What is the point of sound cards?

Jim99

Jim99

Jim99

Associate
Joined
25 Feb 2015
Posts
1,642
I'm a bit puzzled by this.

Right now I'm using a USB DAC / Amp (Azur 351A) plus stereo hi-fi speakers. To me, going down the hi-fi route seems a lot more likely to produce good quality audio than buying audio equipment by Logitech/Creative etc who seem to slap ridiculous logos everywhere (e.g. X-Fi) and charge ludicrous prices for equipment that doesn't appear to differ particularly from the rest of their range.

Am I missing something? I keep expecting them to disappear and die off, but people are still buying them. Is there some kind of benefit, or is it just a case of people thinking that a £50 5.1 set of gaming speakers needs a gaming sound card?
 
I'm no audiophile by a long way, so I'm certainly not speaking for the group. I bought a Creative Z because it was an improvement over onboard sound, for convenience, and for appearance.

The onboard sound on my (now replaced) P8P67 Pro motherboard wasn't bad, but I did notice a difference when adding a soundcard. This is on a £50 pair of speakers (Edifier R1600T), and a £50 pair of headphones (Asus Vulcan ANC). In particular, there was no hiss at all from the headphones, where there had been on my case's front panel connectors. I'd moved the cabling inside the PC to try to lessen the interference as much as I could, but I couldn't eliminate it and once I'd noticed it I couldn't stop hearing it. Because the headphones plug straight into the output on the Creative card, the cabling wasn't being used and so interference was no longer an issue.

I play almost exclusively using speakers, my son (who uses my PC more than I do) always uses heaphones. Consequently, before the soundcard every time I want to use the PC, I had to drop under the desk and unplug the headphones to get the speakers to work, and when he went on the PC, he had to do the same to plug them back in. With the soundcard, we have both permanently plugged in and it's a simple 3 mouse click process to switch between speakers and headphones. It's a little thing, but over time I cannot believe how much of an improvement this is.

Finally, aesthetics. Without the soundcard, I had to open a flap on the front of my PC case to plug in the headphones and leave it open all the time. I know how stupid this is, but it ruined what is (to me) a really nice looking case. With the soundcard, the heaphones are plugged into the card itself and the flap on the front of the PC can stay shut. Plus, it's nice looking through the side window of the PC and seeing a pretty soundcard in a slot, rather than seeing an empty slot screaming out that your PC could be improved.

The thing I've always loved about PCs is that they can be so unique. While others may hate my PCs looks, or consider the things above as completely inconsequential, to me they are important enough for me to spend a few quid on a solution to fix them and never to regret it for a second. I'm sure with the right knowledge I could have spent the same amount and got better sound quality, but the sound quality I've got is perfect for my needs/level of audio appreciation, and the other benefits of the setup were the main things I was after. :)
 
Some soundcards have audio-processing features that are not present on hi-fi grade DACs. This is particularly relevant to gaming (which has simulated rather than recorded sound) but much less so than a few years ago.

The majority of games now have software based sound engines that are pretty much the same via a DAC as they would be on a soundcard. The sound processing is done via the CPU rather than on a soundcard. For legacy gaming (pre-Vista era) you are really missing out if you don't have a soundcard and with software that lets it use its features on newer versions of Windows.

Vista was a massive step back to be honest for gaming audio. We are only just getting to the stage now where software gaming audio has caught up with what an X-Fi could do back in 2005 in terms of audio simulation. To get an idea of what a setback it was, imagine that Microsoft has stopped GPUs functioning around the Geforce 2 era and forced the CPU to render everything.

These days a soundcard is still relevant if you use headphones (and to a lesser extent stereo speakers) As gaming audio is simulated, it depends on the simulation to provide things like directional cues. The likes of Dolby Headphone (on Xonar) or Trutheatre Headphone (SoundBlaster Z) create a more realistic soundfield over headphones than many 'native' gaming audio engines (usually by simulating 5.1 or 7.1 over headphones). To give you an idea of how knobbled we've become: with the (extinct) DirectSound3D or (now very rare) OpenAL apis a 2005 X-Fi could simulate the actual gaming world in 3D over headphones. It was basically full 3D simulation and not the pseudo-surround sound we get now.

If you don't game on your PC, I would say there's no reason to get a soundcard over an equivalent DAC (other than the convenience of having it in your case). I say "equivalent" because some soundcards are actually well-regarded audiophile grade equipment. The likes of the Xonar ST and STX include very competent DACs, heaphone amplifiers etc. They are a credible alternative to lower grade DACs etc.
 
Last edited:
With my headphones on while gaming my sound card is way better than the on board sound from my motherboard ..can hear more ie someone coming up behind me trying to c4 me in BF4 ...although I suspect thats mostly down to the headphones themselves...But I dont heart that kind of detail from the motherboard using the headphones , but the sound is much better overall :)
 
Back in the day soundcards were progressing with hardware features beyond just stereo or even surround including proper hardware acceleration, environmental effects were slowly coming along and we were about getting to the point where they would actually do real time actual geometry based effects, etc.

Then as Uriel said with vista MS bitch slapped them back into the stone age and a plain old DAC is barely any less useful for gaming in a lot of cases.

Annoyed me no end actually as about that time I got to experience a demo of what Aureal was playing with where the actual "texture" of a surface as well as the plain geometry would modify the sound environment - it really does a lot for the immersion of a game.
 
Last edited:
@Uriel, you're right about the hissing noise. Once you hear it and notice it, you cannot ignore it. Damn interference is really annoying especially when you're having to stick to headphones to satisfy late night chilling and maintaining residential harmony!
 
Jim99 said:
I'm a bit puzzled by this.

Right now I'm using a USB DAC / Amp (Azur 351A) plus stereo hi-fi speakers. To me, going down the hi-fi route seems a lot more likely to produce good quality audio than buying audio equipment by Logitech/Creative etc who seem to slap ridiculous logos everywhere (e.g. X-Fi) and charge ludicrous prices for equipment that doesn't appear to differ particularly from the rest of their range.

Am I missing something? I keep expecting them to disappear and die off, but people are still buying them. Is there some kind of benefit, or is it just a case of people thinking that a £50 5.1 set of gaming speakers needs a gaming sound card?
Click to expand...

Just because it's labelled as "Hi Fi" doesn't mean it's better. I just checked the specs for the Azur 351A and compared it with my Asus Xonar STX and a few things jumped out at me:

1) The DAC only goes to 48kHz while the STX goes up to 192kHz

2) THD @ 1kHz the Azur measures 0.02% while the STX is 0.001% (headphone out) and line out is even lower at 0.0003%

3) Signal to noise ratio of the Azur is >92dB while the STX is >124dB

So apart from the virtual surround sound features plus the ability to use DAW software and have a very capable ADC they are also a very cheap entry point to high quality audio. Another thing is size, I have nowhere to put a large amplifier, there is just no spare room on my desk.

Finally, the headphone outputs of a lot of the more modern mainstream amps and receivers are not particularly good. Decades ago they used to tap the main speaker output and reduce the power with some very large resistors but in more recent times they often just add a very cheap separate amplifier circuit that is capable of the bare minimum, with little consideration for sound quality.

So in short, yes, you are missing something.
 
Last edited:
smilertoo said:
i got an STX because i wanted to use DAW software.
Click to expand...
Snap, always had a creative card for years because of this. The ST having ASIO support plus a decent line in ADC for recording was the clincher when I replaced my X-Fi. Only grief I run into is ground loops. (not caused by the card, but the whole PC) I also have a yellotec PUC usb interface that gives me balanced XLR I/O too via ASIO4All.
 
Interesting answers all round, so thanks chaps.

rids57 said:
Just because it's labelled as "Hi Fi" doesn't mean it's better. I just checked the specs for the Azur 351A and compared it with my Asus Xonar STX and a few things jumped out at me:

1) The DAC only goes to 48kHz while the STX goes up to 192kHz

2) THD @ 1kHz the Azur measures 0.02% while the STX is 0.001% (headphone out) and line out is even lower at 0.0003%

3) Signal to noise ratio of the Azur is >92dB while the STX is >124dB

So apart from the virtual surround sound features plus the ability to use DAW software and have a very capable ADC they are also a very cheap entry point to high quality audio. Another thing is size, I have nowhere to put a large amplifier, there is just no spare room on my desk.

Finally, the headphone outputs of a lot of the more modern mainstream amps and receivers are not particularly good. Decades ago they used to tap the main speaker output and reduce the power with some very large resistors but in more recent times they often just add a very cheap separate amplifier circuit that is capable of the bare minimum, with little consideration for sound quality.

So in short, yes, you are missing something.
Click to expand...

That's fair enough. I suppose an interesting question would be what the cost of equivalently spec'd kit is, i.e. DAC vs sound card, assuming that both feed into an amp.

It seems to me that quite a few people are spending a £100-200 on sound cards, then bundling them together with really dreadful PC World speaker systems, but clearly that's not the only market and there are actually some decent sound cards out there.

In terms of the desk space, I've always preferred to have something external, i.e. DAC/Amp than fill up PCIe slots internally that block airflow etc - but yeah it's all down to personal preference.
 
I admit, I do use a £50 pair of speakers with my STX, the Edifier R1600T but they are actually very good speakers for the money. I do only use them for watching video though, all gaming and almost all music is through my headphones (HD650 and AKG K702) and IEMs (Fidue A73 and RHS MA750).
 
A dac is only good for 2 channel stereo listening.

I actually prefer dolby headphone for music as i don't hear the echoes or any of the downsides people talk about with music on DH.

Just think of a soundcard as a dac you plug in to your computer with the added bonus of surround etc.
 
Last edited:
Do people still think that internal soundcards are much different to external "DACs"? Something like the Xonar D2 and Xonar U7 will use similar components in their respective price points. Same Cirrus Logic/Burr Brown DACs, NEC signal relays, audio processors made by C-Media, etc. The only major difference is one is in an external plastic box and the other slots inside you computer.

Of course, you can then get into the whole argument about external being better due to being away from EMI from inside the case but unless you've got 4 graphics cards it's just not much of an issue. The only thing that really matters is cost and personal preference. Just make sure you don't go too far and descend into the realm of audiophile madness with vacuum tubes and magic beads taped around wires while describing sound with words like "warm" and "sharp".
 
/gives his tube amp a poke and eyes up the USB cable with several ferrite rings on it :D

Convenience is a big reason why external sound cards are popular. Its always nicer to have a headphone socket where you can see it and having a volume control on the desk right in front of you is going to be a big selling point.
 
Quite impressed how well a fairly simple circuit built around a LM317/LD1085 or LP2951 filters noise. I wouldn't say Ferrites are snake oil either :P

Agreed though these days even a lot of internal soundcards aren't that removed from external DACs circuit wise - quite a few designs aren't that far removed from off the shelf builds based around the TI PCM17xx chips, etc. fairly close to the example application circuits - not like they used to be with a custom processing chip and custom DAC stages built with a certain amount of discretes, etc.
 
Last edited:
The ferrites are used to "try" and reduce the noise my Modi picks up but they failed miserably - no big deal, I only hear it when running a sine wave sweep test, it's just OCD inducing. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom