My understanding of sound cards is wrong ?

shankly1985

shankly1985

shankly1985

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I always though buy sound card it gives louder better audio over onboard, louder yes but quality not so much?

I just been reading up on Sound cards vs DACs and I came across loads thread and this video. Now what shocked me is the output impedance and how this effects your audio output my philips x1 is rated 30 Ohm and my sound card output is 22 Ohm that is a lot of audio I lost :(
I seen DACs like O2 have just 0.54 output impedance :cool:

So what is the point in recommending sound cards these days if even your Onboard has better output quality? just for being louder?

Ok I need to buy a DAC+AMP say £200 max and will be used for gaming and music with Philips Fidelio X1

Enjoy the Video its a real eye opener or ear opener :p
 
I think back in the day, sound cards for gaming made sense because games were still offloading some of the audio processing to the sound card and on board audio was just plain awful. These days, it's all done in software and on board audio quality is way better than it was before, the dacs, opamps and shielding is considerably higher quality.

The only reason to buy a sound card these days is if you need some very specific features or if you want a powerful built in amp to drive some high end headphones but don't want to get an external dac/amp (for whatever reason). I have an Essence ST for this very reason, but I wouldn't bother with anything less, as you may as well use the onboard audio at that point. My Sennheiser HD650 sound excellent out of the Essence ST and the long cable means I have no issue connecting it directly to the sound card and not from the case front panel. This is the only reason I have the Essence ST, otherwise I would use onboard audio or just get an external dac/amp.
 
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That video contains a large amount of BS, thanks mainly to the guy from Mayflower who is quite simply plugging his product (O2).

Firstly, not all headphones are affected by low damping factor, AKG Kxx series, for example, are completely unaffected, so making sweeping statements like those clowns (I respected Logan up until this farce) is not a great idea.

32 ohms is the industry standard for headphones?
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Since when? There is no industry standard, the guy is squawking through his backside.

Because a sound card has an output impedance of 10 ohms, that means you are losing 10 ohms of music!
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What the hell is he talking about? The "expert" is an imbecile!

Your Philips X1 has a nominal impedance of around 36 ohms (as measured by Innerfidelity) which rises to a peak of around 44 ohms at 80Hz, falling back to 36 ohms. This means that your X1s are somewhat susceptible to a low damping factor, which is the ratio of the input impedance of the headphones to the output impedance of the amp. The ideal value for damping factor is a minimum of 8:1.
If the impedance v frequency curve was flatter, then this would mean that the headphones were not sensitive to damping factor.

Does this mean that if your ratio is less than this, you are "losing audio signal"? No, it doesn't, it just means that your bass frequencies are not being optimally controlled, while the rest of the frequency band will operate normally. This might make the bass sound a little "loose" or flabby but that is the extent of what will happen. If you feel that this is enough to warrant the abandonment of your sound card then fair enough, have at it but don't expect a "night and day" improvement from an external DAC and amp.

Also, while it is true that sound cards do have fairly high output impedance, they are not all as bad as 22 ohms.

Asus Xonar STX: 10 ohms
Sound Blaster Z: 22 ohms
Sound Blaster ZxR: 38 ohms

Personally I think the output impedance of the ZxR is too high, which is why I have never recommended it. While the Sound Blaster Z is still high at 22 ohms, the Asus STX is not too bad at 10 ohms and is on a par with a lot of external amps.

It also needs to be said that not all external amps have low impedance either, the Musical Fidelity V90-HPA for instance has an output impedance of 50 ohms and some go even higher.

If you really feel you have to get an external DAC / Amp setup, then the Schiit Modi 2 & Magni 2 mini-stack would be a good place to start.
 
Thanks Rids. Its hard for me to say its pointless changing to DAC+AMP without ever trying that setup. But reading around on other forums like HeadFi etc seems a lot of people hate sound cards and treat them just like Gaming Headsets.

I been recommended O2+ODAC JDS Labs
 
There is no denying a low impedance setup will suit your X1s better but reign in your expectations as the improvements might not be all you expect.
The SB Z is a decent sounding card, so you are starting off from a fairly decent platform, so any improvements will likely be subtle.
If you do go with JDS labs, the O2 + ODAC in one box would be the way to go.
 
Because a sound card has an output impedance of 10 ohms, that means you are losing 10 ohms of music!
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Only had a brief glimpse at the video, but he really said that?

If that's not a Captain Picard facepalm moment, I don't know what is.
 
Thing is despite in some cases integrated audio having a little more attention paid to it than in the past it is still largely an afterthought on the motherboard and despite some of them using decent DACs and not terrible capacitors often they still have horrendous routing of the traces, workhorse op amps, etc. that results in higher susceptibility to RF and EM interference and an overall dull sound. There are some exceptions and likewise not all soundcards or external DACs are anything great.

Sadly the benefits of an addin soundcard aren't really being exploited any more even for gaming and often a good quality external DAC is the best option :(
 
Yeah his blogs and O2 design process are well worth reading - even if you don't entirely agree with everything (sometimes he is a bit of a contrarian and will take an extreme position with no margin for error to make a point even if he is right) he knows his stuff and its a good reference point to work from.
 
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Rroff whats your stand on this Sound Cards worth it over DACs + Amps ?

Before posting this thread I thought sell up and get DAC etc but now am just not sure. To pay £200 I would least expect something in return.
 
I would go "DAC + Amp" all the way nowadays. More versatile/portable, and is outside the area of electrical interference (i.e. the computer). +1 for O2+ODAC, though you may want to additionally look at Schiit's Magni/Modi combo stack.

If you're budgeting, you can just get an amp for now, connect that to your line-out of your onboard (which won't be dreadful if it has been made in the past 8 years), then get a DAC later.
If you're on a low budget, you can just grab one of the ASUS Xonar's.

Also a "sound card" is a DAC+Amp (+ DSP).
 
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TBH I'm not that impressed by most recent soundcards but external DACs can be as much about personal preference sound signature wise as much as quality - probably more than soundcards.
 
With an O2 + ODAC or Modi + Magni, you should see some improvement over your SB Z. The Bass should tighten up a little and you may get better separation but that is mostly because the X1 isn't a great match for the SB Z. If you had an STX, with it's lower impedance and better DAC and amp, you probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart in a blind test.

I did a lot of critical listening to my STX vs the Asus Essence one MUSES edition when I had it to test and any differences were really very subtle (better separation, slightly clearer sound, bass was a little more solid and crisper), nothing really jumped out at me and that was a £135 sound card against a £550 DAC & Amp. So some of these cards are really very good and punch a lot higher than a lot of people give them credit for.

Motherboard manufacturers are forever name dropping audio features that make it sound like they have everything you get with a sound card and feature wise they are correct. Trouble is they do a lot of it through software in the DSP while being surrounded by fairly ordinary circuitry and components. Decent sound cards however, and I include the SB Z here, tend to use good quality components and the best cards use very high quality (audio grade) components and add shielding against the noise (which does work) found inside any computer case.
 
My Essence ST sounds horrid with low impedance headphones, especially IEMs where it sounds very muddy with undefined bass and rolled off treble. Using the same IEMS and headphones with my Schiit Modi/Magni and it sounds way better.

With my HD650 however, they sound almost identical, with the Schiits sounding slightly more forward in the midrange, but the Essence giving better bass extension.

I do have a question though: Does using an external DAC (like the Schiit Modi) have any negatives over a soundcard when it comes to gaming? Is there any performance difference? I don't use any sort of DSP effects at all, even for gaming.
 
If you're not using DSP effects then the only thing I can think would be a factor would be Lag and I think this is rarely a problem. Only one I can think of off the top of my head is when using the FiiO X7 as a DAC, there is noticeable lag there but I think that's a software problem.

I've been using my HD650s and Modi & Vali stack to play Fallout 4 tonight, just to see if it stacks up against my usual AKG K702 and STX game pairing and couldn't honestly say that I missed anything. My brain was even fooling me into placing sounds behind me when I was expecting to hear something there, like Dogmeat's paw steps when he was following me - and that was even when I knew damned well that all I was hearing was straight stereo. :D
 
titaniumx3 said:
I do have a question though: Does using an external DAC (like the Schiit Modi) have any negatives over a soundcard when it comes to gaming? Is there any performance difference? I don't use any sort of DSP effects at all, even for gaming.
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Used to be latency/priority issues but largely isn't the case any more though you may get the odd DAC that has less than ideal latency. Sadly the advantages a soundcard could bring in terms of things like handling a ridiculous number of hardware processed sound channels is completely unused by any game at the moment.

I keep my X-FI for using CMSS-3D in games and due to the fact that 1-2 game engines still have EMU 10/20K specific paths copy and pasted from older versions of the engine which give better compatibility/performance.
 
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For me, a big issue is quality diminishing returns as cost goes up. A good AMP DAC stack will cost up to £200, and some AMPs are only designed to drive headphones. If you're fussy about your audio its a good way to go, but the improvement over a soundcard is subtle rather than obvious.

The nice thing about sound cards, is you can still get half decent ones for cheap. If you're looking to upgrade a bad mobo audio, or have an audio solution that will survive multiple mobo upgrades, soundcards still have their place. There's also DSP effects if you're into that.

I'd love a good AMP/DAC stack and a decent set of bookshelf speakers, but would it blow away my current soundcard and active monitor setup? It would certainly be better, but when all is said and done I'd be more inclined to put my money into a new monitor, or GPU.
 
You guys have talked sense into me, so what I have taken from this thread the only real benefit for me is going higher end sound card like Asus STX.
Asus is out the window though there driver support for everything is shocking.
 
no problems here with the STX and Windows 10 (8.1.8.1823 driver) and if you don't like those the unified drivers are good too.

I've never had any trouble with the drivers since I bought this card several years ago and it's been through Windows 7, 8.0, 8.1 and 10.
 
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