Anybody still use add in sound cards

[eldorado99]

that's the card I'm looking to get when I move. Sounds like you love it. What kind of headphones do you use with it and what kind of speakers?

Yes it is pretty great. I wish I would have bought the 7.1 version now though. It comes with a daughter board for composite/RCA analog out for all channels. The standard version only has stereo out for analog (and digital for 7.1 bypassing analog). You used to be able to purchase the daughter board separately but I can't seem to find it for sale anymore.

Anyways for headphones I am just running some AKG 702's, which sound pretty good on it. I may upgrade to something better in the future but right now I am happy with them. More importantly for the stereo out I am running a couple of Bryston 4B's with a pair ofB&W 801's.

 

[MrSquished]

By decent I imagine you're talking some $500 headphones. I can't possibly afford to live so lavishly, I wish I did. Spending $100 on Sony Golds was the most I've ever spent for headphones which likely casts be a PC peasant in the order of things.

Yeah my favorite cans were $500 a year ago, the Beyer T90's, but now are a hundred cheaper. Honestly my 3 audio purchases a year ago were all irresponsible purchases financially speaking at the time. I have a few lapses a year where I go overboard on something big, for me that is, it's all relative. It's not like I dropped 60 G on a luxury car or 20 G on a diamond necklace. I wish. I don't make ATOT money but managed to squeeze it out.

But whatever in a few years after some raises or getting a new higher paying job, things will change and you'll have the loot.

What seems to be the gateway drug for headphones are the Sennheiser HD600's. They can be found new on Amazon for $300 but sometimes as low as $250, or you can go used. The HD 600's blew me away and made me finally realize what the hype was about as far as high end audio. The T90's took it to another level. There is a point of diminishing returns. A $1500 pair of headphones will not be 3x better than a $500 set. It's more like a 15% gain perhaps.

 

[MrSquished]

After dropping some Zeppelin, now listening to some high bitrate down tempo music and am just blown away by the clarity, separation and overall quality of the music

 

[Anubis]

i used to use an M audio card but then after a driver+windows version issue i stopped. i just run optical out of the mobo into a home theater AVR that takes care of everything else and does a better job at it vs anything i would be sticking in my computer or 99% of all desktop DACs

 

[bigboxes]

I had an X-Fi in my last main rig, but it was PCI and my new mobo had no PCI slots. Tried out the onboard and it was good enough for me. It's a high end mobo so that probably makes some difference. However, if I had more money (and a lot less debt) I might invest in a dedicated soundcard again some day. I was going to reuse that X-Fi card when I build my HTPC a year ago, but I didn't need it as I was using the optical out on the mobo to port directly to my Denon. I have the X-Fi and an Audigy 2 ZS in a box somewhere. Where do bad soundcards go when they die?

 

[postmortemIA]

X-fi XtremeGamer, i have lost count how many rigs it survived. Maybe this is reason why Creative is almost out of business, you buy one of their cards and they last forever.

Even drivers are not that bad, box came with XP and Vista drivers. And we're all the way through windows 10.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I've been using an X-Fi Titanium HD for the past 5 years. Its pretty solid, and I actually don't make good use of it (has a good quality analog input), but it sounds decent for me. I thought about getting a vintage stereo receiver but too difficult to know what is good and not and prices have gotten out of whack, and then I'd have to figure out speakers. I've been using a set of the original Swan Mk stereo, and they work well enough for my listening.

Thunderbolt has definitely opened up a plethora of interface options!
Finally replaced our firewire MOTU devices with Apogee Ensembles.
Onboard audio is full of noise, distortion and other bad things and most products with the name "Creative" in them are not much better particularly when dealing with drivers and i/o. The USB sound blaster is actually pretty decent though. But it lacks proper balanced outputs.

Lots of interesting stuff going on in the audio world. I can't help but think a lot of it is pointless (like the push for mega-bandwidth DSD signals, I think they're up to 5.2MHz, er nevermind they're up to 22.5MHz) just to keep pushing new specs to sell new equipment (that checks all the feature boxes). At least on the audiophile side. I can't remember what it is, but I seem to recall that there seemed to be some movement towards a new type of signal/DAC (that is closer to PCM, but allegedly is supposed to resolve the issues that the what like 2-3 types of DACs used for processing those signals has), but that might have just been the marketing of some certain company. Speaking of, I think Chord is actually doing their own DAC designs (versus using the typical BB/TI/AKM/Sabre/WM/etc) using FPGAs (and in the case of the, I think Mojo, is getting raved about quite a bit).

And of course the changes happening in the headphone world (where they're still debating different target sound curves and HRTF and whatnot). But Tyll (of InnerFidelity) seems pretty high on the prospects of what going digital and basically making the whole signal chain integrated (so the processor, DAC, amp, and transducers all will be aimed at working together, with DSP being the big benefit where it will enable powerful manipulation both to get as "correct" of sound as possible, but also to enable a lot of tuning based on the user's preference, where the DSP could correct for anomalies that arise).

In another thread on here, I made the case for what VR/AR will bring to the audio realm (if you read up on the developer side of how to do those "right", doing the audio well is an integral part of accomplishing that). And this is certainly wishful thinking, but I'm hoping that being able to offer a complete experience with VR, might usher in a new era like the 70s and prog-rock and concept albums. But maybe it'll at least start a push for binaural mixes (and react to your positioning)? Probably not (since the iPod sadly didn't usher binaural mixes despite it really pushing personal audio and headphone markets).

They've improved onboard quite substantially (depends on the specific boards, but the Realtek 1150 actually often does quite well - obviously it won't compare in performance to $500+ external pro boxes, but for typical users a lot of integrated will be more than good enough for the speakers they have attached). And as we've seen, plenty of people enjoy distortion.

Creative has actually changed quite a bit. They have several external cards (including a nifty but a bit expensive one that features a modest 2 channel speaker amp) that seem to be quite good. Even their standard fare has improved, and their higher end offerings have an abundance of features and decent audio quality. If you're a real pro then yeah you'll likely be better off with a real pro mixer if for nothing other than the interface, but Creative is fine, if overpriced (but then they're hardly the only audio company that describes). The funny thing is, Creative still actually has a dominant role in setting how things could go (I believe they control OpenAL which I think most games use), but their hardware isn't a necessary part of that any more (so no being locked to EAX levels based on the Audigy hardware you have).

And actually Creative had some quite good (for the price) pro stuff under E-Mu. I don't know if they even still produce those though. I think their more serious stuff is being done under Cambridge (DACMagic for instance, although I think it is still a consumer oriented device, so not sure if they do much in Pro audio).

Creative also was keeping the good quality Fostex headphones that Denon had been using (and then decided to stop and replace with inferior in basically every way but lame "gamer bling" looks), for a while there.

Just don't go looking at their hugely expensive ridiculous sound bar.

 

[magomago]

I do. I'm a bit of an audiophile though. The built in cards usually have sucky amplification and tend to be a bit noisy.

Soundblaster Z is the best for the money (super cheap now too!)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102048&Tpk=N82E16829102048

is there really a difference? I'm curious if it makes a small difference, or if we are talking about a huge difference in quality.

 

[Six]

Soundblaster? Haven't heard that name in the last 12 years. Thought they've gone extinct.

My setups are:
USB to headphone DAC to headphones or amplifier
HDMI to HDTV to optical out to DAC to amplifier.

 

[VirtualLarry]

For VR, an upgraded Aureal Vortex sound card would be nice. I remember playing Unreal Tournament with positional audio, it was amazing!

 

[ch33zw1z]

I'm not a huge audio buff. The on board sound in most boards I buy is realtek, I have one board that the on board died in many moons ago, I tossed in a pci sb4 and it works fine

 

[zinfamous]

If you're a pro doing sound recording/producing for records or movies or whatever, then you definitely need a discreet card.

For all other purposes, you don't need one. Mainstream Mobos, even under 100 bucks, come with very capable 7.1 chips on them. If you need anything more than that for games, then you are deluding yourself into thinking you need to spend more money for no reason whatsoever. I mean, it's totally fine if you want to do that, just don't try to convince anyone with common sense that you are gaining any benefit from games with your discreet SoundBlaster....or whoever makes them now.

I last put one in a machine, c. 2003.

 

[postmortemIA]

If you're a pro doing sound recording/producing for records or movies or whatever, then you definitely need a discreet card.

For all other purposes, you don't need one. Mainstream Mobos, even under 100 bucks, come with very capable 7.1 chips on them. If you need anything more than that for games, then you are deluding yourself into thinking you need to spend more money for no reason whatsoever. I mean, it's totally fine if you want to do that, just don't try to convince anyone with common sense that you are gaining any benefit from games with your discreet SoundBlaster....or whoever makes them now.

I last put one in a machine, c. 2003.

It is not all about gaming with games that use software audio positioning, it is about sound quality and extra features that come with these cards.

 

[repoman0]

No onboard for me. I did an informal A/B comparison between a Schiit Modi 2 DAC and the onboard sound on my Z170 board, both plugged into a Sherwood analog stereo amp. Not a high end setup by any means but the difference was in the "night and day" category. I was bummed because part of the reason I upgraded to Z170 and Skylake was supposedly better onboard sound and I wanted to sell my DAC to partially fund it ... I ended up keeping the DAC.

Now I've sold the standalone DAC and I route audio through my 1070 HDMI out and use a Marantz 5.1 receiver to decode it.

IMO skip both onboard and add in cards and go with an external DAC+amp or all in one receiver unit.

 

[DigDog]

we've had this conversation before, several times .. it always ends in a -storm between people who say dedicated sounds better (and also throwing in a ton of technical reasons most of which are wrong and some which are right yet irrelevant) and people who understand audio. the correct answer is: use it if it makes you feel better.

 

[Darwin333]

Yeah my favorite cans were $500 a year ago, the Beyer T90's, but now are a hundred cheaper. Honestly my 3 audio purchases a year ago were all irresponsible purchases financially speaking at the time. I have a few lapses a year where I go overboard on something big, for me that is, it's all relative. It's not like I dropped 60 G on a luxury car or 20 G on a diamond necklace. I wish. I don't make ATOT money but managed to squeeze it out.

But whatever in a few years after some raises or getting a new higher paying job, things will change and you'll have the loot.

What seems to be the gateway drug for headphones are the Sennheiser HD600's. They can be found new on Amazon for $300 but sometimes as low as $250, or you can go used. The HD 600's blew me away and made me finally realize what the hype was about as far as high end audio. The T90's took it to another level. There is a point of diminishing returns. A $1500 pair of headphones will not be 3x better than a $500 set. It's more like a 15% gain perhaps.

Question: The HD 598s can be had for $150 versus $320 for the HD600s and $315 for the HD650s. What is the "sound quality" difference in these earphones assuming they are being run with decent equipment? Would one be better served getting the cheaper 598s and spending $150 on a decent DAC/amp or would you get better sound quality from the 600s and using the amp from a Xonar sound card? I understand that a lot of this is subjective but if you could use something like percentages to quantify, like you did with the price difference, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

 

[Skel]

I'm currently using the onboard. I've always used a SoundBlaster in my rig until a couple of years ago when I went through two of them within a couple of months. I'm sure I just got a bad run of them. I haven't upgraded to the newer SoundBlasters yet as I just haven't sat down to look at what I really wanted. It does feel odd not to have a SoundBlaster something or another in my machine though. I was such a fanboy of them in the 90s. It's a bit depressing to see how far they've fallen, as at one point you said sound for a computer and it was a SoundBlaster (or a really sad knock off that claimed to be 100% SoundBlaster compatible). I really thought when they started doing nvidia based video cards they were going to expand into a much larger company.

 

[deustroop]

Sound cards were obviously a necessity back in the days of early computing but in recent years with the technology of integrated sound circuits improving , the add in board is less an improvement. I found that for middle of the road sound quality, the bigger improvement came not from an improved dac but better speakers/headphones. I went from a sound blaster to on-board without a twitch but had my personal safe space exploded by a set of 2.1 high end speakers.

 

[brianmanahan]

soundblaster Z here, replaced my x-fi with it just last year

 

[SketchMaster]

Once upon a time my hearing was amazing. I poured money into top-end SB cards and speakers.

At 31 my hearing is shot from abuse. I don't bother with add-in cards other than a cheap USB one for my work laptop to drive my Sennheiser cans that block out the office and road noise.

 

[renz20003]

I didn't realize that you needed that much power to drive high end headphones.

I currently use the old Logitech x530s. They get the job done.

 

[Iron Woode]

I use the onboard audio on my ASROCK H97 Pro4 - alc892 codec with ELNA caps. The sound difference from a plain alc892 board was remarkable. Much more clear and crisp.

I use the Logitech Z640 speaker set.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

I have a ZxR in one rig, and an onboard in another. The ZxR sounds better, at least with 250 ohm headphones..

I'm kind of annoyed that there is a shortage of DTX motherboards, because my ideal setup would be one high end GPU in slot #2, with a dedicated sound card in slot #1. But instead I'm toying with the idea of giving up dedicated sound to go SFF. I like a 6700K + TXP setup, but the sound quality is just very meh on it compared to my ATX build which has the ZxR.

 

[bigboxes]

I use the onboard audio on my ASROCK H97 Pro4 - alc892 codec with ELNA caps. The sound difference from a plain alc892 board was remarkable. Much more clear and crisp.

I use the Logitech Z640 speaker set.

Yup. The ALC1150 codec on my board sounds pretty good to me. I realize there are different levels of sound quality. It's just going to have to take a lot to get much better. Diminishing returns.

 

[Imp]

If you're a pro doing sound recording/producing for records or movies or whatever, then you definitely need a discreet card.

For all other purposes, you don't need one. Mainstream Mobos, even under 100 bucks, come with very capable 7.1 chips on them. If you need anything more than that for games, then you are deluding yourself into thinking you need to spend more money for no reason whatsoever. I mean, it's totally fine if you want to do that, just don't try to convince anyone with common sense that you are gaining any benefit from games with your discreet SoundBlaster....or whoever makes them now.

I last put one in a machine, c. 2003.

Maybe it's my 2010 mobo's onboard sound, but I tried it and I could tell the difference between a Creative X-fi with music and a $700 receiver + bookshelf system. The onboard sounded muddled or flat. For games, I could give less of a shit, my volume is usually set very low for games and onboard with definitely be sufficient.

I don't get the $300 sound cards though... My current X-fi USB was like $90 years ago.