Does anyone else just use the onboard sound chip on their mobo?

[hans030390]

I use an Auzentech Bravura sound card. I have a nice audio setup, so I'm not going to skimp out on that. It also has a nice headphone amp, which was another thing I needed.

If I wasn't big into audio, then they're really not necessary.

 

[Emulex]

yeah the onboard sound chip works great. it's just passing LPCM/PCM/DD/DTS etc. so that's not very hard to do

 

[Anarchist420]

I have an Asus D2X, but I do have it hooked up to my receiver via S/PDIF optical. I'm not using the onboard VIA codec because the driver doesn't render the audio very well (sounds worse than my D2X's drivers), and also incase I ever want to use EAX 3.0-5.0 the D2X's drivers will emulate it qenerally quite well and even in Windows 7 w/o any external software package like Alchemy.

Using an excellent integrated headphone amp can give even better output quality than you can get from a Titanium HD even if its stock OPAMPs are replaced with better ones.

 

[Anarchist420]

I should add that it's really shitty that PC games still use lossy audio, especially with all of the good output devices you can hook your pc up to. There is really no excuse for developers to do so, if there ever was. Games used to use redbook (CDDA) and that was no compression.

Audio has been way too overlooked in gaming both in technical quality and in innovation.

 

[Brainonska511]

I haven't used a stand-alone card since HS, in a Pentium 4 Prescott Dell Dimension 8400 (Audigy 2 ZS Dell OEM version). Since then, I've just used onboard and it is sufficient. My HTPC has audio out over HDMI from my HD5450 to the TV.

 

[Jetster...]

I use my onboard hd sound for gamming and music. HDMI for movies. But I just bought a pair of Sony MDR V6 headphones. When they get here I want to compair the two using the headphones

 

[Imp]

X-fi Xtrememusic I've caried over 2 or 3 systems. Has to be at least 5 years old. The only reason I want to get rid of it is because it's blocking my GPU fan, and there are occasional crashes that appear audio driver related. I have no sound processing effects running like Crystalizer, CMS3D and the difference is night and day between the Realtek onboard.