My understanding of sound cards is wrong ?

To save making a new thread...

I recently built an Windows XP, Socket 775 PC, which has a built in ALC888 audio chipset. However, I've had a Soundcard hanging around in my box of PC stuff for at least 5 years that I got from a 'multimedia' PC I must have bought and stripped second hand or something. I've never used it before so I thought I would try it. It's a Creative Audigy 2 ZS.

It installed no trouble with latest drivers from 2010 (good considering it was released in 2003!) and it sounds 'fine'. Amazed it still works as it has been at the bottom of the box crushed by heatsinks and 3850 x2 for years!

1) Is this likely to give noticeably better sound quality than the old-ish onboard sound on the S775 motherboard?

2) Is it likely to give noticeably better sound quality than whatever AMD use in their current graphics cards (if that is even how it works? Or do graphics cards just pass the audio through the GPU).

I only really use Spotify with its "high quality" setting, with Creative T40s, so this question is only really out of curiosity. I am sure that spotify (and then the speakers) would be the limiting factor if I was really interested in getting high quality audio.
 
IIRC the Audigy has a better SNR, little better protected against EMI, etc. than the 888 but largely there probably isn't much in it other than whichever happens to have the quietest level of background noise in a realworld environment. The Audigy probably has the better software suite though Creative kind of watered down their software over the years with each update.
 
I did a comparison between the Realtek HD audio/AMD (not the ALC888) and the Audigy by switching 'device' on Spotify whilst playing a song on the two different PCs.

They're both hooked up to the same speakers, with my main PC connecting via GPU -> HDMI Cable -> Monitor -> Generic 3.5mm cable -> Speakers, and my XP PC doing Soundcard -> generic 3.5mm cable -> Speakers.

They sounds very similar although the XP Audigy PC maybe sounds less... harsh? A bit of a smoother tone if that makes any sense. I wouldn't be able to tell which one was being used if it didn't say on the screen!

Any song recommendations that would be good to test?
 
rtho782 said:
In double blind testing, it's been shown that people can't tell the difference between sound cards and onboard.
Click to expand...
Me not telling the Mrs that I upgraded the sound card from Asus DG to Asus STX... She noticed.

But this is through floorstanding speakers.

Much better bass especially at lower volumes amongst other benefits.
 
rtho782 said:
In double blind testing, it's been shown that people can't tell the difference between sound cards and onboard.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-19.html
Click to expand...

Not really true entirely - though specifically what devices you are comparing will have some impact on that.

Swapping between the Realtek ALC898 on my motherboard (which is fairly reasonable and only one step behind the latest and greatest) and my Creative X-Fi there is a huge difference - the Creative has considerably lower noise floor, sounds more detailed and more alive.

A lot of onboard sound using C-Media codecs sounds dreary to me with a loss of dynamic and resolution - though that is partly due to often being paired with some really run of the mill op amp buffers off the DAC.

Some of the TI codecs can be pretty decent - if a little dry and harsh they are usually a bit less susceptible to picking up interference and reasonably detailed compared to some of the other chipsets - onboard audio with some attention paid to noise immunity/layout paired with a PCM179x DAC and something like the OPA1612 for buffers would probably rival almost if not every soundcard currently out though.
 
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