External soundcard vs internal?

[bononos]

What is the consensus for general gaming and casual music listeners? Outside or inside?

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1428698/i...the-pc-worth-it-if-you-have-a-good-sound-card
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=99728&st=0

Krueger and a couple others seem to think that the performance of internal soundcards already exceed the typical critical listening threshold for normal users.

 

[_Rick_]

If you've got a half-way decent mainboard, on-board will usually do.
If you have a pair of expensive headphones, you'll want either a mainboard or a soundcard with a headphone amp to serve the high impedance and deliver the Ampères.
If you have a high-end external amp, I would probably get an external DAC.

Avoid using front audio plugs, the cases are usually cabled/wired pretty poorly, and there'll be plenty of noise on the line. Best to get an external extension and run the wires round back, outside the case.

 

[BrightCandle]

External should in theory have less interference and should produce better quality all else being equal. Those with very high end setups may find they want to go external for better fidelity. I haven't seen much useful data on this however, there are almost no quantitative reviews of sound cards anymore, despite Soundblaster and Asus releasing decent high end cards in recent months and external high end systems being released. I don't know if the claim is measurably different or not.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I've heard good things about the uDAC-2 SE. While things are fine with my setup now, this is on my list of things to get.

 

[NickelPlate]

This is always a point of contention among people. I used to use external cards for many years back when MB audio was in its infancy. Always Creative but MB sound has gotten about as good IMHO these days. I dropped my Creative Xfi for onboard audio using Klipsch Promedia 4.1 speakers and some Bose QC headphones and I can't tell the difference honestly except for lack of EAX in games that support it. EAX is kind of dead technology anyway these days so no big loss there. And not having to deal with Creative bloatware and crappy driver support is a big plus in my book. If I was going to go with an external card, I would suggest looking at Asus or someone else besides Creative.

 

[priyanka741]

internal sound card is good for gaming console you must have graphics card

 

[Throckmorton]

I use the sound that comes out of HDMI and trust that the sound card built into my Asus monitor is good!

But I think best quality is going to be with a USB card. I don't see how running optical to a DAC can be that great since that optical stream is compressed.

 

[teecee33]

I am a headphone kind of guy and always have better luck with internal sound cards. I buy good motherboards though.

 

[bononos]

External should in theory have less interference and should produce better quality all else being equal. Those with very high end setups may find they want to go external for better fidelity. I haven't seen much useful data on this however, there are almost no quantitative reviews of sound cards anymore, despite Soundblaster and Asus releasing decent high end cards in recent months and external high end systems being released. I don't know if the claim is measurably different or not.

There are about even imo or fairly close without any significant advantages as far as noise is concerned. The Xonar one is exceptional but its alot more expensive and can't be compared with the common soundcards.

This is always a point of contention among people. I used to use external cards for many years back when MB audio was in its infancy. Always Creative but MB sound has gotten about as good IMHO these days. I dropped my Creative Xfi for onboard audio using Klipsch Promedia 4.1 speakers and some Bose QC headphones and I can't tell the difference honestly except for lack of EAX in games that support it.......

The thread was about external usb cards which some people claimed overcame the problem of noise from other components (for pci/pcie cards) which Krueger says is fallacious. Other parts like the cpu have improved so much in terms of performance/price, the same thing has also happened to soundcards so even hdmi output might sound pretty darned good. Even the dacs on cellphones have way better specs than my old soundblaster Live.

 

[wjs500]

I use a komplete audio6 mostly for recording music. It works great for playback, but the equalizer settings etc that are built in with my internal soundcard obviously don't work with it. Aaaand I miss the bass! Also it occassionally needs to be power cycled, so its a little annoying. On the other hand a lot of external soundcards have software that can adjust equalizer and special effects. I wonder if there's software I can use with this in a global capacity....

 

[dstevod]

As an option for an exteral card, the new Meridian Explorer may be worth checking out http://www.meridian-audio.com

Historically Meridian have been very good with digital audio, although I have no experience with the Explorer.

S

 

[_Rick_]

I use the sound that comes out of HDMI and trust that the sound card built into my Asus monitor is good!

But I think best quality is going to be with a USB card. I don't see how running optical to a DAC can be that great since that optical stream is compressed.

It's only compressed when you run something else than PCM over it.

But then DTS/DD has been good enough for DVDs, for quite a while, so I don't worry about that too much. If you want hi-def music, switch your optical to PCM, and you'll have bitperfect CD-quality.

For higher end stuff, there's always HDMI. But a decent DTSHD etc. decoder-amp is probably going to be a bit expensive. And I don't think DTSHD etc. is required, when all you're running the sound through is a pair for small surround satellites.
And an external DAC doesn't give you an advantage there either, as you still need a decent amplifier and decent speakers in the chain to get any benefit over DTS/AC3.