Discrete sound cards and onboard sound.

[Cyrus9008]

I see endless threads about video cards and so on but rarely do I EVER see any posts on sound cards or reviews. I have been a huge advocate of of creative labs for several years going back to the days of before the Soundblaster Live! edition.

I certainly understand as to why people people put much more emphasis(and money) into their video cards because those sweet frame rates are oh so nice. I have tested the difference between onboard sound and my Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Ed.(I hate how they put that assholes name on it almost enough that I wouldn't buy it) and the difference is enormous.

I haven't tested it in quite sometime on the new motherboards but the clarity of those sound cards in my experience can't be beat. It helps with gaming as well, you can hear enemies more clearly as they try to sneak up to you.

My question is... Do the majority of you own a discrete sound card be it creative labs or not?

Edit: I also understand that many people have problems with Creative Labs complaining of driver issues and other marketing tactics but I'm only talking about performance of sound cards. I've never had a hiccup with any of my Creative cards over the years and I have owned several of them, it's the only brand I am familiar with other then realtek onboard sound. So I cannot give any feedback on other cards like the xonar.

and

Has onboard sound on some motherboards come up to the quality as to where you would not need a discrete sound card?

 

[oynaz]

When playing back sound, on-board sound cardsare getting so close to discrete cards that the price difference is nearly always better spend on better headphones/amp/speakers.
The difference is getting very small.

When recording, the picture is very different. Discrete cards are leaps and bounds ahead, even a lowly SB Live trounces any onboard solution.

But if you are taking recording seriously, you want to get in Maya/M-Audio/RME/Steinberg territory anyway.

 

[BrightCandle]

Discrete cards do have better 3d positional sound virtualisation for headphones but the high end Realtek cards support some amount of it as well. The days of it making any actual game performance difference are long gone I suspect, sound acceleration is a small part of CPU time these days and the Windows API has put to death hardware acceleration.

There is a sound quality difference quite evidentially. But unless you actually go out and spend proper money on your headphones or speakers your not going to spot the sound card being the limiting factor.

I still think the positional audio makes it worth it, and after using a Creative X-fi and an Asus Xonar I prefer the Dolby Headphones implementation on the Xonar. Both are much much better than the top end Realtek chipset that came with my motherboard.

 

[Zap]

Do the majority of you own a discrete sound card be it creative labs or not?
...
I'm only talking about performance of sound cards.
...
Has onboard sound on some motherboards come up to the quality as to where you would not need a discrete sound card?

I own quite a few discrete sound cards (various decent PCI cards, even couple PCIe X-Fi and Auzentech). They are all collecting dust in my garage.

Nobody short of a professional in the audio field "needs" a discrete sound card over one built into motherboards.

Regarding "performance" I have not noticed any system performance differences using discrete sound cards. The sound also sounds the same to my ears. Note that I only use stereo (speakers and headphones) so what I say may not apply to surround sound.

The only problem I've had was hearing system buzzing when using my headphones. Note that this is only using better headphones, and only while using front ports. TBH I have had the same problem with front ports plugged into the headers on SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium, so the problem was with the cables for the front ports not being shielded enough.

Some people claim that SoundBlaster cards in particular "sounds better" to their ears. This is due to the op amps that Creative uses, which subtly alters the sound in a particular way, plus because over the years people have gotten used to stuff sounding like that and associate it with "better." It is like how the bass and treble are always turned up in every rental car I have driven, and how all commercial radio stations use sound processing to "brighten" the music. It makes for a brighter sound that most people think sound "better." People have done experiments with removing the Creative op amps from an X-Fi and putting them on Auzentech cards, which makes the Auzentech card sound just like the Creative card.

EDIT: See post 10 in this thread on FM sounding "better" due to being compressed.

 

[go_gordon]

All my computers have been using the built-in sound cards for years. I used to be able to tell a slight difference, but now I guess built-in cards have gotten better. Can't tell the difference between built-in and discrete sound cards.

 

[sm625]

When you say the difference is enormous, do you mean the analog sound quality? Because when I run the optical out from my onboard sound it sounds pretty much the same as the optical out from my X-mystique pci card. I still prefer my X-mystique because it "cooperates" nicer with my hdmi sound going through the monitor.

 

[Belegost]

I always output spdif to my receiver and go from there, at which point it doesn't matter what the PC has, just the receiver quality.

 

[illram]

Well onboard is not the only competitor. If you use HDMI your video card is handling the sound, and most video cards these days output 5.1 to 7.1 surround, which for 99% of folks is more than enough. This makes soundcards even more irrelevant IMHO, as using them increases cable clutter for people who want to keep things simple. My receiver currently handles the sound from my video card and it sounds fantastic.

I do remember the old SoundBlaster days fondly, although that is mostly nostalgia rather than anything rational.

 

[mfenn]

Some people claim that SoundBlaster cards in particular "sounds better" to their ears. This is due to the op amps that Creative uses, which subtly alters the sound in a particular way, plus because over the years people have gotten used to stuff sounding like that and associate it with "better." It is like how the bass and treble are always turned up in every rental car I have driven, and how all commercial radio stations use sound processing to "brighten" the music. It makes for a brighter sound that most people think sound "better." People have done experiments with removing the Creative op amps from an X-Fi and putting them on Auzentech cards, which makes the Auzentech card sound just like the Creative card.

:thumbsup: to this. Sound quality is harder to objectively measure than video quality, so "better" gets to be a very subjective term.

I always output spdif to my receiver and go from there, at which point it doesn't matter what the PC has, just the receiver quality.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: to this. People who really care about sound quality wouldn't be caught dead putting their DAC and amp on a tiny little board inside of an EMI storm (aka the inside of a PC case) anyway. That sort of interference is possible to objectively measure.

 

[Binky]

The actual sound device is irrelevant when the sound (on my gaming/desktop computer) is coming from my 5 year old $20 desktop speakers. I'm assuming that most people have relatively bad speakers too, so top notch sound signals won't really change much of anything.

 

[ViRGE]

Has onboard sound on some motherboards come up to the quality as to where you would not need a discrete sound card?

I'd say no. Motherboards are still pretty nasty for EM interference; for speakers this doesn't make a huge difference, but even bad headphones make the resulting poor SNR stand out. As a headphones user I would not use anything long-term that does not come on a discrete card.

BrightCandle also makes an excellent point about audio positioning. Realtek's codecs can't really handle 3D audio positioning; like SNR this isn't a big problem for speakers (because with 5.1 speakers the audio engine is doing everything and the codec is a dumb DAC), but for headphones it makes a world of difference.

 

[Stuxnet]

For my general purposes (games, listening to music), I can't tell a difference. The cost savings aside, I just don't want a card in my rig that's blocking airflow while at the same time generating more heat (Creative cards do generate stupid amounts of heat, too).

I haven't had a discrete sound card in 4 or 5 years.

 

[Remobz]

I'd say no. Motherboards are still pretty nasty for EM interference; for speakers this doesn't make a huge difference, but even bad headphones make the resulting poor SNR stand out. As a headphones user I would not use anything long-term that does not come on a discrete card.

BrightCandle also makes an excellent point about audio positioning. Realtek's codecs can't really handle 3D audio positioning; like SNR this isn't a big problem for speakers (because with 5.1 speakers the audio engine is doing everything and the codec is a dumb DAC), but for headphones it makes a world of difference.

Would the Asus Xonar DG be a good buy for someone on a budget paired with gaming headphones? Should I save up for the more expensive Xonar essence stx?

I am solely a headphone user when gaming.

 

[ViRGE]

Would the Asus Xonar DG be a good buy for someone on a budget paired with gaming headphones? Should I save up for the more expensive Xonar essence stx?

I am solely a headphone user when gaming.

I'm not a Xonar user (I'm using the X-Fi Titanium), so I couldn't comment.

 

[BrightCandle]

The Asus Xonar DG has all the same positional capabilities as the STX and the built in headphone amp but with worse SNR. Unless you have just bought yourself some $500 headphones you aren't going to tell the difference in sound quality between the two.

Personally I ended up with a D2X because I wanted 7.1 speakers plugged in alongside headphones and I only have PCI-E in the current motherboard. My ideal card would have actually been a Xonar Xense but without all the expense of the low end Sennheiser headphones that the thing ships with as I would have liked to have tried their built in headphone amp solution. But I use the amp on my speakers which does an decent job.

 

[tumsk]

When recording, the picture is very different. Discrete cards are leaps and bounds ahead, even a lowly SB Live trounces any onboard solution.

Is this true? I'm about to rip some vinyl and may bust out my old SB Live. More importantly, will it record at 24/96?

 

[Cyrus9008]

I'l start posting some replys in a bit my new build is all messed up and a bit busy right now but I really want to respond back to some of these posts. If anyone can answer my question in the post above this called something like "new build is extremely unstable" i'd apprecite it.

 

[Zap]

:thumbsup: to this. Sound quality is harder to objectively measure than video quality, so "better" gets to be a very subjective term.

Well, there's two parts to this.

1) Sound reproduction is accurate.

2) It "sounds good to my ears."

You CAN measure the first one.

You cannot measure the second one.

 

[Cyrus9008]

When playing back sound, on-board sound cardsare getting so close to discrete cards that the price difference is nearly always better spend on better headphones/amp/speakers.
The difference is getting very small.

When recording, the picture is very different. Discrete cards are leaps and bounds ahead, even a lowly SB Live trounces any onboard solution.

But if you are taking recording seriously, you want to get in Maya/M-Audio/RME/Steinberg territory anyway.

I have great speakers for my computer right now, I am running a Bose speaker system and I noticed a HUGE difference in the clarity and richness of the sound in movies and games when using my XF-i sound card. I'm not trying to sound like a pawn for advertising creative, I'm sure other discrete cards are just as good but only have experience with creative.

I own quite a few discrete sound cards (various decent PCI cards, even couple PCIe X-Fi and Auzentech). They are all collecting dust in my garage.

Nobody short of a professional in the audio field "needs" a discrete sound card over one built into motherboards.

Regarding "performance" I have not noticed any system performance differences using discrete sound cards. The sound also sounds the same to my ears. Note that I only use stereo (speakers and headphones) so what I say may not apply to surround sound.

The only problem I've had was hearing system buzzing when using my headphones. Note that this is only using better headphones, and only while using front ports. TBH I have had the same problem with front ports plugged into the headers on SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium, so the problem was with the cables for the front ports not being shielded enough.

Some people claim that SoundBlaster cards in particular "sounds better" to their ears. This is due to the op amps that Creative uses, which subtly alters the sound in a particular way, plus because over the years people have gotten used to stuff sounding like that and associate it with "better." It is like how the bass and treble are always turned up in every rental car I have driven, and how all commercial radio stations use sound processing to "brighten" the music. It makes for a brighter sound that most people think sound "better." People have done experiments with removing the Creative op amps from an X-Fi and putting them on Auzentech cards, which makes the Auzentech card sound just like the Creative card.

I'm not a big Audiophile I just play games, listen to music and movies and you're right the 3d positioning on stereo and headsets are bar none better than onboard sound. I wasn't reffering to a very slight better performance but rather a big difference in quality of sounds from discrete card compared to onboard. Probably the biggest advantage for me is the 3d positioning as my Bose speaker system is only 2.1 but I love the speakers they produce really good sound.

When you say the difference is enormous, do you mean the analog sound quality? Because when I run the optical out from my onboard sound it sounds pretty much the same as the optical out from my X-mystique pci card. I still prefer my X-mystique because it "cooperates" nicer with my hdmi sound going through the monitor.

I mean the analog sound quality I don't use the optical out jacks for anything.

 

[postmortemIA]

I have one of decent analog desktop speakers (Z-5500) and X-Fi card. I couldn't stand onboard for more than 5 minutes. Best way to explain difference is listening to 64kbps mp3 and uncompressed audio.

 

[Cyrus9008]

I have one of decent analog desktop speakers (Z-5500) and X-Fi card. I couldn't stand onboard for more than 5 minutes. Best way to explain difference is listening to 64kbps mp3 and uncompressed audio.

That's a pretty good way in putting it actually. X-Fi is a great card I love that thing.

 

[dawza]

I can tell the difference between onboard analog and a midrange or better dedicated sound card, particularly with an A/B test and good headphones. But I agree that most people who care about output quality will probably run digital out to a dedicated DAC + amp.

Nonetheless, I've read for years that onboard sound is getting better/a sound card is no longer needed, and yet, every time I try straight analog onboard (with every platform upgrade), I vomit a little bit inside.

 

[Cyrus9008]

I've read that for probably the last 10 years that onboard is getting better and better and soon discrete soundcards will be a thing of the past for casual users. However anytime somone every makes a prediction to the future of computers it's almost always wrong.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I dumped my X-Fi for Realtek when I found out

1. Mic bleeds into the output
2. Music quality was actually worse
3. Creative bloatware sucks

One of my worst purchases ever.

 

[grohl]

The only problem I've had was hearing system buzzing when using my headphones. Note that this is only using better headphones, and only while using front ports. TBH I have had the same problem with front ports plugged into the headers on SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium, so the problem was with the cables for the front ports not being shielded enough.

This is my biggest problem. Can someone point or link me to some shielded internal cabling?