Do You Really Need a Discrete Sound Card? 520
crookedvulture writes "Integrated audio has become a common freebie on motherboards, causing many to question whether there's any need to have a sound card. Tech Report took a closer look at the issue by testing the latest integrated Realtek codec against a couple of sound cards: Asus' $30 Xonar DG and its considerably more expensive $280 Xense cousin. Everything from gaming performance to signal quality is explored, and it's the blind listening tests that prove most revealing. The integrated solution is obviously flawed, and in a bit of a surprise, the cheaper Xonar is the one most preferred. Discrete sound cards certainly have their benefits, and you don't need to spend a lot to get something that sounds a lot better than the average motherboard."
Discrete sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
To be honest, I prefer my sound to be continuous. I tried playing left for dead with a flickering sound card, and let me tell you, *silence* *silence* *silence* *Roar of Tank right behind you* *silence* Not a good way to play. Don't even get me started on Voice Chat.
Re:Discrete sound card? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but sometimes I use the computer when others are sleeping. I need it to be discreet.
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:3, Funny)
As opposed to what? Continuous sound card?
You know, do you need a sound card that doesn't let your roommate or neighbor know that you listen to porn all day?
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually not a bad idea. I wonder how complex your algorithms would have to be to determine if the sounds produced are of gunshots or female moans.
Too many times I've either gone from an FPS to a naughty website or vice versa and either the volume was left down or too high and either I can't hear the game or some horny girl can be heard all throughout the house.
What I need is a dedicated card that can handle all that for me - anytime I try to set up different volume controls per application in Window
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
I know he is supposed to be a repairman fixing the cable, but maybe he has another motive.
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
By the way, just to be clear, did you want Betty White doing the acting, or Betty White doing the voice-over? 'Cause I'm pretty sure either way would be fucking hilarious!
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, Betty White sitting on a chair right beside the action, narrating over a cup of tea...I could watch that.
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how complex your algorithms would have to be to determine if the sounds produced are of gunshots or female moans.
They should give the Turing award to anyone that can produce an algorithm that can tell the difference between porn and women's tennis.
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
They should give the Turing award to anyone that can produce an algorithm that can tell the difference between porn and women's tennis.
You mean women's tennis isn't porn?
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
The music gives it away.
Re:Discrete *wink* *wink* sound card? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Analog of course. They've got this new qbits that can have literally any value between 0 and 1!
Does anyone still have soundcard? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think that I have put a sound card in a game rig in the past 5-8 years. Does anyone still use them besides people who have some some special need for them?
Re:Does anyone still have soundcard? (Score:4, Interesting)
When I bought my last desktop (2008) I noticed a huge drop in audio quality and volumes going from my SB Live! in my Pentium 4 box to the Realtek HD onboard in the new system. A year ago I added an SB Audigy to my C2D box I noticed a huge jump in the sound output - I didn't have to crank my speakers up to understand speech, recording quality went up, and I started to notice the difference in 128Kb/s vs 192Kb/s (especially on percussion).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have used many systems with integrated audio, mostly with Realtek cod
Re:Does anyone still have soundcard? (Score:5, Informative)
Sound cards used to be sold because their ability to decode sound was done on the card rather than having the CPU doing it, which would slow down the gaming performance (somewhat). I'm sure that sound cards also have other features not found in on-board chipsets, but most of those are for things like high end gaming.
About 7 years ago I remember getting an on-board NVIDIA chipset that had hardware decoding of mp3 files. The CPU utilization of the system without the hardware decoding the CPU jumped to about 45% continuous while playing back the mp3 file. On the rig with the NVIDIA chipset with hardware decoding the CPU utilization was nearly imperceptible. It became to expensive for NVIDIA to offer those for long so they replaced them with generic sound chipsets.
Re:Does anyone still have soundcard? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I might be the special need, but yes, I do. The reason is because I have my PC hooked into my entertainment center. The last time I bought a motherboard, I could not find one with the socket and memory type I wanted that also had a digital-output for the sound on the motherboard. I finally just picked up a used Turtle Beach off Amazon, and now I got surround from my computer again.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My own machine still has audigy2 I bought long, long ago, and that has been in at least 2 other systems before. My parents, who usually get my "hand downs" use ancient SB live!
Both machines have realtek on board audio, and even my father, who is not audiophile by any stretch noticed a difference in spite of using some crappy 50€ speaker+mic set on that machine after I put SB Live in (his words were something among the lines of "whatever you did to our computer, it sounds different. I like it more that
Sure (Score:3, Interesting)
One reason is simply quality. The built in soundcards are fine, but they are optimized for cost, not quality. I had that problem at work. Figured I'd use the built in soundcard since I wasn't doing anything really critical. However it had an audible hiss with my headphones plugged in. It couldn't handle the low impedance load well, and an audible hiss was the result. Really annoying.
Another can be compatibility issues. Sometimes internal cards fall over on certain things for whatever reason. I again had thi
Yes, yes I do. (Score:2, Interesting)
I was plagued with choppy audio under W7 until I disabled my Realtek sound chip and got a Turtle Beach PCI card. Actually, IIRC, CoD4 refused to run at all with Realtek. Never had a problem with it under Linux though. Of course, YMMV.
That depends. (Score:4, Funny)
Only if what you listen to requires discretion.
Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
My motherboard has optical SPDIF in and I'd never use a DAC in the PC environment, it's just too noisy.
I used to think the same thing too. Amazingly enough, you can engineer your way around the noise and create a very good sound card, at least from my informal experience with a handful of different cards. That said, most motherboard solutions (including laptop versions, unfortunately) are nearly worthless because of the price optimization pressure.
Some years ago, I had an undergraduate student design an audio I/O card for a research computer we were developing. She did a remarkably good job. Despite being buried in the middle of an environment with a fair bit of electrical noise, the card produced quite good sound that was essentially as quiet as it would be as if it were in a separate enclosure. She had proper power supply and ground isolation, local re-regulation, and ran all signal traces on internal layers with ground/power planes on the external faces of the PCB. Worked great.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
[1]The closest thing you have to latency in these circuits is slew-rate, which is measured in volts per _nano_seconds. There are also the phase shift/distortions that the GP mentions, but the truth is these are practically impossible for humans to perceive in any real sense. 'specially for audio frequencies and circuits that aren't garbage.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
OK, everyone's talking about the noise produced inside a PC, but what in a PC is going to have noise at audible frequecnies?
You don't need noise at audible frequencies, you only need noise that produces unwanted harmonics at audible frequences.
EMI, for one, introduces all kinds of artifacts. Have you ever held your mobile phone near a powered speaker? Did you hear the crackling/popping noise coming from it? Yet, your phone communicates at 900MHz or above, which by your reasoning should be inaudible. High-resolution DACs are very sensitive to electrical interference. Such interference usually does not mean co-resonance (where the device oscillates with the same frequency as the noise source), but more often "beating".
In the same vein, there are plenty of devices inside a PC that impact the stability of the power supply voltage rails. Small wrinkles on the power rail might again cause DAC inaccuracy, but of more importance is its impact on signal timing: a power surge (or dip) will affect the slew rate of transistors, which can cause inaccuracies in the timing of signals.
In how many ways this can affect music reproduction is up for debate. But usually the second form of interference (jitter) causes much more audible problems than the first.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't.
But I don't do anything that revolves around audio.
Of course 99.5% of the people who claim to be audiophiles and claim they can 'tell the difference' don't need one either. Its just a different type of epenis.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've gone through various cards and I can definitely tell a difference between grades. The gold shielded $1000 cables are bullshit; but an obscenely thin aluminum cable will destroy sound and video quality (there are truly shit products out there), and the solution to that is a $12 RCA cable (audio/video/stereo) instead of the chinese crap that came with your game system.
A low-end SB Live! or SB Audigy card, however, works wonderfully. The Emu10k1 chipset in the audigy clearly provides a higher grade tha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Gold shield? I've never seen any cable that used anything for the shield other than either aluminum foil (with a drain wire) or a braided copper or silver shield. Even the expensive cables almost invariably use copper in one form or another. Gold is a poor conductor and would make an awful shield. It's only used to coat connectors because it doesn't oxidize.
Cheap cables can degrade the sound, mostly by having too small a wire gauge for the main conductor. Thus, on average, judging cables by their diame
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... Gold is a poor conductor ...
Gold is a superior conductor to aluminum and not much worse than copper. I'm guessing its cost has more to do with aluminum winning out on low end shielding. :)
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I put my PC into a wooden case so the bits would properly resonate before being sent to the speakers.
Ghost Recon (Score:4, Interesting)
Years ago, I got Ghost Recon for Christmas. I had all the minimum specs of the game - and most of the recommended - but one thing never mentioned was a sound card. Now, for normal singleplayer gameplay there was almost never an issue. However, when playing online, where there could be anywhere from 16 to 32 sounds going at once, my game would slow to a screeching hault for the length of the gunfight - essentially making me useless online. I couldn't even play the support class because a full auto-machine gun tended to slow things down a bit, so I never went anything but the sniper and would always run to the flanks to try and avoid my game from hearing any sounds besides my own shots. Had to disable music and some ambient effects just to get that going.
Since then, now that I'm older and I can afford things on my own - I've never gotten a computer for gaming without a soundcard. I never want to be in that situation again, and I figure dedicated hardware was the way to go (like a good Graphics card helps with the display of things obviously, so I naturally assume a sound-card provides the same assistance with audio).
Now - whether that's still the case, could I go and grab the latest game, meet minimum specs, and have audio cause lag? I don't know. If so, I think soundcards are still necessary. Especially for the EAX effects and such.
Re:Ghost Recon (Score:4, Informative)
Sometimes Yes You Do (Score:2, Informative)
Realtek? (Score:2)
Realtek's sound chips / drivers don't play nice with a few games I enjoy, namely NWN1 & other Aurora Engine games.
Revealing indeed (Score:2)
Asus' $30 Xonar DG and its considerably more expensive $280 Xense cousin. Everything from gaming performance to signal quality is explored, and it's the blind listening tests that prove most revealing.
They reveal the authors insistence on going into excruciating detail on everything. Maybe his attention to detail makes him a better audio engineer/evaluator, but honestly we would have been fine with "The subjects preferred X card for Y music by a substantial margin"...
Largely depends on your speakers (Score:2)
If you buy a set of not-too-expensive surround speakers (I have the Edifier 501s - a bargain at $150 a few years ago) then you should go for a discrete soundcard imho. If you're just going to pipe the sound through a couple of $5 speakers, then don't bother.
Vinyl (Score:4, Insightful)
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Vinyl is strictly worse than any semi-modern solution when technical merits are concerned. The only reason you can have vinyls that sound better is because of the bastard recording industry and their loudness war [wikipedia.org].
Re:Vinyl (Score:5, Insightful)
Or because people prefer the sound of vinyl, coloration and all. You can measure the performance of a medium and determine which is the most neutral (or the "best" from a technical pov), but that doesn't always equate to the one which people think sounds "best" to their ears. I get into this a lot with audio fans who say that their $xxxx gear sounds "better" than something much cheaper, despite the test results saying the cheaper one is as good or better from a transparency pov - our ears don't always like transparent (tube amps are great evidence of that!).
Where are the 'real' reviews of peripherals (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a m audio delta 2940 PCI card I bought on ebay and hooking it up to my Tripath 2020 amp with fostex full rangers literally (figuratively) blew me away. The quality of the output compared to the rear output on the SBLive (kx drivers) was night and day. Amazing. I got it to do some digitisation of old audio recordings.
Does anybody have any quantitive measurements of the Apri 2010 Mac book pro As i'm interested in doing some recording with that wondered how good a quality I'm likely to get.
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A USB breakout box is desired as it means I can use a higher quality offboard DAC for playback, as the analog sound out the mac is OK, it's nothing amazing imo.
Depends on purpose... (Score:2)
My HTPC uses my ATI card as the soundcard - HDMI audio. Which is nice because it does support the necessary protected path audio so I can play my blu-rays and send the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio over HDMI.
My laptop has a USB dongle that encodes 5.1 audio into a DTS or DD stream so I can play games with surround. Again, not likely something to have onboard anymore (the old nVidia chipsets used to have a DD encoder).
And there's also the music (though usually they go for Firewire or USB interfaces?)
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Which is nice because it does support the necessary protected path audio
The protected audio path is suddenly "necessary" and "nice"?!?
What the hell... man, please get an audio player software that disregards DRM (Blu-Ray DRM has been defeated) and you'll be able to send this to any sound card no matter if it degrades to the protected audio path or not.
You do. (Score:2)
both x-treme music card and altec lansing fx6021 were rather cheap. no, you really dont need to spend $400 on a hipster-labeled 'Beyond gameRx SuperCardBrand', but, you should spend some if you want to get some.
unfortunately both xtreme music and fx6021 are
Rather depends... (Score:2)
If you are in the really cheap seats, you should probably spend whatever audio money you have on speakers or headphones that don't utterly suck. OK speakers/headphone drivers are still much trickier than OK silicon amps and DACs. On the other hand, a lot of today's fancy motherboards are happy to output S/PDIF in your choice of optical or electrical, which lets the DACs and amplification in your receiver, which can be of virtually
does anyone still buy overpriced creative crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
used to spend $250 or so on a sound card in the old days but in the last few years the onboard chips have become good enough. the worst part about the old Audigy cards was you had to install all the crappy software that most people didn't use
Hello? What about the dick-waving contest? (Score:5, Funny)
How am I supposed to gloat about how awesome my sound setup is if I don't have a discrete sound card? Instead of wasting time with blind listening tests, they should go to a bar, walk up to a woman and say:
versus
This is what I call real-life testing scenarios.
Re:Hello? What about the dick-waving contest? (Score:4, Funny)
I think in this case, since you don't want to wake up your parents upstairs, the integrated option would probably be best.
Oh man, the memories... (Score:2)
Dude, I remember back in the day when I got a Creative AWE 64 Gold card. That's right, the ISA one with the gold-plated RCA outputs, expandable RAM, and general kickassery.
I still have the shiny plastic bit that came on the front of the box! It's sitting just to the left of the framed Fuckwad Theory print [livingwithanerd.com].
Creative X-FI is far better than my onboard audio. (Score:2)
Despite Creative's very rocky buggy drivers early on and design issues with early X-FI's The Fatality Tittanium card has been incredible compared to my built in audio on my intel board.
I could NEVER get line in to work on the realtek stuff. It was always flakey, the drivers first said it wasnt possible due to a design bug, then a year later they updated and line in was there... but it barely functioned right. I use line in because I have 2 workstations next to each other.
So I went and bought an XFI... think
It's the noise (Score:3, Insightful)
The main reason to get a discrete card is the noise. Onboard audio always puts out white noise to the speakers, which you really can hear in a quiet environment. My Xonar D2X puts out no noise at all; you can put your ear right to the speaker and hear nothing. This way I can leave the speakers on instead of having to turn them on each time I want to watch a movie and turn them back off again to avoid the damn noise grating on my ears. The card's sound quality is excellent and Linux fully supports it.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on the application (Score:2)
I do lots of stuff with DSP, playing with various sorts of digital modulation and demodulation. While the crappiest sound interface can capture everything there is to capture from a communications-quality audio signal, it's handy to have some extra signal-to-noise ratio or sampling rate for particular applications. I've played with PSK31 [wikipedia.org], HF weather fax [wikipedia.org] and weather satellites [wikipedia.org].
...laura
Sound engineers do (Score:2)
So yes, sometimes.
Not anymore (Score:2)
Naturally this answer will vary depending on job-type requirements, but in general, if you're playing games or playing back music, the answer is now a pretty cut and dry "No".
For many years integrated sound sucked. I would purposefully look for boards that didn't include it when motherboard shopping (didn't want unused ports on my board). Lately though, integrated sound - and network, has gotten to the point where it's good enough for anyone not wanting to indulge in a specialty/niche action.
Sound cards j
DDLive/DTS Connect (Score:3, Informative)
If you want digital surround sound for a HTPC, you want Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect to transcode into DD/DTS bitstream into your HT receiver.
AFAIK there are currently ZERO onboard sound chips that do this.
Yes, you could run 6 cables from the back of the HTPC into the analog preamp ins on your receiver (assuming it isn't a skinny modern HTPC-in-a-box that only has SPDIF or HDMI in) but you'd likely also end up with hum and other strange sound artifacts from the chintzy DAC..
These days, I'd _REALLY_ prefer a dump of 5.1 LPCM over HDMI, and it's technically probably easier to do to boot, or at least less license-y..
They always forget to test for power supply noise (Score:3, Insightful)
PC audio testers always forget to test for the influence of power supply on output noise. I noticed simply changing the power supply makes a big difference to the output noise level. Also some ventilators and other PC components draw current in bursts so there are nice clicks on transitions. This will affect both on-board sound and internal audio cards. I can tolerate a few decibels of white noise, but I don't like to feel like a doctor listening to PC internals. So I'd like to know how an audio component performs in worst case power supply scenario.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, when my friends and I started podcasting with multiple people we found ourselves looking into audio cards at Newegg for the first time in a decade.
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Re:Phirst phoast (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely right, but not only if you intend to record new audio. If you intend to podcast or make music with your computer, whether with MIDI instruments, or by using found sounds or with a microphone and guitar, you'll want to have a discrete audio adapter.
And it can be done very cheaply with professional results. USB audio adapters, with included pre-amps for mics and direct instrument connections, can be had for well under $100. And once you get the audio into the computer, you'll want to be able to hear it loudly and accurately, using the outputs on the adapter. Though many home music producers say it's absolutely necessary to use a pair of high-quality (audio) monitors to mix down the sound, a lot of passable work can be done with a good pair of headphones (though you'll have to make some adjustments to compensate), especially if you're doing electronica or dance music.
I designed the computer music lab at a major university, with a big fat budget, and I've helped students get off the ground with a few hundred bucks (including a midi controller).
Commercial-quality audio production has never been more accessible, and that makes me happy if for no other reason than that it can cut the major record labels out of the chain from idea to finished product.
Re:Phirst phoast (Score:4, Insightful)
If I had a nickel for every time I've sat someone down in front of a decent quality sound system (think $500 system, counting receiver and speakers or receiver and headphones) and played them an album that they, "know inside and out" and they find something new that they've heard before, I would be able to afford the amazing speakers [legacyaudio.com] that a friend works with. Let's be honest, as long as people consider iTunes 128 kbps AAC to be, "High Quality" and 256 kbps AAC to be, "Highest Quality" with 128 MP3 being acceptable, it doesn't matter how expensive your soundcard is, it won't sound good.
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Your SB16 came w/ SCSI? I feel ripped off - mine has an IDE Controller on it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh yeah, need something to power this 2X CD-ROM drive. Now if I can just find my CD caddy so I can load it...
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I actually remember both of those, *and* why you would need those particular solutions back in the day. (For those of you youngsters, PC motherboards prior to the mid-90s were not blessed with the on-board ports that are standard today...)
-MT.
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You got the better deal, they cleaned the controller for you.
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Actually, the built in sound cards are pretty decent, for virtually everything (games, music, videos, etc). The average person doesn't care.
The built in cards are no more free than the on-board IDE/SATA/USB/network. It's part of the board and it has a component cost. Just because a component can be replaced with a PCI card doesn't mean that the on-board component is free.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience, the only time it's worth having a discrete sound card is if you have a kick-ass set of headphones (or speaker setup). For the average $100 set of headphones/$400 speaker setup? Totally unecessary. Now, it's worth it if you want "surround" virtualization with headphones, but otherwise, again, totally unecessary.
Of course, if you truly care about sound quality, you'll just use a digital output (either through USB or Optical) and buy a nice external DAC, thereby completely bypassing any potential electrical interference generated from a sound card.
Note: I run an ATH-AD700 off my built-in sound card and I think it sounds great, so no accusations of audiodouchebaggery on my part, please.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
are you out of your mind?
Out of hundreds of people that I interact with during any given week, none of them have $400 speakers hooked up their PEE CEE.
no wonder this country is going to shit.
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Never heard of people using one of those "home theater in a box" setups? Or people producing music? Or people dual-purposing a high-end audio setup?
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I don't have $400 speakers plugged in to my TV!
I didn't say $400 speakers, I said setup. There is a very, VERY big difference.
People producing music are not your "average" setup.
You sure about that? You'd be surprised how low-budget you can go and still produce a great-quality sound.
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In my experience, the only time it's worth having a discrete sound card is if you have a kick-ass set of headphones (or speaker setup). For the average $100 set of headphones/$400 speaker setup? Totally unecessary. Now, it's worth it if you want "surround" virtualization with headphones, but otherwise, again, totally unecessary.
Of course, if you truly care about sound quality, you'll just use a digital output (either through USB or Optical) and buy a nice external DAC, thereby completely bypassing any potential electrical interference generated from a sound card.
Note: I run an ATH-AD700 off my built-in sound card and I think it sounds great, so no accusations of audiodouchebaggery on my part, please.
Don't forget your gold-plated cables.
Got relays, beyatch? (Score:5, Informative)
Sound quality matters, but sometimes small features that one might usually overlook even more.
For example, say that you have a nice speaker setup and a good amp, but an aging pre-amp that can no longer decode the latest audio formats. If you run things with a PC, the pre-amp is basically a very expensive DAC. If you can find a sound-card with good DAC's on it you can, in theory, just toss the old pre-amp and connect your computer directly to your amp.
Problem! When a computer boots up, a large voltage spike goes through its various components including the audio card. With many audio cards or audio chipsets this spike goes right out the line to your amp, which dutifully amplifies it into a very large CRAWHOOMP!!! Besides causing your cat or dog to projectile defecate on whatever it happens to be near at the time, this can also damage your speakers and/or amp!
How do other components like pre-amps get around this problem? Good audio components all have some way of electrically isolating their outputs from the rest of the device so that these power-up CRAWHOOMP's don't happen. This usually means electromechanical relays. This is why your expensive amp or receiver usually makes some clicking noises moments after being powered up. That's the relays clicking into place once voltage levels have normalised.
Good audio cards, like the Asus Xonar series, also have these now. On-board chip-sets usually do not since it would add a few dollars to the price of the board and most people don't plug their computers output directly into an expensive amp and speakers.
Long story short, what audio components you hook up to your computer and how you hook them up both have a large impact on the features you need in your computer's audio card. For a long time, computers had zero chance of replacing pre-amps because almost all audio cards lacked the small features that good audio gear almost universally possesses. That's changing, and about time too!
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Depends which ones. I have tried making a media center out of nearly anything short of a dead badger. Based on my experience:
Most VIA EPIAs have sound quality on par with discrete audio solutions. It is something you can hook to a proper amp and not be disgusted by what comes out from the other end. Most via based mini-ITXes can proudly play flac encoded audio with proper Hi Fi quality. So are some of the older Crystal Audio chipsets found on really old high end motherboards.
Compared to that most audio on I
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It is a lot cheaper though. No extra board, just a couple more inexpensive components for the pick and place machine. The solder, admin overhead, etc comes for free since the board gets that with or without the extra chip. That's especially true with the common technique of making one master board and then lesser boards are just a matter of not actually placing all of the chips.
In more tightly integrated chipsets it costs even less. They don't save much at all leaving part of the die blank. Then it's just a
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been in the industry for about 25 years. And I can tell. I have a media center set up with about 15 speakers in all. I definitely can tell. I don't disagree with you that sound quality and features are better with an add-in card. I just don't agree that sound quality is that bad with on-board audio.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but what about silence quality? The onboard sound options I've tried over the last few years have all suffered from appalling noise levels. Installing even a basic but quiet sound card can make a big improvement in overall sound quality.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW, in my experience going with any onboard sound card is not the best way to go these days. I used to use lots of different high end sound cards, but now that new high end DACs (digital analog converter) actually have USB input, the best way to get sound out of a computer/digital device is the same way you get it off a high end turntable or CD transport - go from source to DAC, then convert it. The device drivers that allow you to treat an attached USB device as a digital audio device are very good, avail
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
No way, I am the type of person that says the $8.00 HDMI is as good as the $120 HDMI from Monster--because it is (www.3dguru.com). I'm the guy that says that the coat hanger sounds as good as the Monster audio cables. I am saying that the on-board sound is good enough for my audio system.
Don't buy from Monster!!!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:4, Informative)
No, baby, it's not about the length - it's about how you plug it in.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Funny)
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I tried that on my desktop at home, kinda funny, but the interference got encoded into the TOSlink signal, as at some point it has to travel electrically. I was kind of surprised about this, as I would have thought it would sound good too, but Realtek truly is utter crap.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Educate yourselves (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Educate yourselves (Score:5, Interesting)
I prefer language to be understandable in both its written and spoken forms.
It is, but that's why we have separate dialects for speech and for writing. There's no need to compensate for the weaknesses of one in the dialect used for the other.
Re:Educate yourselves (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the Chicago Manual of Style allows " Asus' " as an alternative to "Asus's". Just make sure to be consistent.
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Hey! When not using my headphones, I use the speakers built into my monitor, you insensitive clod!
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Output to my monitor's speakers doesn't even pass through my soundcard... unless it does so prior to sending it to my video card, which then sends it out to my monitor via HDMI.
Then again, I don't use my monitor's speakers unless I want to independently control the volume on it; normally I use my surround system connected to the computer's sound outputs.
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Most of the time, I use my ATH-AD700s, but when I want to show people a youtube video or if I'm gaming and watching a movie, I'll just use the speakers built into the monitor. My main monitor is an Asus VH236H (secondary is a Dell 2005FPW). I gotta say, considering they are just speakers built into the back of a monitor, the VH236H has some decent built-ins. They are tinny and devoid of bass, just like any built-in speaker on a budget monitor...but I'm constantly surprised by the amount of detail that ma
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Yes, yes, we get it, your audiophile sensibilities are so much more refined than our plebian ears. But if the average listener can plug into a 30 dollar card and a 300 dollar monstrosity and not hear any difference, isn't the person not sensatized to tiny imperfections in sound output getting the better deal here?
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When random adolescents were asked, "Is apathy and ignorance the biggest problem among American teenagers?" the typical response was, "I don't know, and I don't care."
Much like the onboard sound on my system (and I do have a decent set of Klipsch speakers from 8 years ago or so) I really don't give a crap what sound device I'm using. The last time I bought a dedicated sound device, I bought one of those cool Creative external devices for something like $80. It lasted a little over a year before it mysterio
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Or save your money and get something decent like a Firewire external audio interface. I have a nice 12 in/out one that does 24-bit 192Khz. Obviously I'm not using that for general purpose stuff. You then have your PC and sound device well apart and isolated.
If you're really serious about using analogue outputs (really, why bother?) and want the best quality then you would be using balanced in/out.
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I have been using multiple distributions of linux for years on all variety of onboard sound cards and not one of them has ever caused the things you posted. Just to offer a counterexample.