Should You Buy A Sound Card?

[NeghVar]

Back when I had a laptop, I got a Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1. This way I could fully utilize my Roccat Kave 5.1 headset.

 

[lcpiper]

I still use add on sound cards for two big reasons.

1st, it off-loads the sound processing in some cases, it does depend on the motherboard chipset and how good the on-board is.

2nd, and biggest, I like true 5.1 surround and not USB "fake" surround. Not many motherboards come with all the auto jack connections for true 5.1 surround but if that is what you want then you need a card to really get it. The biggest problem these days is finding a decent headset for the job that will last.

I loved my 5.1 Medusa's, dropped them once too often and broke them. I replaced them with a new set and they broke way too easy and early so now I am in search of another good set but just haven't found who makes a good one.

I do miss my Medusa's. They were like cheating.

 

[xorbe]

USB has higher latency. This is noted by the midi-in audio-out users.

 

[USMCGrunt]

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.

I'm former infantry that was stationed in Twentynine Palms...where all we use is live ammo...no fake shit going on, I ruined my ears on thousands of rounds through my rifle, frags, IEDs, mortars, machine gun fire, and all manner of loud ass vehicle transports (CH-53 is worse than the range, imo) all without ear pro and I can still hear the difference between onboard and discrete. The difference is minor and I quickly acclimate but I still know I'm missing out. Same thing with my vehicle, I had a Charger with an aftermarket headunit and speakers and it sounded solid (Not body shattering bass, just solid all around experience). When I traded it in for a truck, I didn't swap out the audio equipment and the music experience was a stark contrast, everything sounded muddy and bad. After 2-3 days I stopped noticing it though and I'm not bothered by it....but I still know if I spent a couple hundred dollars I'd get a much better experience.

Sound, just like any other sensory experience, is very subjective. What I hear may not be what the other 7 billion or so other people in the world hear. I have had a Sound Blaster Z card for a long time and recently picked up a pair of Turtle Beach Z60 headphones with a built-in DAC. The sound is pretty good through the DAC (The bass vibrates my ears, that's for sure, lol) but if I shut off the audio processing on the DAC and use whatever signal the PC passes through USB it sounds terrible bad.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

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

At this point - although slightly more expensive - an external DAC connected by SPDIF optical cable would probably be the best solution.

If/When My Titanium HD dies (or maybe before) that's the route I'll be going down.

Side benefit is it will free up a PCIe slot

 

[tmillszero1]

SPDIF and ADAT still introduces latency... no way around it. Even if you have a 1K sound card like I do. I have a RME Hammerfall AIO PCIE. However I can honestly say that I have no electrical interference from it at all. It's the latency that kills me at times.

Well, sort of. One of the parts of a sound card is the DAC.

What I think he means is an exrernal DAC.

Discrete soundcards generally have better DAC's than onboard realtec-type chipsets, but the differences these days are much smaller than they used to be.

Both discrete sound cards and onboard sound suffer from the same problem though, that they reside inside the electrically noisy computer. The most common solution to this is to go external USB DAC, which is better, but it is still not electrically isolated, and there are some timing issues involved in using USB for sound.

The best solution by far is to use an external DAC connected by optical SPDIF. Complete electrical isolation, and bit perfect timing.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

SPDIF and ADAT still introduces latency... no way around it. Even if you have a 1K sound card like I do. I have a RME Hammerfall AIO PCIE.

Yeah, but the latency is small, and most professional audio production tools allow you to adjust for it. I mean, we are not talking a significant enough amount of latency that it would really impact media consumption (games, movies, etc) either.

I'd trade off a little bit of latency for a lower noise floor any day.

 

[zone74]

So much damn misinformation going on here.
A: Its impossible to tell the difference between a properly encoded 320kbit mp3 and a FLAC file. Literally.

Then why can I pass an ABX test comparing the two in Foobar?
It is entirely dependent on the complexity of the piece of music being played.
There are many tracks where I probably could not pass an ABX test because they compress well.

They've had expert audio engineers who can't even tell a 192kbit mp3 and a FLAC apart and it was using top top top end audio gear.

There is a loss of "space" and there are often "warbling" artifacts with compressed audio.
Here is a demonstration of the artifacts present with 128k AAC encoding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhA7Vy3OPbc&t=10m15s
128k AAC should be roughly equivalent to 192k MP3.
At around 19 minutes in, he does the same comparison at 256k AAC. Watch the 128k section first though, for the explanation of what is being demonstrated here.

Another problem is that most applications do not reduce the volume level when compressing the audio, which can result in inter-sample clipping on playback.

You can't get surround sound with a DAC. Sorry. All computer DAC's only output in stereo. Unless your game can do Surround over headphone, which I think only like 5 games exist that do so you are going to be listening to it in stereo.

This is one of the main reasons that I'm using a sound card.
There are a few software-based solutions now though, like Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3.
However I would prefer to offload that processing to hardware than have it run on the CPU.

And you need a Creative card if you're going to be playing old games and want the best audio experience possible on any OS newer than XP.
I would have been recommending the Sound Blaster Z for this, but after getting some strange results with one or two games that I tested recently, I've now ordered an X-Fi Titanium HD to see if things are any different there.
It looks like the EAX support on the SBZ may be software emulation, instead of hardware EAX - but that is still a lot better than no EAX/DirectSound3D support.

I'm not sure if the Titanium HD does hardware EAX either - it's difficult to find this sort of information.
I think that people seem to have completely misunderstood what happened when Microsoft killed DirectSound3D support in Vista, which is why so many people seem to think that a sound card doesn't do anything more than their on-board audio.

I know that the EMU20K1 cards have true hardware EAX support, but those are all PCI.
Looking over the datasheet, it seems as though the 20K2 cards should also have hardware EAX support, but I want to test it and see for myself.

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.

That's a headphone amplifier's job, not the DAC.
Of course many "DACs" combine a DAC and a headphone amplifier, but if that's your issue, you could just buy an amplifier and hook it up to the stereo output from your sound card.

 

[tmillszero1]

All good and valid points!

Yeah, but the latency is small, and most professional audio production tools allow you to adjust for it. I mean, we are not talking a significant enough amount of latency that it would really impact media consumption (games, movies, etc) either.

I'd trade off a little bit of latency for a lower noise floor any day.

 

[Gmok Bonecrusha]

There are a few software-based solutions now though, like Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3.

Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 + Cambridge Audio Azur DacMagic

I honestly love this setup. I can not tell the difference in processing vs my ZXr. 90% of the time I am using the DAC and software combo. It's that good.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

I laughed at night and day and 1000w.

same, but hey, everybodys gotta start somewhere. audio has a ton snake-oil and misinformation everywhere, so its understandable.

anyhow, onboard has improved by leaps and bounds over the years, and for most people, its more than good enough.

audio processing tends to barely account for anything, so having a sound card do it isnt going to help in any tangible way (fps). most people also have low quality speakers (all computer-grade speakers, even logitech and klipsch, arent good; same goes for all "gaming" headsets/headphones) so throwing $100 or $200 at a sound card is money poorly spent.

now, if you do have good speakers (hifi [which don't need to cost a ton]) a sound card/DAC can definitely improve things, but it doesnt really make sense unless you have good speakers to start with and an amp/receiver that can properly drive them (watts are a terrible metric to gauge amp/receiver quality/performance).

another concern is onboard audio processing. for whatever reason, every onboard audio chip ive had has had trouble playing lots of simultaneous sounds. sounds will cut in and out, or just not play at all. this is something you wont really notice if youve only ever had onboard.

so IMO, should you buy a sound card/DAC? only if you already have the other more important stuff (i.e., speakers and amp).

of course your mileage will vary. some people cant tell the difference between 720p and 1080p video, so for them, higher end equipment is largely a waste.

 

[zone74]

Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 + Cambridge Audio Azur DacMagic
I honestly love this setup. I can not tell the difference in processing vs my ZXr. 90% of the time I am using the DAC and software combo. It's that good.

Interesting - I thought that X-Fi MB3 was limited to working with certain on-board audio hardware. I did not realize that it worked with USB DACs. Or are you using on-board audio for MB3 and an S/PDIF output to the DAC?

As far as I am aware, the main difference between that and a Sound Blaster Recon3D or Sound Blaster Z is that it's all running on your CPU instead of being processed in hardware on the Sound Core3D chip.
It will be the same thing with older games running through ALchemy: software emulation instead of hardware passthrough.

But that's why I've ordered the X-Fi Titanium HD: as far as I can tell, the Sound Blaster Z series only does SBX processing in hardware, while EAX uses software emulation.
With cards that support hardware EAX - and I think the Titanium HD is the newest card which does - ALchemy should be passing the instructions to the card via OpenAL instead of using software emulation.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Interesting - I thought that X-Fi MB3 was limited to working with certain on-board audio hardware. I did not realize that it worked with USB DACs. Or are you using on-board audio for MB3 and an S/PDIF output to the DAC?

As far as I am aware, the main difference between that and a Sound Blaster Recon3D or Sound Blaster Z is that it's all running on your CPU instead of being processed in hardware on the Sound Core3D chip.
It will be the same thing with older games running through ALchemy: software emulation instead of hardware passthrough.

But that's why I've ordered the X-Fi Titanium HD: as far as I can tell, the Sound Blaster Z series only does SBX processing in hardware, while EAX uses software emulation.
With cards that support hardware EAX - and I think the Titanium HD is the newest card which does - ALchemy should be passing the instructions to the card via OpenAL instead of using software emulation.

Interesting indeed.

Going the external DAC route has always interested me (though I've never gotten around to doing it) but I was wondering what kind of gaming features I might be missing out on. This might be a decent complement to a Schiit Bifrost + Asgard combo + Beyerdynamic DT770 pro combo. (I ahve the latter two already, just not the DAC)

 

[nilepez]

Yes, there are limits to what the ear can hear but you are forgetting that almost all musical instruments and the rooms or studios they are played in are subject to harmonics. Yes, those harmonics go way beyond the ear's limits but being harmonics they bounce around and return as artifacts that are clearly audible to the human ear.

Cut off the harmonics you hurt the sound.

Hit middle "C" on a good piano and the entire instrument vibrates and resonates (the better the piano the more you get). If all you hear is the fundamental note without the artifacts it sounds dead and lifeless.

The audio gear you buy should not kill the harmonics or artifacts, but most sound cards and low priced DACs as well as many lower priced headphone AMPS do just that.

That is also the problem with MP-3, the very algorithms used to compress the file cut the harmonics and artifacts first leaving you with lower quality sound.

Games are games, all synth no studios just tracks laid down on a drive so games aren't really fair game (no pun intended) for testing the accuracy of much of anything...They fall under the personal taste category.

Any harmonics that come back within the range of the ear will be audible on a CD. When I read discussions on this among audio engineers, most think 96/24 (and especially 192) are snake oil. Always comes back to shannon nyquist.

MP3 is a different issue. Bottom line is whenever double blind tests are done virtually nobody can tell the difference between analog and a CD (assuming they're both from the same master)

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Any harmonics that come back within the range of the ear will be audible on a CD. When I read discussions on this among audio engineers, most think 96/24 (and especially 192) are snake oil. Always comes back to shannon nyquist.

MP3 is a different issue. Bottom line is whenever double blind tests are done virtually nobody can tell the difference between analog and a CD (assuming they're both from the same master)

IMHO 96/24 and 192 are useful for in process editing only.

For listening to a final product 48/16 should be indistinguishable from 192/24

 

[Astral Abyss]

I always start out trying onboard audio with every new motherboard upgrade I do. I always end up with a sound card back in the computer after a week or so.

Two major reasons:
1) lack of bass from onboard, and lack of clear bass especially
2) everything sounds flat and lacking detail using onboard

Even the highly touted ALC1150 has this problem, although it's getting a lot better. Maybe the next upgrade will be the one. (been telling myself this for 10 years now... I'll keep hoping)

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

MP3 is a different issue. Bottom line is whenever double blind tests are done virtually nobody can tell the difference between analog and a CD (assuming they're both from the same master)

Also, as regards mp3's they take a lot of flac (pun intended) undeservedly.

A well compressed mp3 (let's say "lame --alt-present Standard", or whatever they call it these days) will be indistinguishable in double blind tests in all but a few corner cases, even on high end audiophile equipment.

Hydrogenaudio.org posted a rather fun double blind test a bunch of years ago, where they had participants take double blinded tests on their own equipment (their readership is very much in the snake-oil audiophile territory) in which they found, that with lame alt-preset standard, audiophiles only picked the right sample roughly half the time, or about the same as if they were just guessing.

While I am not saying that there isn't a benefit from having good gear, the truth is a lot of this stuff is more placebo effect than anything else.

The brains desire to justify a purchase (or a decision to encode everything in FLAC) can have a very powerful impact on how we perceive the world. None of us are immune or truly objective in this regard.

 

[nilepez]

This is why vinyl sounds better :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Yup and if CDs and vinyl used the same master, CD's would be the better choice (because 20 years from now a CD will sound the same).

 

[zone74]

Interesting indeed.
Going the external DAC route has always interested me (though I've never gotten around to doing it) but I was wondering what kind of gaming features I might be missing out on. This might be a decent complement to a Schiit Bifrost + Asgard combo + Beyerdynamic DT770 pro combo. (I ahve the latter two already, just not the DAC)

What I do is use the "play stereo mix to digital output" option in the SBZ control panel and hook up my DAC via Toslink. I intend to do the same with the X-Fi.
That way the audio is still being processed in hardware, but audio quality should be improved over using an analog connection. (note: I had the DAC before the sound card, so I've never used its analog output to do a direct comparison)

When I had a Xonar DGX, it seemed to process Dolby Headphone on the CPU instead of doing it in hardware, which had a noticeable impact on system performance in certain situations and it caused big DPC latency spikes - even with the UNi Xonar drivers.
I don't know what the performance impact will be like for X-Fi MB3, but I'd rather spend $80 on a card to do that processing in hardware than $30 on software.

IMHO 96/24 and 192 are useful for in process editing only.
For listening to a final product 48/16 should be indistinguishable from 192/24

Correct. High sample rates are useful to avoid aliasing in the recording/editing process.
When you render that out in a finished product, aliasing should not be present if you've done the downsampling correctly.

The number of tracks that I have in my library which have a whine in the 15-16kHz region, that I rarely ever see anyone complaining about (e.g. flyback transformers at 15.625kHz or 15.734kHz seem to be common) or high res recordings with similar problems around 28-30kHz, basically confirms that "ultrasonic" audio frequencies have no audible effect on music - since those are frequencies (15-16kHz) which should be audible to anyone without any hearing loss. Most adults will have some degree of hearing loss in that region simply due to age though.
The only time that ultrasonic frequencies should have any audible effect is when they cause aliasing or other distortions within the audio band - and that's not a good thing.

Similarly, 16-bit should be sufficient for playback of a mastered file assuming that everything was processed correctly.
However if I have the option of receiving say a 24/48 file instead of a 16/44 file for little/no additional cost, I will take the former.
Some audio engineers don't seem to understand how dither works and think that it's just "adding noise" to the file, or harming "low level details" - neither of which is correct. So a 24-bit file provides a safeguard against bad mastering.

Yup and if CDs and vinyl used the same master, CD's would be the better choice (because 20 years from now a CD will sound the same).

It doesn't help that people are often using things like the TT-DR meter and posting results from vinyl rips to prove that they came from a separate master. http://dr.loudness-war.info/
Dynamic range meters produce artificially high results with vinyl rips, and should only be used on files from a digital source. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AE9dL5FG8

I don't understand the resurgence in vinyl at all. I could maybe understand if it was nostalgia, but a lot of the people buying vinyl now are in their 20's.
And the same thing is starting to happen with cassette tapes...

 

[nilepez]

And let me repeat again, only a computer can tell a proper LAME encoded 192kbit mp3 and a FLAC apart.

That doesn't make sense. A 192 kbit MP3 has virtually no frequencies above 16khz. While I'm not sure I could hear it today, 10+ years ago, I could definitely hear those frequencies.

Even 320 kbs files have trouble reproducing all of the highs, without affecting lower frequencies. MP3 is a much bigger change than PCM vs Analog.

 

[nilepez]

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.

Problem is that cassettes suffered from his and applying Dolby also cut off the highs. I always preferred vinyl to cassette, though if you made your own cassette and applied enough compression, you could mitigate some of the hiss. The other issue is that commercial cassettes were often less than great tape stock.

 

[Gmok Bonecrusha]

Interesting - I thought that X-Fi MB3 was limited to working with certain on-board audio hardware. I did not realize that it worked with USB DACs. Or are you using on-board audio for MB3 and an S/PDIF output to the DAC?

As far as I am aware, the main difference between that and a Sound Blaster Recon3D or Sound Blaster Z is that it's all running on your CPU instead of being processed in hardware on the Sound Core3D chip.
It will be the same thing with older games running through ALchemy: software emulation instead of hardware passthrough.

But that's why I've ordered the X-Fi Titanium HD: as far as I can tell, the Sound Blaster Z series only does SBX processing in hardware, while EAX uses software emulation.
With cards that support hardware EAX - and I think the Titanium HD is the newest card which does - ALchemy should be passing the instructions to the card via OpenAL instead of using software emulation.

The MB3 software recognizes the DAC.

From there, like you said MB3>USB>DAC>S/PDIF>WA6>HD800's

The only issue I have, is swapping from speakers to headphones. It's not a clean swap. I need to reset a browser, restart a game, etc.

The sound is clean as a DAC with the Creative effects. It's nice.

 

[nilepez]

I still use add on sound cards for two big reasons.

1st, it off-loads the sound processing in some cases, it does depend on the motherboard chipset and how good the on-board is.

2nd, and biggest, I like true 5.1 surround and not USB "fake" surround. Not many motherboards come with all the auto jack connections for true 5.1 surround but if that is what you want then you need a card to really get it. The biggest problem these days is finding a decent headset for the job that will last.

I loved my 5.1 Medusa's, dropped them once too often and broke them. I replaced them with a new set and they broke way too easy and early so now I am in search of another good set but just haven't found who makes a good one.

I do miss my Medusa's. They were like cheating.

OK, I don't use the analog out, but my last 3 MBs (going back to 2007) have Front, Center, surround and sub out (I guess I could dig out my old DFI Athlon 64 to see if it has that...kinda think it did too). Pretty sure all but the current board were under 200 bucks (130-160).

I use SPDIF out my old logitech surround speakers and I'm sure they're not capable of differentiating between DACS. They're good for what they are, but aside form the sub, it's a whole lotta mid.

 

[zone74]

I use SPDIF out my old logitech surround speakers and I'm sure they're not capable of differentiating between DACS. They're good for what they are, but aside form the sub, it's a whole lotta mid.

If you're using S/PDIF, then you're using a digital connection and bypassing the DAC in the sound card. (DAC = Digital to Analog Converter)
The DAC will be in whatever receives the S/PDIF connection.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

The MB3 software recognizes the DAC.

From there, like you said MB3>USB>DAC>S/PDIF>WA6>HD800's

The only issue I have, is swapping from speakers to headphones. It's not a clean swap. I need to reset a browser, restart a game, etc.

The sound is clean as a DAC with the Creative effects. It's nice.

http://i.imgur.com/fCOsMxH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3cZaxdD.jpg

Looks pretty cool. I might have to try this if I ever get the external DAC.

What kind of CPU load have you seen from this?

 

[nilepez]

IMHO 96/24 and 192 are useful for in process editing only.

For listening to a final product 48/16 should be indistinguishable from 192/24

From what I've read even 96/24 is overkill for editing and 192 is likely to make things worse. I know I don't have the ears to hear beyond 20khz (actually down to 17 or 18khz these days).
Most end users, are incapable of hearing anything beyond what a CD can play.

 

[nilepez]

Also, as regards mp3's they take a lot of flac (pun intended) undeservedly.

A well compressed mp3 (let's say "lame --alt-present Standard", or whatever they call it these days) will be indistinguishable in double blind tests in all but a few corner cases, even on high end audiophile equipment.

Hydrogenaudio.org posted a rather fun double blind test a bunch of years ago, where they had participants take double blinded tests on their own equipment (their readership is very much in the snake-oil audiophile territory) in which they found, that with lame alt-preset standard, audiophiles only picked the right sample roughly half the time, or about the same as if they were just guessing.

While I am not saying that there isn't a benefit from having good gear, the truth is a lot of this stuff is more placebo effect than anything else.

The brains desire to justify a purchase (or a decision to encode everything in FLAC) can have a very powerful impact on how we perceive the world. None of us are immune or truly objective in this regard.

I haven't done it in years. I know in the early 2000s, I took live recordings I made and encoded it to 192 khz and I could hear a difference on computer speakers...it was very disappointing (and somewhat unexpected). Nevertheless, I really have to study most pop/rock songs to hear a difference of high quality encodes (though I mostly encode to Vorbis, not mp3, so take that for what it's worth).

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

From what I've read even 96/24 is overkill for editing and 192 is likely to make things worse. I know I don't have the ears to hear beyond 20khz (actually down to 17 or 18khz these days).
Most end users, are incapable of hearing anything beyond what a CD can play.

I've never measured my sensitivity at high frequencies, but I know I am higher than average, as I can clearly hear (and am bothered by) things like dog whistles and ultrasonic welders. They make me cringe in pain.

As I have gotten older I have lost some of my ability to pick out detail in a noisy environment though. The absolute range seems mostly (at least practically) unaffected, but the lessening ability to pick out detail in a noisy environment has been annoying, especially when trying to have conversations in loud places.

 

[nilepez]

I don't understand the resurgence in vinyl at all. I could maybe understand if it was nostalgia, but a lot of the people buying vinyl now are in their 20's.
And the same thing is starting to happen with cassette tapes...

It's nostalgia...it's also because of the bigger artwork. I've bought some vinyl in the past few years, but it's almost always limited edition releases and always from newer bands that I support, but I don't play it. I haven't owned a turntable in decades.

 

[Gmok Bonecrusha]

Looks pretty cool. I might have to try this if I ever get the external DAC.

What kind of CPU load have you seen from this?

Really depends on the game. BF4 I notice a like a 4% increase on the CPU. League of Legends like 1% tops. Tera I couldn't get a read on the CPU usage (crashes), but my FPS on the ZXr vs the DAC was a loss of up to 10FPS! The card definately off loads in MMO's and RTS games. But when you're pulling 100FPS, I don't mind.

 

[BillR]

Any harmonics that come back within the range of the ear will be audible on a CD. When I read discussions on this among audio engineers, most think 96/24 (and especially 192) are snake oil. Always comes back to shannon nyquist.

MP3 is a different issue. Bottom line is whenever double blind tests are done virtually nobody can tell the difference between analog and a CD (assuming they're both from the same master)

While many consider the Nyquist calculations to be the end all be all of compression the methodology is not without it's flaws...Not saying it's all bad but it does assume a lot.

Take a few moments and read this little bit of info, it explains a lot and also explains where some of the harmonics went and it's worth the read:

Sampling: What Nyquist Didn’t Say, and What to Do About It

Tim Wescott, Wescott Design Services

The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is useful, but often misused when engineers establish sampling rates or design anti-aliasing filters. This article explains how sampling affects a signal, and how to use this information to design a sampling system with known performance.

January 5, 2015

 

[zone74]

While many consider the Nyquist calculations to be the end all be all of compression the methodology is not without it's flaws...Not saying it's all bad but it does assume a lot.

Take a few moments and read this little bit of info, it explains a lot and also explains where some of the harmonics went and it's worth the read:

There isn't really anything in that which changes how things are already done with audio.
We use a high sample rate when recording/processing to prevent aliasing, and can use an appropriate anti-aliasing filter when downsampling to something like 44.1kHz. Software like iZotope gives you very flexible control over the filter being used when downsampling - though it really should not be necessary.
DACs then upsample the input internally rather than using zero-order hold.

The zero-order hold example in that paper is what you get with a "non-oversampling DAC" or "NOS DAC" and they completely break how digital audio is supposed to work. Yet many audiophiles seem to love them.
The only time that a NOS DAC should be used is when it accepts very high sample rates on input (e.g. 768kHz) because the intent there is to use your PC to do all the upsampling instead of it being internal to the DAC.
Frankly I think it's a bit ridiculous, but you should still get good audio at the end, unlike people who are using NOS DACs which only operate at 44.1kHz.

The "Digital Show & Tell" video at Xiph.org is a great demonstration of how digital audio works, with real-world examples.

 

[burton14e7]

I use my soundcard for the headphone amps and coms but all the system sound goes through hdmi to a marantz receiver and SVS speakers & sub. I don't play FPS but I would assume they're 5.1 encoded these days so surrounds would be fine for positional audio through the receiver.

 

[umeng2002]

I have an external DAC and Headphone amp, but my SBz is all for the DSP effects connected to the DAC with an optical cable.

I use SBX Pro Studio features all the time:

Surround for Headphone surround simulation in games, DD+ Netflix movies, even stereo movies to make it sound like watching in a room, watching Blu-ray rips, etc. I only use headphones, so I need the surround effects (and yes, they work well).

Smart Volume for keeping porn quiet, lol. Also in case a movie or game is mixed poorly. I can limit the dynamic range so an explosion won't make me deaf or I can hear soft dialog.

Dialog Plus is used for some movies where the center channel is too low due to a poor mix in a movie or game. Even with Surround on, if the center channel is too low for some reason, this will boost it in a certain frequency range to make dialog sound clearer and soften the surround channels a bit. Again, this really helps with crappy stereo-only online movies.

For music, I leave all the DSP stuff off.

 

[biggles]

My setup (see sig) is the Gigabyte z97-sli board which runs the alc1150 realtek onboard sound. Used with Corsair sp2500 2.1 speakers. I have wondered at times if a discrete sound card would improve sound quality. But it is hard to get an answer to that question when one is talking about specific parts like mine.

It would be great if someone would do reviews that use a type of objective metric. For instance, I thought there was something called rightmark audio analyzer. So, the reviewer would run alc1150 vs asus xonar dgx with that program.

Anyway, if someone could make the case that a discrete card would improve my setup I am open minded. Would want the sound card to be under $100 though.

 

[Criticalhitkoala]

My setup (see sig) is the Gigabyte z97-sli board which runs the alc1150 realtek onboard sound. Used with Corsair sp2500 2.1 speakers. I have wondered at times if a discrete sound card would improve sound quality. But it is hard to get an answer to that question when one is talking about specific parts like mine.

It would be great if someone would do reviews that use a type of objective metric. For instance, I thought there was something called rightmark audio analyzer. So, the reviewer would run alc1150 vs asus xonar dgx with that program.

Anyway, if someone could make the case that a discrete card would improve my setup I am open minded. Would want the sound card to be under $100 though.

I had a Gigabyte Z97N itx board and I got a lot of interference. I can't exactly say the Asus Xonar U7 made the sound better, but the amp on it makes my headphones sound like magic if it means anything.

 

[ShamisOMally]

People here think they're computers, when repeated double blind tests have proven even audio professionals can't tell a 160bit properly encoded LAME mp3 and a 320 FLAC apart.

But yes, YOU'RE the exception right?

 

[UnrealCpu]

Sound card.companies would be out of business if integrated sound cards were comparable to creative sound cards . creative cards are so good they don't even need to release a flagship sound card every year. Technology on the motherboard that produces sound will never be as good as a full fledged dedicated sound card with multiple components. I bet this guys next article and title will be "dedicated GPU is a waste of money and not needed anymore" I also bet the author of the article owns a a Macbook pro

 

[zone74]

I use my soundcard for the headphone amps and coms but all the system sound goes through hdmi to a marantz receiver and SVS speakers & sub. I don't play FPS but I would assume they're 5.1 encoded these days so surrounds would be fine for positional audio through the receiver.

It's probably less necessary to have a sound card with that setup than someone wanting positional audio when using headphones.
I expect you might see some performance improvement by offloading some of the processing to a sound card (in situations where that might occur) but then you'll nee to use an analog connection from the PC.

It might be worthwhile to purchase something like the X-Fi MB3 software to restore 5.1 audio and emulate EAX effects in older games.
However I just bought a license for the software to try it out, as I plan on doing a comparison between the Sound Blaster Z, X-Fi Titanium HD, on-board audio, and thought I might as well throw MB3 into the mix, but I'm only able to set the MB3 as a stereo device and not a 5.1 device for some reason.
For it to work properly, that device needs to receive 5.1 audio from the game and forward it to your output device, while also having the option to downmix to stereo for headphone use for example.

EDIT: It seems that I can only enable 5.1 (or 7.1) when the Realtek analog output jacks on my motherboard are selected as the output device.
Though I can select other devices in MB3 such as the HDMI output or a USB DAC, when I do this, the MB3 device is set to stereo.
So MB3 may not be the best thing to get if you are wanting to use it with an HDMI audio device.
I'm not sure what the restrictions are - if any - when using the bundled ALchemy software though. It may still be worthwhile to purchase a copy of MB3 for that. I don't have any way to test 5.1 via HDMI right now though.

I'm currently using the default Microsoft drivers for the ALC892 in my system, so I'm not sure whether the Realtek drivers will enable things like forwarding the audio to another system device.
I can see them maybe having the option to forward the audio over its own S/PDIF output, but not to a completely separate device like HDMI.

My setup (see sig) is the Gigabyte z97-sli board which runs the alc1150 realtek onboard sound. Used with Corsair sp2500 2.1 speakers. I have wondered at times if a discrete sound card would improve sound quality. But it is hard to get an answer to that question when one is talking about specific parts like mine.
It would be great if someone would do reviews that use a type of objective metric. For instance, I thought there was something called rightmark audio analyzer. So, the reviewer would run alc1150 vs asus xonar dgx with that program.
Anyway, if someone could make the case that a discrete card would improve my setup I am open minded. Would want the sound card to be under $100 though.

Unless you are hearing problems caused by the sound card (hiss or other noise) I don't think there's any reason to upgrade from an audio quality standpoint.
However from an audio processing point of view, sound cards offer a number of useful features.
If nothing else, you need ALchemy or similar software to restore 5.1 audio and EAX effect to most DirectSound3D games.

People here think they're computers, when repeated double blind tests have proven even audio professionals can't tell a 160bit properly encoded LAME mp3 and a 320 FLAC apart.
But yes, YOU'RE the exception right?

So now it's 160k instead of 192k. It's amazing how quickly the MP3 format is improving in quality!
Never mind that "audio professionals" have demonstrated problems with 256k AAC, as linked to earlier in the topic.

If you're happy with MP3, that's fine. Disk space is not an issue, and quality can be, so I use lossless encoding.
Even if only 1/10 tracks were affected, I'd rather use FLAC.
I'd estimate that it's at least 50% of the tracks in my library which would be affected if we were to say that any FLAC file with a bitrate of >1024k would have reduced quality when encoded to MP3 - and I expect the bitrate does not need to be nearly that high for there to be an audible difference.

 

[gamerk2]

People here think they're computers, when repeated double blind tests have proven even audio professionals can't tell a 160bit properly encoded LAME mp3 and a 320 FLAC apart.

But yes, YOU'RE the exception right?

Does the source in question have the highs/lows where the lower encoding matters? What device is being used to decode the audio? Headphone sensitivity? Lot's of factors to consider. Certain audio tracks are going to be more affected then others.