Onboard audio vs Dedicated

[DidelisDiskas]

I was wondering how does current day integraded audio on motherboards compare to an external dedicated audio card like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Focusrite-Sc...218853&sr=8-2&keywords=focusrite+scarlett+2i2

1) Are there any motherboards that can even match it?
2) How far behind are middle of the road 80-120$~ mobos?
3) How far behind are cheap mobos?

 

[nerp]

Most onboard soundcards are decent for normal use, some actually have rather high quality components and offer signal to noise ratios that were once only possible with add-in cards. But few actually are suitable for pro audio production and it's recommended you get a pro card for that, or a USB audio device. But if you just want to listen to music and play games and you have regular speakers, onboard is usually good enough.

I don't recall offhand the various grades of onboard audios and which chipsets are best, but there are some on the better end, others on the lower end. The SupremeFX audio on my ASUS board is actually great. But I'm judging this on sound clarity and lack of distortion/noise. I am not running anything extreme here. I used to have an M-Audio pro card back in the day and that was so much better than onboard, but this was early 2000s.

 

[UsandThem]

It depends on how it is implemented on the board. Some boards isolate the audio from the rest of the components, have built-in amps, etc.

Here are a couple of threads where this was discussed.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=38341200#post38341200

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=38361233#post38361233

 

[DidelisDiskas]

I was interested because in my particular case, i have the soundcard i posted above and i like to write some stuff in supercollider (audio programming language). My current mobo is a cheap one and i can clearly hear the difference between the onboard audio and the soundcard (not to mention i/o latency.), but i would prefer to get rid of it and i could settle for some integrated audio that's a bit worse, but if the gap is day and night i guess i will have to keep the soundcard.

I don't need any fancy features or many input ports (or support for 5.1, 7.1 systems), i'm just after clear unfiltered sound and less latency.

Here are a couple of threads where this was discussed.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=38341200#post38341200

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=38361233#post38361233

Thanks, though the people in those discusions seems to be media consumers, while movies, music listening, game sound quality does not bother me all that much, i can listen to those on on any shit speakers/headphones if need be, my personal need for better audio is tied to playing around with sounds in supercollider (i'm also using linux).

 

[UsandThem]

I was interested because in my particular case, i have the soundcard i posted above and i like to write some stuff in supercollider (audio programming language). My current mobo is a cheap one and i can clearly hear the difference between the onboard audio and the soundcard (not to mention i/o latency.), but i would prefer to get rid of it and i could settle for some integrated audio that's a bit worse, but if the gap is day and night i guess i will have to keep the soundcard.

I don't need any fancy features or many input ports (or support for 5.1, 7.1 systems), i'm just after clear unfiltered sound and less latency.


Thanks, though the people in those discusions seems to be media consumers, while movies, music listening, game sound quality does not bother me all that much, i can listen to those on on any shit speakers/headphones if need be, my personal need for better audio is tied to playing around with sounds in supercollider (i'm also using linux).

I'm not sure on that because I have zero idea what that entails. My only experience is dealing with speakers, headphones, music, video, PC games, etc. So I won't even pretend to know what would work best with supercollider.

 

[DidelisDiskas]

I'm not sure on that because I have zero idea what that entails. My only experience is dealing with speakers, headphones, music, video, PC games, etc. So I won't even pretend to know what would work best with supercollider.

Heh, it's like an empty DAW (digital audio workstation), but with tools that let you create whatever the hell you want (synths, filters, reverbs, loopers, gui's, i guess you can even write normal programs in it, though it's more suited to dealing with sounds).

{SinOsc.ar([440, 441], 0, 1, 0)*EnvGen.ar(Env.perc(0.01, 5), addAction: 2)}.play;

For example a line above creates a sine sound with a steep attack envelope, that plays note A4 for 5 seconds.

 

[UsandThem]

Heh, it's like an empty DAW (digital audio workstation), but with tools that let you create whatever the hell you want (synths, filters, reverbs, loopers, gui's, i guess you can even write normal programs in it, though it's more suited to dealing with sounds).

{SinOsc.ar([440, 441], 0, 1, 0)*EnvGen.ar(Env.perc(0.01, 5), addAction: 2)}.play;

For example a line above creates a sine sound with a steep attack envelope, that plays note A4 for 5 seconds.

That sounds like the kind of stuff my two teenagers are into. They are always creating games, audio, and all that kind of creative stuff. When they show stuff to me, I am just amazed they can do stuff like that. Definitely much smarter than I am

 

[DidelisDiskas]

That sounds like the kind of stuff my two teenagers are into. They are always creating games, audio, and all that kind of creative stuff. When they show stuff to me, I am just amazed they can do stuff like that. Definitely much smarter than I am

Well it's a great time to do it too, for example live sound generation was not really possible (in practical ways at least, for compositions with many sounds for example) until the early 2000'~, as the cpu's were not powerful enough to synthesize many sounds on the fly.

 

[RLGL]

For the average tone deaf guy like me, they are fine

 

[BonzaiDuck]

One of my systems [see sig] provides full WMC capability with my silicon-dust tuners. It has the onboard audio connected to a 5.1 (ancient!) Logitech speaker system, with an HDMI connection to my AVR on the other side of the room -- with passthrough capability to the HDTV when the AVR is turned off. Within WMC, I can switch between the onboard audio 5.1 and the 7.2 AVR configured for 5.1.

Of course, the HT sound is better. But when I don't want to heat up the room and use more kilowatt hours, it's running through the Logitechs.

Works for me.

Also -- I came across a 5.1 audio decoder over the last year -- can't find it with a current web-search at the moment. But you could run an HDMI cable into it, and it would feed a 5.1 speaker system using 3.5mm standard plugs.

 

[OlyAR15]

It depends a lot on how good your speakers are.

 

[DidelisDiskas]

It depends a lot on how good your speakers are.

Had a pair of KRK R6 monitors, but even though they had very good clarity i felt that the room acoustics were not that great and i wanted to free up some space anyway. Today i'm just rocking a pair of of Audio-Technica ATH-M30x headphones. So not uber great, but i guess they are above the avarage:

https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Techni...88227&sr=8-1&keywords=Audio+Technica+ATH-M30X

 

[JEDIYoda]

I really Love my RME HDSPe MADI FX - 390 Channel PCIe Audio Card. Just amazing!!

 

[manderson]

I really Love my RME HDSPe MADI FX - 390 Channel PCIe Audio Card. Just amazing!!

What do you use it for? I had the RME Fireface UCX. Absolutely loved the audio quality, but hated their TotalMix software. I haven't done any recording for the past few years, so now I'm sporting a Dangerous Music Source which is an incredible playback monitoring unit with no software at all.

To the OP - I've never used onboard audio, but I'm an old geezer. Back in the day they were all junk, but I'm sure there has been much improvement.

 

[will889]

As stated above it does depend on specifically how it's implemented mostly the shielding. Relatek ALC 1150 being standard on many of the upper-mid to high end boards do very well with a good set of cans, with the older ALC 892 still the usual for mid-low to lower end boards and in that case a nice add-in PCIe card would be beneficial.

 

[Iron Woode]

As stated above it does depend on specifically how it's implemented mostly the shielding. Relatek ALC 1150 being standard on many of the upper-mid to high end boards do very well with a good set of cans, with the older ALC 892 still the usual for mid-low to lower end boards and in that case a nice add-in PCIe card would be beneficial.

my HTPC uses an Asrock H97 Pro4 board with the ALC892 codec with Elna caps and it sounds way better than my older Asus MA88TD-V Evo/USB3 board with the ALC892 codec using the same speakers - Logitech z690.

 

[will889]

Yep it does depend on the board too. ALC 892 is very good on some boards.

 

[HexiumVII]

It really depends on your taste. Generally if you have to ask, you are no an audiophile to dump tons of money on something totally subjective. All sounds card have a sound signature that are different. Not necessarily "better." Money is better spent on better speakers or headphones. Speakers are a bit hard to recommend depending on budget. If you want some really good headphones on a budget try Grados.