What Soundcard is recommended...

[Caveman]

So... Been out of building my own systems for about 9 years now... "Back in the day", the SoundBlaster Variants were the thing to get to keep the CPU offloaded and give the best sound reproduction... Now, my understanding is that sound cards are kind of passé...

Yes?

If not, I have no issue spending up to $100 for a good soundcard...

My use for the machine I install it in will be gaming and HTPC. I really like good quality sound. Looking for the best back for the buck sound solution. If my motherboard gets me 98% of the way there, then I'm ok just using it... It is a separate chip built into the MOBo, right (and does not eat CPU cycles)?

The MoBo is an ASUS Z87-Pro V Edition with the following sounds spec:

Realtek ALC1150 8 Channel High Definition udio CODEC support DTS Ultra PC II and DTS Connect

 

[Dahak]

Now a days its more about what you are hooking the up for your sound output.

If you are hooking up to a good set of headphones, you may want something that has a good headphone amp on it. if you are hooking up to a consumer speaker set like logitech for example, the onboard would be fine.

The need for a sound card kinda died out when Vista and later changed the audio stack and now there is no hardware accelerated sound anymore.

But pretty much the onboard sound will get you 99-100% there unless specific usage case is needed.

 

[Charlie98]

But pretty much the onboard sound will get you 99-100% there unless specific usage case is needed.

^^^This. Nowadays it's more about what you are putting the sound too... headphones or system.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

But pretty much the onboard sound will get you 99-100% there unless specific usage case is needed.

This^^

If you want to splunge a bit, go for a mainboard with a Realtek ALC1150. They're very good for onboard audio.

 

[Cerb]

I take analog outside of the case. The greatest problem with onboard is induced noise, these days, not quality of the DACs or line drivers, nor, most of the time, dynamic range (assuming +1-2VRMS).

Audio stream handling and processing doesn't eat too many cycles for any modern x86 CPU, Atoms included. Doom 3, for example, which was quite playable on fast P4s and Athlon XPs (I know, because I played it on an Athlon XP ) did surround sound, with effects, all purely in software (and then had to, by contract, add EAX effects ).

 

[mfenn]

All games do their effects completely in software these days. It's simply not a big deal computationally-speaking and gives the game developers full control over the sound pipeline. The important part about sound devices (onboard, discrete outboard units, or traditional PCI(e) cards) is how good their DACs are (and headphone amps if you're using cans with no external amp).

A good ALC1150 implementation will get you 98% of the way there, good enough that you want to spend your money on a high end speaker/headphone setup before circling back around to an outboard DAC.