Anybody still use add in sound cards

[Fritzo]

Flat is your subjective placebo based opinion. The sound is digital and all 1's and 0's. As long as the bit stream isn't missing chunks, it would sound the same regardless of the processing unit. Now the volume level has to deal with amount of current going through the output, but in reality, you shouldn't be relying on a sound card or sound chip for that in the first place.

I think people are under misconceptions when it comes to sound from a computer. It's not analog anymore, and as long as the chips can handle the higher bit stream rates, they are all going to be the same when it comes to the fidelity of the sound. Which is the point of digital sound versus analog.

In the day onboard chips literally couldn't handle the sound well because they weren't powerful enough. There were also driver issues, and issues when it came to communications with other parts of the PC. There were also heat issues. That has pretty much all gone away. For most users the sound processing that is handled by the onbaord processors is more than enough. The amount of channels, and fidelity is more practically on par with the best stand-alone sound cards/devices. Now the power output for power devices will probably suck, but there are ways around that. If you are looking to mix in tons more channels for some other reason such as doing your own music mixing, then a stand-alone device/card made for that would suit that user better.

But if you are just playing games, watching videos, and listening to music then the built on sound cards are more than enough today.

Sound to the speakers is analog (I'm using 1/8" jacks), and "flat" is not subjective. It's kind of like putting a blanket over the speakers when using the onboard sound, and removing it when using the SB Z.

 

[MongGrel]

I just know what I hear, the Azuntech still has worked well for me over time.

Old pic on the ghetto setup, it's been rearranged a bit since then.

The 47" TV even looks small these days, still use it as an extended screen.

It has held up remarkably well over time, even with some burn in here and there depending on what is thrown at it.

 

[HumblePie]

Sound to the speakers is analog (I'm using 1/8" jacks), and "flat" is not subjective. It's kind of like putting a blanket over the speakers when using the onboard sound, and removing it when using the SB Z.

How are you getting analog sound out from an onboard sound chip built on a motherboard? I don't know of any current motherboards that do that at all. 1/8 or 3.5m jacks still do digital over the line from the output from the onboard chips. 3.5mm can do either analog or digital signals, but practically all current chips push out digital.

Onboard sound will more than likely push out less amps for volume, but a good amp will fix that. Do you have the soundblaster Z software adding things to the sound profile to "liven" up the sound through an equalizer setup of some sort? That is probably what is happening and giving you that "flat" comparison.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's a funny looking digital signal.



Straight from a built on sound card. First one is a 1khz tone in Audacity, the other is a DTMF tone.

I suppose SOME sound cards might use some kind of PWM output to simulate analog sound, but even then I think I'd still qualify that as analog, it's just an analog signal that happens to look digital. Speakers work analogly, it's just the nature of them. Even POTS is analog, even though the hardware at the end may be digitized. Most computer speakers will have a built in amp as well since the signal from the sound card does not have much power behind it.

Now if you're talking about USB speakers/headphones then that's a bit different, technically those probably show up as a sound card of their own and have nothing to do with the onboard one.

 

[VashHT]

Yeah not really sure what he's trying to say, the codecs used for onboard audio all have analog outputs. I have a powercolor HDX and it's analog out is definitely better than my onboard, it's especially noticeable when I use my nice headphones.

 

[HumblePie]

Guess I hadn't looked at that many boards lately that are still doing analog out through the 3.5mm jack.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So I setup the Scarlett 2i2 box at church just now, that I talked about in another post. The difference is night and day. This is for recording in my case. On the built on card we were getting lot of noise, which is typical of onboard. Usually it's not a big enough deal if it's only used for playback since whatever you are playing is going to overpower the noise, but for recording it was actually pretty bad on that particular system. We also have some 1000w stage lights and when those were on the dimmer the recording would pickup the 60hz noise. Not anymore.

The Scarlett box is basically a USB sound card and it also uses a proper audio grade cable, so no need to mess with adapters or making custom cables. Just a regular guitar cable. It will also take a XLR cable.





So long story short I did find a use case for a non built on card. But guess it's rather niche.

 

[Murloc]

I just output digital on hdmi with no processing and the marantz AVR handles decoding and D/A conversion.

Guess I hadn't looked at that many boards lately that are still doing analog out through the 3.5mm jack.

If you can connect simple headphones or PC speakers to it and hear music, it means it's an analog output, AFAIK all audio jack ports output that, the jack was invented in 1878 for analog purposes.
To output digital audio from a computer you have to use hdmi or spdif.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Guess I hadn't looked at that many boards lately that are still doing analog out through the 3.5mm jack.

I think any analog speakers would sound horrendous with the high harmonic content of a digital output on the 3.5mm

 

[John Connor]

Still use one here. Back then it meant 2-5 extra FPS.

 

[Imp]

The Scarlett box is basically a USB sound card and it also uses a proper audio grade cable, so no need to mess with adapters or making custom cables. Just a regular guitar cable. It will also take a XLR cable.

I almost got one a few months ago when I needed an XLR to USB adapter. Think it was pretty well reviewed, price wasn't bad. I went with a Shure version though. The Shure seems to act like a an external sound card when I plug it in with input and output options.

 

[pmv]

If you are using a digital connection from the computer to your sound system, which is what the majority of computer users have setup, then you aren't going to notice a difference in sound at all from the best sound card/device versus the onboard sound that is handling the same digital fidelity rate. Any one that thinks or says differently is mistaken.

Even when it comes to analog signals, very few sound devices support analog out today.

Really? Lord, I am _seriously_ out-of-date/out-of-touch, on this stuff.

I'm still using the (XFi?) card I got several PC-builds ago. Just kept transferring it to the new one. And just use an old midi-system someone else threw out to connect to the PC (have a better hifi but never actually use it any more).

Do people really all use digital to connect PCs to sound systems these days? I'm surprised at that...but then again, I guess fewer-and-fewer people use desktops either, so I'm just very very old.

Edit - reminds me that I used to fuss over whether a game supported EAX (of some version or other). But till just now I'd pretty much forgotten EAX even existed.

Edit again - I'm actually a bit surprised that Creative stayed in business, given how poorly they lived up to their name. They should have been called 'Moribund' or 'Stagnant'. Not quite as bad as Casio who don't seem to have changed their digital watches in the last 20 years.

 

[HumblePie]

I think any analog speakers would sound horrendous with the high harmonic content of a digital output on the 3.5mm

that's why I use a digital setup

 

[yhelothar]

Do people really all use digital to connect PCs to sound systems these days? I'm surprised at that...but then again, I guess fewer-and-fewer people use desktops either, so I'm just very very old.

No. It's mostly analog. It's the same jack that people have been using for decades. The same one on your 80s Walkman cassette tape player. It's the same 3.5mm headphone jack on your mp3 player and phone. Only a very few select surround sound 5.1 speaker systems and gaming headsets have a digital S/PDIF connector on it. Most of those are optical or coaxial digital.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

that's why I use a digital setup

No, I meant that if you fed a bunch of square waves to a speaker / amp's analog input, you'd get interesting sound
Unless you enjoyed listening to a mish-mash of odd harmonics.

 

[Imp]

No, I meant that if you fed a bunch of square waves to a speaker / amp's analog input, you'd get interesting sound
Unless you enjoyed listening to a mish-mash of odd harmonics.

Ugh... I picked up sound editing and got paranoid about frying other people's speakers. Did some reading and, apparently, square waves may be as bad as clipping a speaker by overloading the signal?

 

[MongGrel]

I made a bit of a joke to my cousin once who farms was heavily into hi-fi once and owned property miles away from anyone that he should buy a powered mixing board and stacks from a band selling them.

I had not seen him in many years, but bigger than shit he was grinning and had Peavey stacks with sub cabinets that a band could use for a small concert and a 24 track powered board in his living room when I visited a decade later

He is kind of a minor land baron these days, he was more like my brother than my brother was growing up, we hung out all the time.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ugh... I picked up sound editing and got paranoid about frying other people's speakers. Did some reading and, apparently, square waves may be as bad as clipping a speaker by overloading the signal?

I'd imagine it might actually be a bit hard on the speakers, because of the sudden jumps, basically go from one extreme to the other but decent speakers should hopefully handle pretty much anything thrown at them. I probably would not blast a sound wave (even sine) at the speaker's resonant frequency though. Now I'm kind of curious to try that with an old speaker to see if it would do anything.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Having an add-in card being worth it is dependent upon multiple factors:

1) If you have a shitty speaker system, no amount of additional sound card equipment will improve your sound. Why pay for the sound card if you didn't pay for speakers that can utilize it?
2) If you don't have the audio for it, it serves you no purpose as well. If you're playing 192 kbs Mp3's on a $200 sound card you're doing it wrong.

 

[Meghan54]

Or, you know, you could use an add-in sound card to replace an onboard sound solution that's died but the motherboard's still quite current?