Nothing beats the 70's Sanyo GXT-7000 Stereo Music Center in my mind, only has a 20 Watt amp, but damn does it throw all twenty of them at the matching speakers. Also has a line-out which allows me to digitize vinyl, compact cassette and radio or loop back out to the Sharp GF-575 to make more racket - that has another line-out if I want to upset the neighbors further. Bit prone to ground loops on the input though but that's easily rectified.

Wouldn't be surprised if in the future, there are no sound cards anymore and instead you have either a speaker with a all the sockets on the back (consumer) or a breakout box (pro), either one would plug into USB3. Would fit with capture hardware as that's gone the same way, as has storage and whatnot. Actually, if the capture gear is anything to go on, you'll need three boxes to do what one card did before, the DSP, DAC and Mixer would all be seperate... They might even move it over to the network and allow you to share the card between systems - OK, less likely due to latency, but these days something that ridiculous wouldn't surprise me.

HighTreason wrote:

Nothing beats the 70's Sanyo GXT-7000 Stereo Music Center in my mind, only has a 20 Watt amp, but damn does it throw all twenty of them at the matching speakers. Also has a line-out which allows me to digitize vinyl, compact cassette and radio or loop back out to the Sharp GF-575 to make more racket - that has another line-out if I want to upset the neighbors further. Bit prone to ground loops on the input though but that's easily rectified.

Not sure about Sanyo, but if I was looking for one it would have been the one from Kenwood or Technics.

Here's another couple reasons for having a discrete sound card: Dolby and/or DTS encoding. My card has hardware encoding for both so I can output to my home theater receiver. I can play games in 8 channel on my big screen and it's awesome.

@Dreamer_of_the_past; I used to have a Technics separate system that was almost identical on paper, I seem to think it ended up going to some friend or distant family member who needed a stereo. It was a good system though, built like a nuclear bunker, the loudness button wasn't nearly as effective as the one on the Sanyo but I never use that anyway.

It's probably worth adding I have a sentimental attachment to the Sanyo too because it was my uncle's, when I was still a baby he gave it to my father who wired it backwards and I ended up with it once he'd got something else... Obviously I fixed the wiring. I'm not saying any are better for everyone though, my theory is that everyone's ears are tuned to different frequencies so it stands to reason they will like different speakers and different amps or whatever else. People like different colors and sounds have colors too, so it's near enough the same.

@Nekurahoka; The Dolby encoder is immensely useful, even better if you have a decoder onboard too. I rather like the FX unit on my current card too as it's good when I'm testing ideas with a synth, I can get a feel for how something sounds with reverb, tweaks to the EQ and a few other things and as it's hardware it doesn't clog up the CPU too much if I'm running something demanding in the background - usually because I tamper with the synth when I'm waiting for the machine to finish doing something.

nekurahoka wrote:

Here's another couple reasons for having a discrete sound card: Dolby and/or DTS encoding. My card has hardware encoding for both so I can output to my home theater receiver. I can play games in 8 channel on my big screen and it's awesome.

My brand-new Z97 motherboard actually touts DTS encoding; I'll probably never test it because I have a soundcard and I don't need surround output to my DAC, but I was surprised to see that in an onboard solution. 😲

HighTreason wrote:

Wouldn't be surprised if in the future, there are no sound cards anymore and instead you have either a speaker with a all the sockets on the back (consumer) or a breakout box (pro), either one would plug into USB3. Would fit with capture hardware as that's gone the same way, as has storage and whatnot. Actually, if the capture gear is anything to go on, you'll need three boxes to do what one card did before, the DSP, DAC and Mixer would all be seperate... They might even move it over to the network and allow you to share the card between systems - OK, less likely due to latency, but these days something that ridiculous wouldn't surprise me.

In pro-audio world the mixer, DAC, and DSP(s) are separate (and have been for a long time). But they aren't connected via USB3 - they're either connected via audio-only interfaces like AES/EBU or MADI, or connected <-> host via very high bandwidth and low latency links like PCIe or Thunderbolt. Wacky audiophile land also has these kinds of configurations, as "separates" are perennially popular. Accuphase is probably the most extreme example, but they aren't alone. What I think is more likely for consumers is that we will see a shift to an output-only USB-fed device that's dumb as a post, and software plug-ins and applications that provide all of the other stuff. At least, this is what's just starting to become popular today. A big part of that popularity, which I don't think has come up in this thread: the average user doesn't own a desktop with expansion slots anymore, they own a laptop or tablet with USB ports.

It's almost certainly a software encoder. Realtek and Creative go that route. It's trivial on modern CPUs as far as I can tell. Motherboard manufacturers opt for a license, put it in the BIOS/EFI firmware, and then the Realtek drivers/installer detect the license and give you support for DDL and/or DTS. I think this started back when HD audio codecs appeared.

You can rig yourself up a free DDL encoder with any sound solution with digital output. FFDSHOW and AC3FILTER can do real time DDL. Works for video playback at least.

The only PC hardware encoder I recall was NVIDIA's Xbox APU ported to PC, aka Soundstorm.

@obobskivich
I agree that many of the "average users" today are on laptops rather than desktops, but tablets? Seriously, that's a niche still compared to both desktops and laptops. It's a "as well as" device rather than a replacement for. And connecting external audio equipment to it? I don't think so. I think probably less than one in a thousand or possibly one in ten thousand tablets get hooked up to any external audio equipment, not counting headphones of course.
The average user doesn't need anything other than on-board audio though. 😀

@obobskivitch: Yeah, and thanks to the OS it's how I have to do it now, though I replaced it with the afore mentioned older PC. I don't have the kind of money or space for all the crap that everything needs now.

@LunarG: Almost nobody I know owns a laptop or a desktop, most are exclusively tablet users now - if that, the majority are happy with their cell phones.

Tablets are gadgets for content consumption but I guess it also depends on what you do for work.

Me and my colleagues many of us have salary packaged notebooks through work but at home I work on the desktop because it's a lot more productive. Now if you don't need to do any work at home and your digital life revolves around reading and watching content then maybe a tablet or phone will do but all the people I know who once were proud owners of a tablet stopped using them and it just lies around at home. Phone is great for keeping up with news, shares, checking e-mail but nothing serious.

@HighTreason My mother used to use a tablet... then she got a decent smartphone and now I almost never see that tablet in use. In fact I see her more on her laptop than on the tablet. IMHO tablets are overshadowed by smartphones in most cases, as they use the same OSes but the phones are more convenient, and for uses she'd rather use a tablet than a smartphone, she'd rather use an actual PC than both. Tablets might be more powerful, but I believe that now that smartphones are powerful enough, most people would be happy with a Laptop+Smartphone combo, and can get by using just the phone if all they do is chat on social media and play casual games.

@LunarG AFAIK there already are external MIDI interfaces for iOS devices, wouldn't surprise me much if this eventually happens. Compared to all the pointless stuff the industry has already released, such a gadget might actually find a niche.

My mother used to use a tablet... then she got a decent smartphone and now I almost never see that tablet in use. In fact I see her more on her laptop than on the tablet. IMHO tablets are overshadowed by smartphones in most cases, as they use the same OSes but the phones are more convenient, and for uses she'd rather use a tablet than a smartphone, she'd rather use an actual PC than both. Tablets might be more powerful, but I believe that now that smartphones are powerful enough, most people would be happy with a Laptop+Smartphone combo, and can get by using just the phone if all they do is chat on social media and play casual games.

Phones are not always more convenient. Especially with content based viewed on a larger screen.

That is why I said "in most cases". But those exceptions are uncommon enough (specially because, given the popularity of smartphones, many contente providers are optimizing contente to smaller screens) that most people wouldn't bother buying a tablet for them, at least not anymore. If someone does encounter these cases often enough, they can always get "phoblets" like the Galaxy Note, a Lumia 1520 or an iPhone 6+ instead of messing with two devices.

Our iPads are used all the time to watch videos and write email. iPhones are cumbersome for that. And our ThinkPads are used a lot as well for all kinds of things. So they all serve a purpose.

LunarG wrote:

@obobskivich
I agree that many of the "average users" today are on laptops rather than desktops, but tablets?

I said "laptops and tablets" not to put them as equals in terms of sales numbers, but to draw attention to the very rapid shift by many users to mobile devices. While desktop computers are absolutely the main focus on a computer board like Vogons, most stuff I've read tends to indicate that mobile devices of some sort make up a majority (potentially a supermajority depending on demographic) of users these days. There's tons of mobile audio gear designed for phones, tablets, laptops, etc out there - some of it is outlandishly expensive and very capable too. However what this shift means is that USB is quickly becoming the de facto standard for any kind of peripheral, because that's all mobile devices generally have for hooking things up; for better or for worse.

obobskivich wrote:

LunarG wrote:

@obobskivich
I agree that many of the "average users" today are on laptops rather than desktops, but tablets?

I said "laptops and tablets" not to put them as equals in terms of sales numbers, but to draw attention to the very rapid shift by many users to mobile devices. While desktop computers are absolutely the main focus on a computer board like Vogons, most stuff I've read tends to indicate that mobile devices of some sort make up a majority (potentially a supermajority depending on demographic) of users these days. There's tons of mobile audio gear designed for phones, tablets, laptops, etc out there - some of it is outlandishly expensive and very capable too. However what this shift means is that USB is quickly becoming the de facto standard for any kind of peripheral, because that's all mobile devices generally have for hooking things up; for better or for worse.

Interesting that a lot of gaming websites are writing a lot about how the majority of the gaming mass are moving away from consoles and back to PCs these days then. Granted, gamers aren't "the majority" of users, but they are a big group, and they do tend to influence their surroundings.

obobskivich wrote:

Agreed on them being for I/O and other features - not quality. Honestly even since Audigy 2 ZS vs SoundStorm and similar I've felt that way - the quality between them was basically identical, but the Audigy had more connectors, and driver features. The other "advantage" if you will - that Audigy card still works and can be "moved" to different systems (it's installed in my dual Xeon right now), the motherboard with the SoundStorm died some years ago. Personally I like being able to "drag and drop" a familiar device with the same features as I upgrade other hardware, versus dealing with new drivers, software, ports, etc blah blah everytime a motherboard changes. I've also had a number of experiences with onboard audio having really awful bundled drivers/software, which makes me lean towards a familiar soundcard as well.

The thing is a bit more complex.
As pointed out in the first page, nowadays built-in audio chips (or at least "high-end" Realtek's) produce the same clarity of sound of 2000$ soundcards
However I guess we are not just interested to plain music. Indeed I believe our target are games whose most single important point is spatialization, i.e. accurate sound placement in the space (in both the two limit situations: stereo headphones just on your ears and an n-speakers scenario around the room).
And this is where proprietary "rendering algorithms" are more vulnerable and might fail at, and where add-on soundcards aren't something so averse.

And only then, additional I/O and features come. Hardware DS restoration under ≥Vista being the most important in this regard imo. Improved HRTF modes, official DD-live/DTS-connect or high impedance headphones support could be others
Or why not? Being able to make HDMI output "hear" restored 8 channel audio.

swaaye wrote:

It's almost certainly a software encoder. Realtek and Creative go that route. It's trivial on modern CPUs as far as I can tell. Motherboard manufacturers opt for a license, put it in the BIOS/EFI firmware, and then the Realtek drivers/installer detect the license and give you support for DDL and/or DTS. I think this started back when HD audio codecs appeared.

You can rig yourself up a free DDL encoder with any sound solution with digital output. FFDSHOW and AC3FILTER can do real time DDL. Works for video playback at least.

The only PC hardware encoder I recall was NVIDIA's Xbox APU ported to PC, aka Soundstorm.

AC3Filter is quite messy to setup
Some other workarounds are mentioned here

LunarG wrote:

@obobskivich
I agree that many of the "average users" today are on laptops rather than desktops, but tablets? Seriously, that's a niche still compared to both desktops and laptops. It's a "as well as" device rather than a replacement for. And connecting external audio equipment to it? I don't think so. I think probably less than one in a thousand or possibly one in ten thousand tablets get hooked up to any external audio equipment, not counting headphones of course.
The average user doesn't need anything other than on-board audio though. 😀

Asus Xonar USB soundcards starts from as low as 30€. This includes EAX 1-5 support and DDL. With ASIO available from twice this price too.

mirh wrote:

The thing is a bit more complex. As pointed out in the first page, nowadays built-in audio chips (or at least "high-end" Realte […]
Show full quote

The thing is a bit more complex.
As pointed out in the first page, nowadays built-in audio chips (or at least "high-end" Realtek's) produce the same clarity of sound of 2000$ soundcards
However I guess we are not just interested to plain music. Indeed I believe our target are games whose most single important point is spatialization, i.e. accurate sound placement in the space (in both the two limit situations: stereo headphones just on your ears and an n-speakers scenario around the room).
And this is where proprietary "rendering algorithms" are more vulnerable and might fail at, and where add-on soundcards aren't something so averse.

And only then, additional I/O and features come. Hardware DS restoration under ≥Vista being the most important in this regard imo. Improved HRTF modes could be others, or official DD-live/DTS-connect.
Or why not? Being able to make HDMI output "hear" restored 8 channel audio.

Well it depends. Audio implementations also require a good output design-- so not all soundcards will have the same clarity. Some onboard audio designs (with anything using VIA in particular) will sound flat or contain bad grounding. Problem(s) can also arise if the motherboard manufacturer makes a few mistakes. Of course the same applies to discreet soundcards: many I've used actually had WORSE output designs than many of my computers with onboard... which means the $2000 soundcards can sometimes sound worse than something like onboard SoundMax.

I always try to avoid Realtek when I can; simply because their ICs seem to fail a lot (especially their 'budget' ethernet controllers which are not nearly as robust as Intel or Broadcom, but that's a bit off topic).

My computer has an external USB audio interface because I do recording-- and possibly due to the fact my computer lacks onboard audio, but those two scenarios are probably the only reason to not use the onboard that comes with your computer.

However I guess we are not just interested to plain music. Indeed I believe our target are games whose most single important point is spatialization, i.e. accurate sound placement in the space (in both the two limit situations: stereo headphones just on your ears and an n-speakers scenario around the room).
And this is where proprietary "rendering algorithms" are more vulnerable and might fail at, and where add-on soundcards aren't something so averse.

I am not a serious gamer but I have never found sound quality to be very important.
I find sound quality much more important for music. Good stereo separation is important
for games but that is pretty much a factor of using headphones or a good speaker setup.

smeezekitty wrote:

I am not a serious gamer but I have never found sound quality to be very important. I find sound quality much more important for […]
Show full quote

However I guess we are not just interested to plain music. Indeed I believe our target are games whose most single important point is spatialization, i.e. accurate sound placement in the space (in both the two limit situations: stereo headphones just on your ears and an n-speakers scenario around the room).
And this is where proprietary "rendering algorithms" are more vulnerable and might fail at, and where add-on soundcards aren't something so averse.

I am not a serious gamer but I have never found sound quality to be very important.
I find sound quality much more important for music. Good stereo separation is important
for games but that is pretty much a factor of using headphones or a good speaker setup.

In games spatialization is actually the most important thing, as I said.

And it's not just dependent on headphones and speakers. I provided a link precisely to sustain my claim then.
Realtek had broken EAX years ago for example. But no other qualitative test has been done ever since afaik.

And btw, sorry if it could seem I'm offending you, you said you are not a serious gamer.. should I assume you never joined the hardware directsound bandwagon (nothing important with never games of course) and play old games with just plain half done sound?

Restoring it is the single most noticeable change I can imagine.
If you knew of everything I said though, good for you

mirh wrote:

The thing is a bit more complex.

I don't understand this comment in context of your broader reply or what you've quoted from me. This seems to imply that you disagree with something I said, but I see the rest of your reply as being in full agreement with what I said. 😊 😀

One thing to point out about the Tom's thing (since I clicked into it again and read the whole thing this time 🤣) - they actually did not compare to a "$2000 soundcard." They compared an Asus soundcard, a Realtek built-in soundcard, and two outboard D/A converters. The $2000 part was a mid-range studio D/A converter - the Benchmark DAC2. It's not capable of any sort of simulacrum processing or other multimedia features like the Asus or Realtek, it's just an output device. Ultimately all their "review" seemed to compare was whether or not each device was adept at driving stereo headphones for stereo music. The obvious answer there should be "of course they are, if everything is working right." The headphones they picked are potentially an issue too - the K550 are designed to be very easily driven by mobile devices, so they're fairly "easy" for anything they plug into. I'm skeptical the HD 800 performed identically across all four devices though, because they have a fairly reactive impedance, and variations in output impedance will thus result in changes in their frequency response (and all of this is measurable and calculable). It's also worth noting that onboard solutions tend not to be as great for driving headphones overall, because they're designed as line-drivers, not headphone amplifiers, and thus generally don't like delivering lots of current. Of course none of this means "you must go out and buy a soundcard" - just that Tom's test isn't something I'd consider conclusive/absolute on the matter. Onboard can be perfectly fine if everything works right, but the option of a stand-alone card is nice in the event that onboard isn't functional, or if you need more I/O abilities (and Tom's does note the I/O abilities thing). Gaming is also another serious consideration - the DAC devices that Tom's tested have no capacity for DirectSound, OpenAL, 3D audio, etc so if any of that matters to you, you will need something "ahead" of them that can perform whatever calculations you like (and with the USB-based device that could be impossible to achieve depending on what you want).