is there much difference between onboard sound and audigy soundcard

[Smithyoffline]

OK just for starters would onboard soundcard to audigy make much difference in quality?

OR

The same kind of price different speakers.

OR

both together, what is the main differences in the quality from what i have now

 

[Addikt]

From my experience, I found that really the quality of your sound card only really matters if you are sending the output through a high end receiver. I tried a better sound card with PC speakers and the difference was marginal at best, not worth the $99 CDN for the ZS. For a good quality receiver however, they are more sensitive to changes in electric pulses send on the out line and you can hear a noticeable difference on a good receiver and good stereo speakers.

Hope this helps.

 

[EeyoreX]

Which on board sound? Which Audigy? There is a wide range of answers depending on what choices you make. For example, I find my nForce 2 Soundstorm audio to be better than my Audigy I sound card.

\Dan

 

[high]

audigy is better for analog, but if you're using the spdif out, they are basically equal

 

[Bucksnort]

A soundcard really takes a load off of your cpu, improves performance.

 

[Mem]

Which on board sound? Which Audigy? There is a wide range of answers depending on what choices you make. For example, I find my nForce 2 Soundstorm audio to be better than my Audigy I sound card.

I prefer my onboard nforce sound(DFI NF2 Infinity) to my Audigy sound card in analogue mode which I`ve now boxed away,as to CPU usage,the Soundstorm boards have the Nvidia APU that is really powerful so cpu usage is very minimal even when compared to the Audigy 2 etc.

Bottom line is yours ears will tell you which is best between the two.

 

[RaNDoMMAI]

Originally posted by: Bucksnort
A soundcard really takes a load off of your cpu, improves performance.

Really? how much does it improve? like will i notice a change?

~RaNDoM

 

[Kingofcomputer]

Depends on what onboard sound - real sound card's chip on motherboard? motherboard chipset embedded sound solution? some chipset embedded sound have very basic features, some have powerful features (Nvidia's Soundstorm).

 

[Kingofcomputer]

Depends on what onboard sound - real sound card's chip on motherboard? motherboard chipset embedded sound solution? some chipset embedded sound have very basic features, some have powerful features (Nvidia's Soundstorm).

 

[yhelothar]

no you definately should spend the money on better speakers.. you won't hear any difference with the altec lansing 221s..

yes and it defiantely depends on which soundcard..
if you're using soundstorm or soundmax.. it'll sound pretty good.. and easily comparable to an audigy..

if you are using realtek or cmedia.. then it'll fall behind slightly.. but you still won't notice any difference with your speakers.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: RaNDoMMAI

Originally posted by: Bucksnort
A soundcard really takes a load off of your cpu, improves performance.

Really? how much does it improve? like will i notice a change?

~RaNDoM

Depends, you probably won't see much of a difference in terms of CPU % used on a modern 1.7ghz+ computer, but buy moving the load off of the main cpu your going to see other benifits.

For instance when your computer is under heavy load your not going to see any reduction in performance or increase in sound latency.

It also depends heavily on the actual onboard sound and what type of sound proccessing. I would expect that stuff like the NForce2's onboard sound is going to use a healthy chunk of cpu, because much of they higher-level proccesssing it does.

For instance your going to see a dramitic difference between simply having 2 channel stereo out while playing MP3's vs having 7.1 digitally enhanced and proccessed channels blah blah blah is going to show quite a bit of difference(relatively)

I am guessing that maybe with nforce2 onboard sound going full out may use 5-8% of the cpu time, while the audigy may use 1.5-3% of the cpu time. On a slow computer you may see as much as 10%-15% cpu usage with stuff like ac97 pass-through, but then again how many people with nforce2 boards use low-end cpus?

 

[Mem]

CPU usage was tested using the DirectX music test application with playback on the Athlon XP2100. I suspect that CPU usage will be a non-issue period with a CPU of this power as while both the nForce and Audigy delivered results of 2 percent or less the Microsoft software synth was peaking at only 4 percent. I tested the MIDI quality using a number of original tracks that according to the source were written to the general MIDI standard and all sounded very good, right up with the Audigy/Live 8 MB SoundFont.

Nvidia nforce APU review .

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Mem

CPU usage was tested using the DirectX music test application with playback on the Athlon XP2100. I suspect that CPU usage will be a non-issue period with a CPU of this power as while both the nForce and Audigy delivered results of 2 percent or less the Microsoft software synth was peaking at only 4 percent. I tested the MIDI quality using a number of original tracks that according to the source were written to the general MIDI standard and all sounded very good, right up with the Audigy/Live 8 MB SoundFont.

Nvidia nforce APU review .

So that's a good APU...

All I found was old reviews of older onboard designs, and those guys would use upwards of 50-60% of cpu time...