sound cards even necessary anymore?

[brianmanahan]

i have had my creative x-fi xtreme music for almost 10 years, since they came out. just recently it started having this problem where every time i restart my computer the drivers get screwed up and i have to remove the sound blaster device & restart in order to get sound back.

but now i am wondering - has mobo sound changed so much in 10 years that dedicated sound cards are unnecessary? i mostly just game/listen to music with my sennheiser hd 595 headphones.

 

[nickbits]

I haven't owned one in over 10 years but I only use digital output so I don't think the card matters at all.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

IMO, usually not. The key is the digital/analog converter and its quality, or lack thereof. Until it hits that, it's all just 1s and 0s from the CPU, and it doesn't matter what kind of sound chip you have.

Now, mobo sound isn't known for awesome D/A converters. But if you're working with headphones, even fairly good ones, you won't notice most of the suck. It's certainly no worse than the sound you'd get out of an iPod or most consumer-grade CD players. Given the spaghetti mess behind most computers, there's a pretty good chance your headphone is running up, down, in between and wrapping around a bunch of AC power cables and other interference sources, which is probably hurting you way more than low quality onboard sound could be.

If you have external speakers (surround is pretty popular for gaming/HTPC applications) then you should just be doing a digital out to the receiver/amp. It'll be a better quality D/A converter than what's on your motherboard. Circumvents the problem neatly, and you can plug your headphones into those.

Standalone D/A converters are available, (essentially a USB soundcard) but tend to be overpriced "audiophile" crap. (No better than what's onboard, imo., but with gold connectors and fancy names for stuff.) But if you've got a cheap laptop that's inadequately shielded internally (an HDD or system fan causing an audible click/whine/hum on the audio port isn't unheard of), one of these may very well eliminate that.

The type of music you listen to also can make it matter/not matter. (If it's newer big-label, studio-overcompressed tracks, you'll never notice.)

 

[Insert_Nickname]

On-board is fine for most usage. If you want something a little more fancy, the Asus Xonar DG (DGX for PCIe) is a good relatively inexpensive card.

 

[corkyg]

Likewise, I haven't used a sound card for over 10 years. Good audio fidelity is best achieved via a good amp and speaker system. Top quality audio transducers will blow away any sound card using computer type speaker amps.

 

[poohbear]

i used to say the same, until i switched to onboard sound cause my sound card died.....my Klipsch 5.1 setup sounded terrible!!!! this was last year, so i bought a new soundcard (auzentech forte) and finally they do justice for my Klipsch setup. If you have nice speakers you WILL notice a difference, if not then there's no point. Anyways it was really underwhelming switching to onboard sound for my speakers.

 

[biostud]

Soundcard or a DAC will improve your sound greatly, if you have a good speaker setup or headphones. If you use it to play music or movies with a high bitrate you will definitely notice the difference. For gamin I just use a creative usb headset I have, but listening to music on the headset is really bad compared to my speaker setup. (but that's $2000 vs $60 sound)

 

[Goros]

IMO it's a waste of PCIe lanes to the CPU, unless you are on an x79 platform. On board sound may not be the greatest but after the Recon3D mess (where the card actually sounded worse than the XFi and any on board sound ever) I walked away and haven't looked back.

 

[TY-1]

For basic builds, which it sounds like the OP is using, I would say that a dedicated sound card is unnecessary. Most onboard sound is pretty decent, with some higher end motherboards adding in higher quality sound (ASUS ROG Maximus V Formula for example) if you are willing to fork over the money. However, for the most part I would not worry about adding in a dedicated sound card or paying extra for higher quality onboard sound as most users who are just making/using basic builds won't notice or care about the difference.

In fact, the only time I would ever add a dedicated sound card into a build is if the user was going to be doing a lot of video and sound editing, the build will be the user's main media terminal (cut cable out and go 100% streaming), and/or the user is a total audiophile that has already put a good chunk of money into a quality set of surround speakers.

 

[corkyg]

A fine point missing. When I use an external audio system, all I take from the on board sound is a pre-amp signal. The use of a top quality audio amp between computer and good speakers is part of my setup.

 

[Revolution 11]

Is there a audio amp you recommend or personally use, corkyg? When it comes to audio, I have no clue what I am doing but I do want my new PC to have better audio.

 

[BrightCandle]

I think there are two key reasons to use a dedicated sound card beyond the professional:
1) You actually have kit where the limiting factor is going to be the soundcard. IE you have high end headphones or speakers attached and the relatively poor ATD on the onboard sound is going to be kind of obvious on your kit.
2) You game with virtual surround sound on a pair of reasonably decent headphones. Here the algorithm used for 3D positioning matters a great deal and either CMSS or Dolby headphone is a must have for simulating 7.1 sound well on a pair of headphones for a gamer.

Beyond that I don't see why anyone would get one.

 

[poohbear]

Just noticed he's using sennhesier 595s, so the answer is yes, u'll definitely notice a difference.

 

[mfenn]

1) You actually have kit where the limiting factor is going to be the soundcard. IE you have high end headphones or speakers attached and the relatively poor ATD on the onboard sound is going to be kind of obvious on your kit.

In that case, I think you'd want to just go digital to an outboard DAC anyway. Much better than trying to cope with the EMI maelstrom known as the interior of a computer case.

 

[BrightCandle]

In that case, I think you'd want to just go digital to an outboard DAC anyway. Much better than trying to cope with the EMI maelstrom known as the interior of a computer case.

Either works. I actually combine (1) and (2) (Sennheiser 598s) and hence I use an Asus Xonar but some of the external solutions combine amp, dolby headphone and good DACs and have the added benefit of not being inside the case.

Personally I prefer Dolby Headphone to CMSS. The surround sound effect is better for me, especially behind. But I also use a modified 7.1 layout to improve it yet further so having a card that has configurable placement is a good idea as well.