Onboard Audio or Soundcard

thatavguy

thatavguy

thatavguy

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Having a quick read over the threads in this forum and thought it might be better just to ask

Ive ordered a Steelseries Siberia headset, which will hopefully arrive today and am wondering if I should spend a few ££'s on a sound card for my new pc rather than running off the onboard audio

The MB is a MSI P67 GD65

I have never used an external sound card before so i'm looking for advice to see if it'd be worth the investment in a card

something like the Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeGamer???

My main use for the computer will be gaming, but I want to look into creating some music in the future as my flatmate wants to teach me how to create some psy trance.

So questions I have are
1) Will it improve my gaming experience?
2) Are there better cards to be looking at?
3) Will it be good to have in future when I get into creating music?
 
I can put your mind at rest and let you know I have no issues quality wise with the gd65's audio with both my headphones and speakers. tbh x-fi is technically awesome but suffers from implementation and driver issues that are well documented. I would pick from the xonar range of cards if you would like something offboard.
 
I disagree with both of the above and I'll tell you the truth...

Trust your ears.

Only you can say if you will hear a difference; take for example a lot of people I know who can't hear the difference between onboard and a high end DAC, while me on the other hand cringe at the low quality you get from onboard. Likewise a lot of people prefer a sound card for positional audio (a must for gaming) where as some (like myself) can't really tell much difference positional-wise between 1 DAC and another.

In reply to your other questions a sound card is almost definitely going to be better for music production however it depends what you'll be using to aid you, and it's unlikely that either the Creative or Asus cards are going to have the connections you'll be looking for at a decent price.
 
Onboard cards have improved a lot over the years but sound cards still produce much better sound quality but as others have mentioned trust your own ears.

Why don't you just get a sound card and try? If you feel there is no difference you could always sell it on.

Andy
 
I can't fault my ESI Juli@, you'll pick one up for about £100, works fine with low latency (less than 10ms latency is a must) comfortably at 24Bit 96kHz.

You could also look into some of the Presonus and Focusrite cards too, Emu and M-Audio also reputable. But no, onboard's got no chance, clics and farts all over.
 
Got to say that I had never bothered with soundcards until I got a budget amp and some wharfdale 9.0`s, the set-up only cost about £140 at the time! when I set it up, I was not blown away by the sound, even though it was a budget set-up, the bass was flat and had very little punch, a friend suggested I should try a dedicated soundcard as when I played mp3`s through my ps3, the sound was so much more vibrant.

So just recently, I thought I would splash out a bit and thanks to some sound advice (excuse the pun) from Auraomega and another poster, I decided to buy the xonar dx and a pair of Goldring dr-150`s, and I must say that they have changed my life in terms of musical pleasure. The soundcard really drives the bass now and just cant believe how much different it sounds now, playing stuff like queen sounds just how you would expect. I am no audiophile but I can hear music and for me the Xonar dx was well worth the £56 I paid, will I ever go back to onboard? Not a chance!!:D
 
Glad you like the DR150's, and have good SQ for your amp and speakers from the Xonar. It amazes me that some people hear no difference between on-board audio and a sound card. I suppose they can't be blamed if they are using something that wont allow them to hear the difference. Once you hear that difference, you can never go back, as you say. :)
 
So what do people with itx machines do? I'm interested in going down that route one day, but concerned with lack of dedicated internal soundcard.
 
Marsman said:
It amazes me that some people hear no difference between on-board audio and a sound card.
Click to expand...

A lot of people can't though, it just depends on if you know where and what the artefacts are; take for example 128kbps and 320, I know a lot of people who when they compare think the 128 is better because it's got 'more detail' (clipping, distortion and artefacts).

Curunen said:
So what do people with itx machines do?
Click to expand...

External DACs. I don't use a sound card anymore, instead I use my AVR for speakers and the Zero headphone amp for my headphones both of which have internal DACs. It costs more, but you have many advantages such as being able to use that DAC with multiple pieces of equipment, and the infrequency at which you have to replace them they work out less expensive over time, coupled with increased sound quality from the amp circuits; you'd never fit that quality of components onto a PC sound card.
 
Cheap headphones/speakers = onbaord
Decent headphones like any good audiophile ones then you need a good soundcard actually i can tell the differance on a lot of stuff between a X-Fi music and the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe, But i'm using sennheiser HD650 and IE8's so they are quite topend.

If you never heard a topend soundcard and phones, You are missing out on something quite special.
 
I can tell the difference with sub £20 IEMs, the difference is night and day to me. Just because you have cheap headphones doesn't mean you should limit yourself to onboard.
 
Just thought I'd bump this instead of starting a new thread.

I've been slowly stripping down my rig in preparation for downsizing to itx, and part of that was removing a xonar essence st and using onboard - my god I did not realise the difference, even for a "consumer" soundcard like this and not necessarily high end external equipment, it is staggering. I'm only using senn HD595 plugged directly in.

Now having second thoughts about losing the soundcard for itx, unless using sp/dif out of the motherboard with an external dac and amp will be suitable.
 
I'd recommend getting an external DAC like I mentioned earlier, they have various advantages over PC sound cards and I'm now a convert... I'd never go back to a sound card :p
 
Ah, didn't see the reply properly. :o

Regarding that, USB or s/pdif out?
Also, although I only care for good stereo audio most of the time, is it possible to have features like dolby headphone using external equipment?
 
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Why settle for just one? Get the Zero and you get both optical and coaxial s/pdif as well as USB ;)

Some external DACs do offer DSPs onboard such as Dolby Headphone. If the software you're planning on using DH with has an inbuilt DSP (PowerDVD) or can use an plugin one (Foobar2000) then your DAC will produce DH anyway, I'm sure there's more software out there that can use plugin DSPs but I've not had need of them.
 
^Yeah really tempted by that Zero. Just reading around about alternatives at the moment. :)

Although I'm finding it mentally tough to kick the habit and lose the dedicated internal DSP on a sound card. That's probably the only thing I'm deliberating about now; pretty much set on an external amp/dac combo.

So - onboard, dedicated, or external (possible?) DSP? Or is it inconsequential?
 
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