Audio cards still needed?

[imported_apocalypse]

Are audio cards still needed these days? Back in the day when Creative exclusively ruled the (gaming) audio card market, all I heard on forums were people ripping on the quality of on-board audio and saying audio cards were the only way to go, but now I don't see that much.

How does the quality of on-board audio today compare to external sound cards? I'm getting an Asus P5Q Pro, if the motherboard matters, though I see most use the realtek audio chip.

Would I hear the difference with low/mid level 5.1 speakers, e.g the x-540, or even with my Sennheiser headphones?

 

[sswingle]

I think most people will say on board is fine nowadays.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: ap0calypse
Are audio cards still needed these days?

Not if you're not using them in a professional capacity. Most onboard sound has excellent quality 7.1 surround and optical in/out.

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: Roguestar

Originally posted by: ap0calypse
Are audio cards still needed these days?

Not if you're not using them in a professional capacity. Most onboard sound has excellent quality 7.1 surround and optical in/out.

And even if you were using them in a professional capacity, you probably wouldn't want to buy a creative card for that task.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Give onboard audio a try, if you don't like it, look for an inexpensive 3rd party (Auzentech, Diamond, whatever) sound board.

If you get one of the better realtek chips on a motherboard that is at all reasonably well made, the on-board audio should be quite fine for almost any general purpose use.

The only bad part about PC motherboard audio is that sometimes the jacks are in inconvenient locations, and they sometimes break if you're not careful to minimize the strain you put on them, and if you do a lot of plug / unplug cycles. The situation is scarcely better with card based sound devices, though at least they are able to be replaced / repaired more easily than the motherboard itself if you break a connector on it.

Either way you could get some PC induced "noise" in the audio at low levels or at high volume levels, so a card doesn't really solve that in many cases. Using digital optical / SPDIF out connected to a digital input DAC / amplifier would tend to solve the problem, though, but that is problematic if your amp doesn't support both PCM and AC52 / DTS / Dolby type formats.

 

[CKent]

Do you think iBuds sound good? If so, onboard is fine.

 

[dmw16]

I remember when on board audio was the worst thing ever and your computer wasn't even close to high end until you sprung for a sound card (either Turtle Beach or Sound Blaster). These days, on board audio seems more than fine.

 

[Operandi]

On board sound is all over the place in terms of quality...

Typically newer boards are much better but my friends Asus Core2 machine is pretty terrible. On the other hand the HTPC I built around a AM2 Gigabyte board sounded pretty impressive when I had it in my Adcom / DCM Timewindow system for a few days.

 

[corkyg]

On boartd audio is getting better all the time, and unless you have top quality external audio transducer5s, you most likely could not tell the difference in a blind ears test.

 

[Synomenon]

The RealTek ALC1200 on my new Asus G45 board sounds really good. Better than the ALC883 on my previous Asus board. Realtek's pretty good with driver updates too unlike Creative.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Roguestar

Originally posted by: ap0calypse
Are audio cards still needed these days?

Not if you're not using them in a professional capacity. Most onboard sound has excellent quality 7.1 surround and optical in/out.

I agree. My HTPC goes optical out to my receiver and the sound is fantastic IMO. My gaming PC has two 3.5mm (headphone jack) outputs going to an outboard power amp/monitor speakers and a subwoofer. I really like the sound.

And the best part? NO CREATIVE DRIVERS screwing everything up. I was a Soundblaster user from way back in the beginning to the X-Fi Ultra (or whatever the heck it was called) days. Since going to onboard sound roughly three years ago, I've not regretted my decision one bit.

 

[yhelothar]

There are still a few games out there that would greatly benefit from hardware sound acceleration. Not sure which ones those are.
But out of all the games I've played, I think the only game that pertains to this is richard burns rally. I've noticed that it sounds much better on a sound card that supports hardware sound acceleration than one that only supports software.

In terms of music quality, as long as your onboard has a half decent DAC, in which most do now, especially with the intel HD azalia audio, you won't hear any difference by getting a sound card.

 

[imported_Scoop]

Just waiting for that Asus card with HDMI for an HTPC.

 

[TheKub]

I have not purchased a sound card since the AudigyII era. On-board is perfectly fine for me.

 

[imported_apocalypse]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi
The RealTek ALC1200 on my new Asus G45 board sounds really good. Better than the ALC883 on my previous Asus board. Realtek's pretty good with driver updates too unlike Creative.

Thats good news for me.

Originally posted by: astroidea
There are still a few games out there that would greatly benefit from hardware sound acceleration. Not sure which ones those are.
But out of all the games I've played, I think the only game that pertains to this is richard burns rally. I've noticed that it sounds much better on a sound card that supports hardware sound acceleration than one that only supports software.

Doesn't vista remove the use of hardware sound acceleration and make it all CPU based software sound processing?

 

[0roo0roo]

yup, fewer and fewer games will depend on hardware 3d effects..and its gonna be done in software, making it universal support. and the devs will have an easier time...and no more creative monopoly
we're up to 4 cpu cores now..eventually 8..sparing one for sound is fine

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
yup, fewer and fewer games will depend on hardware 3d effects..and its gonna be done in software, making it universal support. and the devs will have an easier time...and no more creative monopoly
we're up to 4 cpu cores now..eventually 8..sparing one for sound is fine

Yeah, I certainly wouldn't doubt that's true.
Back in the day, on the old single core CPUs, especially in the pre 2GHz days, running a game in software sound vs hardware sound was the difference between 20% CPU utilization and 3-5%.

 

[imported_Flimflam]

I keep going back to my audigy 2. The input on my onboard is adds noise and doesnt sound as good. Playback in some games makes it freeze for a second or two. having said that I'd probably never buy another creative card, but I would go for another brand.