but the performance was poor. Heard a sound card would help quite a bit to relieve the cup. Man I didn't know the game had ambient music in all places! It did a lot more for my experience then buying a better graphics card and ever since I have strived to get the best sound I could, at least without breaking the bank.

I appreciate good sound but I won't go insane with the equipment. I figure what I have now is really good.
 
I still use my trusty Creative XMod USB DAC. Usb 1.1, but one of the last USB DACs they made that didn't require proprietary drivers. (Looking at you, X-Fi Go and X-Fi Pro... *grumble*)

For a while I was dealing with a fringe case where Valve games had sound stutter upon crash that could not be stopped even when you disabled the sound card in device manager. Just for that issue I decided to stick with externals. Old habits are hard to break when you have a bunch of stuff that works (and sounds fine) that you bring with you from one setup to another.
 
Just a few days ago I got to see the local philharmonic play a bunch of Star Wars songs live. An honest-to-goodness orchestra, and I couldn't tell the difference between that and sitting at home with a nice pair of headphones on, plugged in to my onboard sound.

I'm one of those lucky bastards that ruined their hearing when young. (Combination of datacenter work and shooting without hearing protection.) The audiophiles can keep on using thousand dollar cables. I can get away with the cheap stuff.
 
Very happy with my on-board amp and creative chip on my Gigabyte Z170.
My latest hearing tests showed my hearing to be well within the normal parameters and i`m happy not to have such picky ears that can pick up the slightest differences between sources.
 
i've been using my x-fi in various systems for almost 10 years now. makes upgrading tricky because PCI slots are starting to disappear :/

anyway, my system at work uses the ALC 887 onboard solution and compared to the x-fi it sounds horrible. then again, i've not yet listened to a more high-end onboard chipset, so i can't judge. but as long as my x-fi works, i'll use it. working flawlessly with win10 and daniel_k drivers so far. well, except some of the features not working with html 5 - based sources but whatever :)
 
T_A said:
Very happy with my on-board amp and creative chip on my Gigabyte Z170.
My latest hearing tests showed my hearing to be well within the normal parameters and i`m happy not to have such picky ears that can pick up the slightest differences between sources.
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It's going to depend a lot on the headphones or speakers you are using.
 
What maters today, when using headphones, is to have an amp to power them properly. That is what makes a night and day difference, specially if you plan to use amp-sensitive headphones (there are many out there).
 
The difference between even a decent soundcard (such as a $20 ASUS Xonar DG) and onboard is night and day to me, even using mid-tier headphones like my ATH-m50s. Using onboard audio is the equivalent of playing games at 1024x768. Sure, you CAN, but why would you subject yourself to such low quality?
 
linuxdude9 said:
DAC shouldn't make a difference like that unless one of them is horribly broken. Sounds like there's some equalizer action going on there.
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Different hardware can certainly have different Dynamic Range capabilities.

All you have to do is compare with some high Dynamic Range CD's such as:

Star Tracks
Glenn Miller - In the Digital Mood
Just about anything from Flim & The BB's
Steely Dan Gold Greatest Hits.

I know I can sure tell the difference.

And no, there is no EQ turned on.
 
First sound card I bought for myself not part of a system was the SB AWE - I even populated the mem slots lol. I also had to make a little stand off because it was so long I thought it would flex in my tower case.

Before that I went from no sound (PC Speaker) on Tandy 2500SX20 to SB16 on my first custom PC in 1995. It really was amazing getting sound.
 
Whoops - posted before I finished. Anyway these days I don't run one at all even though I have a X-Fi Titanium. I don't even use onboard - for the last 7 years or so I have been running USB to my Companion 5 speakers and then more often than not output to my headphones from them. Much better volume control that way.
 
Doward said:
To answer the question, no.

IMHO, proper sounds cards died with Creative killed Aureal.

I miss A3D. EAX never compared, imho.

Caveat: I haven't touched a sound card in... 7-8 years? LOL
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Actually, Microsoft killed the entire PC audio market when it killed DirectSound.
 
gamerk2 said:
The difference between even a decent soundcard (such as a $20 ASUS Xonar DG) and onboard is night and day to me, even using mid-tier headphones like my ATH-m50s.
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I have the same sound card and I concur with you.
 
SparkedFire said:
I bought a sound card for the headphone amp and ability to toggle whether i wanted speakers or headphones.
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This. I do sound work for local bands, and I've acquired a taste for big, obscenely comfy studio grade headphones. Most of them are 600ohm and 250ohm, and driving them either needs a $100 standalone amp, along with a DAC stacked on my desk. Given the choice between losing desk space and just buying a sound card made specifically for driving high-end headphones that sits neatly in my case, I choose the soundcard. Plus I can switch between headphones and monitor speakers on the fly.
 
DJS4000 said:
i've been using my x-fi in various systems for almost 10 years now. makes upgrading tricky because PCI slots are starting to disappear :/

anyway, my system at work uses the ALC 887 onboard solution and compared to the x-fi it sounds horrible. then again, i've not yet listened to a more high-end onboard chipset, so i can't judge. but as long as my x-fi works, i'll use it. working flawlessly with win10 and daniel_k drivers so far. well, except some of the features not working with html 5 - based sources but whatever :)
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You could get a PCIe X-Fi. Or if you want to hold on to your PCI one, you can always use a PCIe to PCI slot converter.

PCie to PCI adapters:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-express-x1-PCIe-TO-2-PCI-Adapter-Router-Dual-PCI-slot-Riser-Card-Get-Tow-PCI-/151841858695?hash=item235a7ae487:g:ugAAAOSw3ydVtZ7s

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sintech-PCI-E-express-1X-to-PCI-device-riser-card-adapter-with-15cm-flex-cable-/321385676273?hash=item4ad4143df1:g:8TcAAOxyUylTVc1k

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Replacement-Card-PCI-Express-to-PCI-Adapter-Card-Asmedia-1083-chipset-/111677226553?hash=item1a007b3e39:g:R0cAAOSw~OdVXufj
 
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I run a Xonar DS, works fine for me. I did however, upgrade the op-amp in my external 2:1 speaker system form the 20c one to a OPA227. That worked nicely.

Haven't bothered upgrading the pluggable op-amp in the DS though.
 
I have a Realtek 1150 on board audio and in Windows 7 it sounds great. In windows 8 and 10 the quality drops to where you can barely hear it even at 100 percent. I also read this generation of audio cards are not as great as the on board from Asus and Creative. Audio drivers currently in use v7647.
 
damicatz said:
This is why vinyl sounds better :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
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Well, yes, this too.


I was sticking to technical reasons though. This is due more to the stupidity of people (primarily the consuming public forcing commercial sound engineers to do things they HATE doing in order to satisfy studio demands).

I haven't spoken to even a single sound engineer who LIKES compressing the volume to 96%. they do it because they feel they have to :(

That being said, this primarily affects the type of music that is targeting radio air time (pop/rock).

I listen to mostly older recordings and more underground bands, and have found the dynamic range to be rather pleasing, even on modern remasters!

Of course, every now and then there is a track that has the telltale effects of a overall run through a compressor at the end of the process, and it is awful. Luckily for me this is mostly not an issue though.
 
I can't listen to vinyl. Even on a properly setup deck (Linn/Rega/Thorens etc.) I hear nothing but tracking distortion after 5 minutes of playing. Sounds like nails down a blackboard to me. By the end of the side I'm out of the room.

I love the tech and the look of the gear but I can't live with it's technical/physical limitations.

The only issue I have with digital is the stupid loudness war that took away all the dynamics.
 
cyclone3d said:
You could get a PCIe X-Fi. Or if you want to hold on to your PCI one, you can always use a PCIe to PCI slot converter.

PCie to PCI adapters:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-express-x1-PCIe-TO-2-PCI-Adapter-Router-Dual-PCI-slot-Riser-Card-Get-Tow-PCI-/151841858695?hash=item235a7ae487:g:ugAAAOSw3ydVtZ7s

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sintech-PCI-E-express-1X-to-PCI-device-riser-card-adapter-with-15cm-flex-cable-/321385676273?hash=item4ad4143df1:g:8TcAAOxyUylTVc1k

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Replacement-Card-PCI-Express-to-PCI-Adapter-Card-Asmedia-1083-chipset-/111677226553?hash=item1a007b3e39:g:R0cAAOSw~OdVXufj
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i suppose i could, and will probably buy the PCIe-version once this one breaks or i am forced to buy board without pci slots.

but for now and the foreseeable future i'm good, since asus is kind enough to include pci slots in the z170-a, which is going to be my next board :D
 
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SB-Z here. I don't notice much/any difference between onboard sound and the Z card using regular speakers... But there's a definite sound improvement over headphones using the Z. Because I mostly use headphones, that's a big plus. Throw in the ability to change between speakers and headphones from the desktop (no changing wires) and to me its a no brainer having a separate sound card.
 
ShamisOMally said:
A DAC's primary strength is driving power, there is headphones out there that even top end soundcards can't drive like monster 600ohm headphones, but there is very few pairs of headphones top end soundcards and good onboard sound can't drive properly.
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A DAC is just a Digital to Analog converter, it is not "driving" anything. Let's not confuse the issue by pretending that the built-in headphone amplifiers in various internal and external sound devices is directly related to the DAC, because they are not. IMO you are better off having your amplification separate from your DAC anyway.
 
My son bought me a pair of gaming headphones, with surround and all. I was amazed how many new sounds i can hear in games, so i rarely use my surround speakers anymore. Do remember the days of soundblaster 16... drivers loading up in dos from a bat file. Good old days.
I built a PC for my brother a few years ago, he does music recording and needed a sound card that could handle live and recorded tracks, minimal latency, midi and so on. It was very tough to find a soundcard that could do what he needed. I was able to find one of these:
M-Audio US41077 Delta 1010LT - Not exactly plug and play, tough learning curve, but once he figured it out, it did everything he needed and more. Not even sure you can get them anymore.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5586746&SRCCODE=NEXTAG&cm_mmc_o=2mHCjCWw0fzTCjCVqHCjCdwwp&cpncode=22-156514636-2

I would say only professionals need soundcards anymore.
 
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