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poll: are you using a dedicated sound card or onboard on your primary system?

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Mine is external! Line 6 TonePort UX2, which is a USB recording interface. I can't really tell any difference between the digital out on it and the digital out on the onboard.
 
Onboard for everything, though I do have a couple cards with Dolby Digital Live encoding
that I may eventually use for converting PCM/WAVE output to an optical out going into an external
DTS/DDL type receiver/amplifier.

I suspect if I searched I could find a software encoder scheme for LINUX/UNIX that would do realtime
DTS/DDL encoding with even the digital output on a vanilla onboard sound chip, though, so there's even
less reason to use a sound card.

Basically the only reason to use a sound card IMHO is if you want a high end one with really nice
quality ADC/DAC support better than onboard, and more total input / output channels than onboard.

I hate Creative Labs now due to their horrible driver (and often product) quality and lack of
good open source os support (LINUX, BSD, Solaris, ....), and lack of published specifications to enable
driver support / development. I'll never buy any of their cards again.

 
Onboard Realtek chip, ALC883, I think. Not much point in having a dedicated sound card these days, except for a helpful of specific tasks.

And since Creative is such a shitty company, I see no reason to buy their cards when onboard server 99.9% of sound requirements.
 
Many newer onboard solutions have better s/n ratio and reproduction quality than add-in sound cards.
 
Audigy 2ZS, mainly for recording (guitar etc) -- my speakers are nice enough, but nothing special, so I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference for playback. Can definitely tell the difference when recording though.
 
Originally posted by: herm0016
Originally posted by: Chronoshock
Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
onboard 😱
Click to expand...

You should be slapped. Unless you use your presumably spectacular external source + rockets to play blissful music 24/7 and completely ignore the sound your computer produces.
Click to expand...

i am going to take a guess and say digital on board out. this is what i use also, and it really is not much worse than any other digital out. i let my receiver process the signal. I wish i could get my digidesign card w/motorola dsp and nice opamps to work. 🙁
Click to expand...

Yeah, using digital coaxial output.

I tried the onboard analog "HD audio" for headphones for about 2 minutes before giving up on it and routing headphones through the pre-pro as well 😉
 
X-Fi Platinum, probably the best piece of hardware in my dusted PC
Noted huge difference between this and onboard audio.
 
Onboard for everything.

I've got several PCI sound cards sitting in my garage collecting dust, including an Audigy. Maybe I should just unload them?
 
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