Yeah, onboard sound is generally fine nowadays.

I use an external M-Audio USB interface, but that's simply for convenience, since I can easily connect 1/4" TRS or XLR equipment to it. Does only 16bit though - I can live with that, even for recording.

All of my computers except the PowerMac and SGI boxes have discrete sound cards. In the case of the older machines it's for Soundblaster compatibility, in the newest gaming PC it's for EAX.

My main system doesn't have built in audio because it's a server board. Annoyingly the chipset itself does contain audio, but the traces are not there on the motherboard. I have a USB soundcard to output basic audio in virtual machines and may be sticking in an Audigy 4 because it's lying around.

oerk wrote:

Yeah, onboard sound is generally fine nowadays.

I use an external M-Audio USB interface, but that's simply for convenience, since I can easily connect 1/4" TRS or XLR equipment to it. Does only 16bit though - I can live with that, even for recording.

16-bit dynamic range is 96 dB, which is enough for any listening unless you listen in an anechoic chambers. 24-bit and 32-bit is better for DSP and editing through because the rounding errors accumulate.

I would say that you probably can tell the difference between a sound card and onboard if you plug in a suitably high-end pair of speakers/headphones and listen. Of course, everyone's ears are different. It also depends on the onboard audio of which generation of motherboard. I could tell the difference between onboard of my 775 vs my Asrock's 1150. Guess "Purity Sound" wasn't such a gimmick after all (and not forgetting a 7 year gap between both boards...).

m1so wrote:

oerk wrote:

Yeah, onboard sound is generally fine nowadays.

I use an external M-Audio USB interface, but that's simply for convenience, since I can easily connect 1/4" TRS or XLR equipment to it. Does only 16bit though - I can live with that, even for recording.

16-bit dynamic range is 96 dB, which is enough for any listening unless you listen in an anechoic chambers. 24-bit and 32-bit is better for DSP and editing through because the rounding errors accumulate.

Yeah, I know. I'm using it for recording, where 24-bit would've a significant advantage. It's sufficient for my needs though - I'm not a good enough engineer and certainly not a good enough musician for this to come into play.

Been using onboard now for years and its great. Creative's drivers are terrible

I'm using the X-fi elite pro. The only reason I still use this, is because it has several line-inputs and midi I/O, and EAX/CMSS-3D sounds pretty good in games. Don't get me started on the drivers though, especially in Windows 7.

m1so wrote:

Do people not involved in music making seriously buy expensive sound cards today? Digital is digital folks, unless your integrated soundcard has an incredibly bad DAC or your soundcard has DSP "sound enhancer" functions (usually crap on both dedicated and integrated cards) any difference you hear is placebo. I don't want to sound like a dick, but the fine folks at Hydrogenaudio can explain this to you very well. Unless you produce music or require high-end surround audio, there is no sense in buying a dedicated sound card. This is not like integrated videocards. Hopefully, integrated graphics will eventually reach this point as well.

You'd have to probably be more specific by "expensive sound cards" - I think prices on sound cards have come down dramatically in recent years, for example I still remember my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum being something like $200 when it was new, and my Recon3D was maybe $70. I've seen some PCI Asus cards for under $40. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the performance differences between them are fairly minimal when measured either, processing/decoding/software features aside. 😖 And many higher-end motherboards include some sort of stand-alone sound card as well these days, I actually have a DFI board that's like that, and I've seen a number of Asus and MSI boards that come like that too.

As to the whole "digital is digital" thing, I don't have a problem accepting measurements, data, etc that could support such an argument. But I do have a problem with the "down your throat with a firehose" approach that the "fine folks" at places like Hydrogenaudio tend to take with audio related topics like that. 😵 Personally I don't understand the near-fanatical obsession with declaring to the world how it is and how it will be - if folks want to spend their money on something, that's their choice. 😐

As far as "reasons to buy a soundcard" there's a few more that come to mind beyond "terrible DAC" and aren't specifically related to recording usage (and remember: the objectivist line is that DACs have been consistently transparent for some considerable period of time anyways, so "terrible DACs" can't exist (and of course we all know this isn't true, but we don't say that out loud 🤣 )), like awful shielding/grounding implementation on the board (you get noise when the hard-drives access, or while typing, etc), awful drivers that make the thing unstable, lack of feature-support (like Dolby Digital Live), lack of I/O (lots of integrated devices have limited input options), or poor integration with headphones (many newer soundcards have headphone amplifiers built in, and I wouldn't be surprised if some motherboards start doing this eventually). None of this is meant to illicit a combative argument or flame-war, simply to attempt to say that there is no "one size fits all." 😊

jwt27 wrote:

I'm using the X-fi elite pro. The only reason I still use this, is because it has several line-inputs and midi I/O, and EAX/CMSS-3D sounds pretty good in games. Don't get me started on the drivers though, especially in Windows 7.

I had been hoping after they announced the "Sound Blaster Z" (before they outlined the specific products) that they'd put out a successor to the Elite Pro (and Audigy Pro) cards with better drivers (like the Recon3D). Not that I *need* all of those inputs and outputs, but I don't not need them either. 🤣

Still using a Yamaha receiver with Analog Surround inputs.
Prefer that to its Optical\Coaxial internal mixing any-day.
Gonna keep it working as long as possible.
Even if the Realtek did not have the issue of picking up GPU noise, its not useful for anything more then pass-through for my Genesis. Which is what it gets used for. As the analog Line-in on the Z is being used for other things.

badmojo wrote:

My ‘modern’ machine recently rejected the X-Fi Extreme Music I’ve been using since forever. Windows 7 suffered a rare BSOD and then refused to boot, which I suspect was a Windows update that conflicted with the old Creative drivers. It’s not the first time it’s happened and a re-install of the Creative drivers usually fixes it, but not this time.

Try one of these drivers
http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=709515
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/community/forum … -fi-series.180/

m1so wrote:

Do people not involved in music making seriously buy expensive sound cards today? Digital is digital folks, unless your integrated soundcard has an incredibly bad DAC or your soundcard has DSP "sound enhancer" functions (usually crap on both dedicated and integrated cards) any difference you hear is placebo. I don't want to sound like a dick, but the fine folks at Hydrogenaudio can explain this to you very well. Unless you produce music or require high-end surround audio, there is no sense in buying a dedicated sound card. This is not like integrated videocards. Hopefully, integrated graphics will eventually reach this point as well.

EAX restoration (and more in general DS3D) on windows vista and newer is not something I would miss. And in a forum like this I guess this is very important.
Anyway, Xonar DX here. With UNi Xonar Drivers

@all folks: there's not only creative... with its crappy policies and drivers..
And besides, audio may even be digital... but audio spatialization in games is not always the same

I was using a Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96 for years, but seeing as Terratec never made properly working Windows 7 drivers for it, I had to change when I build my current PC.
I bought an ESI/AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1 HIfi, which according to the manufacturer was compatible with Windows 7. This was based on the VIA Envy24HT (updated version of the VIA Envy24 from the DMX 6Fire), and provides very low ASIO latency. Unfortunately, the drivers for this card was absolutely shockingly bad, to the point of giving bluescreens on a regular basis, so I ended up boxing it and replacing it with a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD. This card has worked beautifully since day 1, and it has very clean output with proper RCA plugs instead of those stupid mini-jacks.
I want good quality ASIO drivers, a selection of in and outputs, a dedicated amplified headphone output and high quality DACs from a daily runner. Gives me some options for usage. The on-board sound on my P6T-Deluxe does not really provide all these things. Hence why I bothered with a sound card in this system.

As to the question "Do you really need a sound card in a modern PC?" then the answer is: "It depends what you want to do with it".
If you're only after listening to mp3s, watching movies and gaming, then you'll probably be just fine with on-board sound. In fact, with a modern mid-to-highend motherboard, you'll be more than fine.
If you also want things like low latency ASIO drivers for music or recording software, proper microphone inputs, greater feature sets and so on, then you might be in the market for a discreet sound card.
Also, if you're looking at the lower end of sound cards, things like cheap Sound Blaster cards or something like that. You know, all those ~$50 cards, then forget it. You're better off using the on-board card and putting the money you save into better speakers. Generally, if you buy any speaker in the world that is designed as "computer speakers", regardless if it's the biggest, baddest Logitech, Creative, Klipsch or Bose set, it'll still be likely to be the weakest link. Hook your PC up to an expensive hifi setup, and it's a different story. Skip the sound-card altogether and go digital to the hifi, and you will still be fine even when connecting to expensive high end stuff.

If I was building a dedicated gaming rig however, I would absolutely not waste money on discreet sound.

Professionals - Only for live performances

I currently use integrated Sound Max (piece of crap) on this laptop.
I used to use Asus Xonar D2X in my desktop.

m1so wrote:

Do people not involved in music making seriously buy expensive sound cards today? Digital is digital folks, unless your integrated soundcard has an incredibly bad DAC or your soundcard has DSP "sound enhancer" functions (usually crap on both dedicated and integrated cards) any difference you hear is placebo. I don't want to sound like a dick, but the fine folks at Hydrogenaudio can explain this to you very well. Unless you produce music or require high-end surround audio, there is no sense in buying a dedicated sound card. This is not like integrated videocards. Hopefully, integrated graphics will eventually reach this point as well.

The answer is yes. High end cards have better quality, quieter and more precise D<->A converters
and they are better filtered to prevent noise. Average consumers need not worry about that stuff really.
IMO speakers or headphones make the system

I always had a Creative before 2009, but when I built my last PC (that I'm still using), I did not update my then present Audigy 2 ZX, not even put that into my then new machine and decided to use on board audio (Asus P5Q Premium - Soundmax blah blah). To my old Quickshot Sound Force 600 stereo speakers (1998?), that Soundmax thingy is more than enough. 🤣

Audigy 2 ZX is still in my XP box, though (Asus K8NE Deluxe). Older machines (PIII - Pentium MMX) have all AWE64s, and oldest ones (386) has SB16s.

Realtek everywhere, usually the ALC889. Maybe a separate card with shielding could improve SNR a little, but I don't care enough at the moment.
So, I wonder if creative labs has shrunk much because of this trend.

Yeah as long as the analog circuit was designed decently and there isn't squealing and static, onboard audio is pretty good these days.

But I'm not giving up CMSS Headphone or hardware EAX support that even an Audigy can provide.

Sound Blaster 16 has a 12-bit DAC actually by the way, at least it has the dynamic range of about 12-bits (72 dB), which is not as bad as it seems - similiar to good consumer analog audio devices (clean vinyl/good cassette tape with the best Dolby noise reduction), so pretty much every modern soundcard has a dynamic range that is more than enough unless you listen in an isolated room with the refrigerator turned off and no airplanes in the near 100 kilometers. Outputs can be good or bad, but modern onboard audio has digital output too which elliminates this risk.

Gaming wise, this is pretty much a non-issue as most games use low bitrate lossy formats. Games often use 22 Khz sample rate for SFX, old games use ADPCM compression or 8-bit samples, newer use MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. Doom 3 is one of the more extreme examples as its ambient music is saved as ~32 kbps variable bitrate Ogg Vorbis. Age of Mythology uses 128 kbps mp3s encoded by Xing (one of the worse encoders), Warcraft 3 used 112 kbps mp3s encoded with the original FhG codec. Funny how nobody notices just how lo-fi most game music and sounds are, then again, I don't really mind. I agree that the speakers make the system in this case.

Yeah I notice the compression artifacts in various games. Doom3 for sure. It's apparent right at the main menu. UT2003/4 come to mind too.

KOTOR 2 shipped with low bitrate monoaural MP3 music. The high frequencies were low-passed into oblivion. I got in on some forum whining about that on Obsidian's site and thus was born the HQ Music Patch which you can download and get high bitrate stereo LAME-encoded MP3.

My first... SB16 ASP MCD - later equipped with a cheap wavetable addon - that rode along with my ISA slot systems, though I think the in the last one, it had to give up the space, replaced by a PCI128 - lovely card, especially with the 8MB Ensoniq sound set.
Later, a SB Live.

But the last two have been using onboard, one a C-Media, finally Realtek - not feeling I've lost anything.

My semi-modern PC has onboard audio and I use it. Motherboard is an Asus M4A77TD.

My hearing is so damaged that I can't tell much of a difference between various cards or systems anyway. I mostly choose sound cards based on things other than audio quality. For example, I use AWE64 cards in my systems that have ISA slots for better DOS compatibility. For my Win9x systems that only have PCI slots, I use 1st or 2nd generation SB Live! cards for their gameports and LiveWare 3.0 DOS emulation. My XP boxes use Audigy 2 ZS because a gameport or TOSLink optical digital-audio-out port can be added on. They're also supposed to sound quite good, but I can't tell. SB Live! 5.1 SB0220 is also quite good for an XP system if you use the updated drivers from the Creative website. However, SB0220 is not so good for Win9x systems and I don't recommend it for that.