Good day.

In my opinion, in the time of AC'97 audio, integrated sound cards (codecs) were pretty lame but nowaydays current built-in sound cards are quite capable (specially if you have got a "gaming" mainboard), at least for a gaming perspective. As you said, unless you are a professional musician, integrated (built-in) audio should suffice for most PC usage.

I agree with both y'all's sentiments.

Two personal experience stories to emphasize the point:

In 2004 I built my Pentium 4 desktop around an ASUS P4P800-E board. That board has what at the time was one of the first 8-channel integrated audio codecs; however I quickly discovered that it was prone to annoying static noises that I could not get rid of. Within a few months I disabled the integrated audio and replaced it with an Audigy 2 ZS; the sound quality, clarity (no static noise), features (hardware EAX, stereo surround) and configurability - all improved.

In 2008 I built my Core 2 Quad desktop around an ASUS P5Q PRO, also with an 8-channel codec. From my past experience I assumed that I would get more with a discrete card, so I got an X-Fi XtremeGamer; this time I did not perceive any difference in quality, and surprisingly, even the configuration options of the Creative suite were sub-par in certain areas to the Realtek software; the only thing going for it was Creative ALchemy, which provided a support layer for EAX-capable games on Vista, but I did not care much. A few months ago the XtremeGamer PCI card started malfunctioning so I took it out and went back to the integrated audio, and feel absolutely no downgrade.

"Your motherboard does not include any sound system but the beeper."

I have a computer, former server, that doesn't have integrated sound. I'm using it with one of those cheap USB audio adaptor dongles and a pair of Creative A60 speakers. Everything sounds fine. Even at high volume there's no noticeable noise or distortion. This was supposed to be a temporary setup until I got a new sound card, but there doesn't seem to be a reason to change it.

dr_st wrote:

I agree with both y'all's sentiments. […]
Show full quote

I agree with both y'all's sentiments.

Two personal experience stories to emphasize the point:

In 2004 I built my Pentium 4 desktop around an ASUS P4P800-E board. That board has what at the time was one of the first 8-channel integrated audio codecs; however I quickly discovered that it was prone to annoying static noises that I could not get rid of. Within a few months I disabled the integrated audio and replaced it with an Audigy 2 ZS; the sound quality, clarity (no static noise), features (hardware EAX, stereo surround) and configurability - all improved.

In 2008 I built my Core 2 Quad desktop around an ASUS P5Q PRO, also with an 8-channel codec. From my past experience I assumed that I would get more with a discrete card, so I got an X-Fi XtremeGamer; this time I did not perceive any difference in quality, and surprisingly, even the configuration options of the Creative suite were sub-par in certain areas to the Realtek software; the only thing going for it was Creative ALchemy, which provided a support layer for EAX-capable games on Vista, but I did not care much. A few months ago the XtremeGamer PCI card started malfunctioning so I took it out and went back to the integrated audio, and feel absolutely no downgrade.

Wow, how come our stories are so (almost) exactly same? 🤣

I also decided to use on board audio first with a P4P800 board (2003 or 2004), not satisfied, and installed an Audigy 2 ZS in a couple of months or so. Then I also really started using onboard audio first time (satisfactorily this time - relegated ZX to secondary computer) with an Asus P5Q (Premium in my case) in 2009, which is also my first C2Q built.

This is emphasizing it even further I guess. 🤣

I just stick to soundcards, don't plan to abandon them soon. Currently using an Auzentech Forte (X-Fi based card) on my main pc and at the office one a pci x-fi platinum. Even with the cheap office speakers the x-fi's crystalizer makes a huge difference. I plan to get the new Creative sb soon for my main pc.

I'd say if you're only interested in moderate amount of gaming you'll be fine with integrated audio. And, as it was already mentioned, some of the higher tier mobos (Gigabyte Gaming series for example) come with decent sound.

At the same time, I'd advise you to at least throw some money at your speakers. I presume your "regular user" still likes to watch a movie and listen to a song a two from time to time. $150 to $200 will make all the difference compared to your average $20 noisemakers, even with some regular ALC. For a good entry level headphones you'll need another $150. But then you may as well get an okayish USB DAC (from ~$300) and forget about the integrated Realtek altogether.

If you meant internal soundcards in particular, they are not very popular nowadays. Even more so with musicians. Sure, some sophisticated or hipster type of a gamer might get it for an "EAX9000" or whatever new technology they may carry, but you would struggle to find many titles that support it.

Onboard sound here since late 2014 (similar thread) and I have exactly zero complaints with it, and the motherboard in question is coming up for 10 years old.

0kool wrote:

For a good entry level headphones you'll need another $150.

Don't need to drop much more than $20 on phones, so long as you pick ones that sound fairly clean and apply system-wide eq to get the color you want. I aim for between $5-10 with earbuds. On the other hand, I've got a bunch of 80s planar magnetic headphones that integrated audio would crap its pants with.

vvbee wrote:

Don't need to drop much more than $20 on phones, so long as you pick ones that sound fairly clean and apply system-wide eq to get the color you want. I aim for between $5-10 with earbuds. On the other hand, I've got a bunch of 80s planar magnetic headphones that integrated audio would crap its pants with.

Wanted to passionately argue with you at first, but for the most people these 2 arguments make the case - "fairly clean" and "the right color". You put it quite elegantly 😀.

No point arguing about personal audio. Find what works and go with it.

I bought an external USB sound card because my motherboard's sound card seems to produce clipping artifacts, lacks spdif input for capture and doesn't have a nice volume knob for me to turn to adjust volume.

I don't see the point of internal cards.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

Good day.

In my opinion, in the time of AC'97 audio, integrated sound cards (codecs) were pretty lame but nowaydays current built-in sound cards are quite capable (specially if you have got a "gaming" mainboard), at least for a gaming perspective. As you said, unless you are a professional musician, integrated (built-in) audio should suffice for most PC usage.

I bought a Gigabyte Gaming motherboard, and I could see two op-amps that (at least) look better than old motherboards (where you can't see anything resembling audio circuitry).

dr_st wrote:

In 2008 I built my Core 2 Quad desktop around an ASUS P5Q PRO, also with an 8-channel codec. From my past experience I assumed that I would get more with a discrete card, so I got an X-Fi XtremeGamer; this time I did not perceive any difference in quality, and surprisingly, even the configuration options of the Creative suite were sub-par in certain areas to the Realtek software; the only thing going for it was Creative ALchemy, which provided a support layer for EAX-capable games on Vista, but I did not care much. A few months ago the XtremeGamer PCI card started malfunctioning so I took it out and went back to the integrated audio, and feel absolutely no downgrade.

IMHO, buying Creative Labs products is an error. Driver support is fine when they're launched, but after some years you'll find that either your product is not supported on your new OS or the drivers lack functions that worked in previous OSs. So they force you into get third party drivers or buy a new card.

Also, I haven't installed Realtek software... I hate when a driver come bundled with a 100 megs app, so I install drivers from Device Manager (that's specially true when dealing with printer drivers). Should I install Realtek drivers with their applications? Do I miss some functionality if I don't?

0kool wrote:

At the same time, I'd advise you to at least throw some money at your speakers. I presume your "regular user" still likes to watch a movie and listen to a song a two from time to time. $150 to $200 will make all the difference compared to your average $20 noisemakers, even with some regular ALC. For a good entry level headphones you'll need another $150. But then you may as well get an okayish USB DAC (from ~$300) and forget about the integrated Realtek altogether.

Yes, a "regular user" in my country doesn't expend more than 80€ in their speakers... but I really wonder if you want to expend that much. I mean most computers do some fan noise (and HDD, and optical drive noises), so you can use expensive speakers that get hampered by your computer noise. I live in a flat, so you may add some street noises and my 4yo son noises... trying to get Hi-Fi sound would be almost impossible. I guess that investing money on headphones would be a better option (specially if they are noise cancelling).

Zup wrote:

IMHO, buying Creative Labs products is an error. Driver support is fine when they're launched, but after some years you'll find that either your product is not supported on your new OS or the drivers lack functions that worked in previous OSs. So they force you into get third party drivers or buy a new card.

Since I don't typically upgrade operating systems, the cards stay in the same machine and on the same OS that they originally were used with, so in that sense it should be OK. I was happy with the Audigy 2 ZS in my XP system 13 years ago; still happy. But with X-Fi on Vista I found the drivers somewhat lacking. It was like integrated audio software moved ahead and got more advanced, but Creative's did not. Plus, there are other downsides to use Creative products, on that I certainly agree with you. 😀

Zup wrote:

Also, I haven't installed Realtek software... I hate when a driver come bundled with a 100 megs app, so I install drivers from Device Manager (that's specially true when dealing with printer drivers). Should I install Realtek drivers with their applications? Do I miss some functionality if I don't?

Printers are a different thing. In most cases I found audio control software to be desirable; it typically allows finer control of speaker settings, surround sound (if it applies to you), mixing different inputs, etc. One thing that I like in the Realtek software on my P5Q PRO is the ability to automatically mute rear audio/microphone as soon as a headset is plugged into the front audio ports; the Creative software could only automatically mute the rear audio, not the rear mic.

If I bought a new 2018 model motherboard maybe I'd skip the sound card, but I'm about as far from caring about new motherboards as I've ever been in my life. 😀 I'd be a lot more likely to shop eBay for something that still has PCI slots, a PS/2 port, and WinXP drivers.

My modern PC motherboard is a Gigabyte from about 2010 with a Realtek ALC889. I used it's onboard sound for a long time, and generally thought it was fine, but it picks up a lot of noise. I've since installed an Audigy 2 ZS. This improved the sound a bit and also gave me a joystick port, which allows me to use one of my good analog joysticks with a driving game.
I have a 2nd of those cards in a P4 Dell machine. In the Dell noise was never a problem, but the tonal quality of the sound with the card is definitely better.

I have at times thought about expanding my server (a K8 Opteron) to be usable as a desktop, because it seems more efficient than running 2 machines all the time. I've never gone through with it. But if I do that, I'll need to add better video and sound. It has no sound built in.
I don't want either of those devices to cripple the high speed PCI-X buses, so that leaves only 1 standard PCI slot. If I use the PCI for video, then the sound would have to be a USB device that's supported in linux and can run on a USB 1.1 port. I don't know if that's even feasible.

My (now aging) Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5 comes with an integrated Sound Blaster Recon 3Di sound card (codec). I haven't had any problems with it although Creative driver suite is very bloated and I tend to disable every "feature/improvement" there. Some people say Creative is not so good anymore (was it good sometime?, they had audio monopoly for a long time). It's well known its driver support is crappy and Realtek audio codecs have improved a lot.

There was a stretch between Aureal being killed off, CMedia improving their audio chipsets to their current state, and Realtek chipsets moving from suck to not suck where they effectively had a monopoly.

IMHO, soundcards don't make sense with a modern computer. The analog audio quality of integrated motherboard audio is sufficient for most users. For those with golden ears, you really need to get the DAC outside of the box full of noisy digital circuits and in its own shielded enclosure with quiet power supply.

In my case, my nVidia graphics card is my "soundcard", as it provides the physical channel for transmitting uncompressed 7.1 channel audio (24-bit, 96 kHz) to my Yamaha receiver. The receiver has a high-end DAC inside, and passes the video onto the big screen. I don't even know if you can do this with a soundcard (plus, it isn't necessary).

As for EAX and legacy DS3D, I use OpenAL, dsoal, and indirectsound to restore legacy 3D audio on this system. There's plenty of CPU power to do complex audio processing, so an external DSP just doesn't make sense anymore.

For me, the most disappointing aspect of all this is that now that we have the technology to fantastic 3D audio and multichannel digital audio output on nearly every PC, many modern games only support stereo.