Onboard sound & sound card together?

[Armadillo]

I have a Gigabyte X99-sli which has realtek alc1150 on it. Unfortunetly, it's also plagued with the dreaded realteak pop, caused by realtek's drivers powering down the output when not in use and being too lazy to release a driver without it or let you disable it even though this issue has been going on for years.

So I grabbed a Soundblaster Z to get rid of that annoying issue. The mic input is not great though and I think suprisingly the onboard mic input works better with my mic.

So can I have both on and just set the creative as the default output for the headphones and the onboard as the default recording device? I would assume I could, but even now I see most places saying to disable onboard with a sound card .

 

[Marsman]

Try it. If it works, it works. I used to use a sound card and onboard for years with many different cards. In fact never did I have to disable onboard audio. Some people have had to though. Why I and others haven't had to while some other people have, I don't know really.

To the actual question; yes you can use onboard audio for microphone and sound card for the audio output. As you've already said, set the SB Z as the default output and set the Realtek for microphone.

 

[Minstadave]

I have to disable my onboard sound on my X99 Krait to get the SBZ control panel to work.

 

[Marsman]

I wonder if it's something that's required or more common with newer boards?

I've still got an Ivybridge CPU. Friend of mine has a Skylake; might ask him if he had to disable the onboard audio.

 

[Armadillo]

To the actual question; yes you can use onboard audio for microphone and sound card for the audio output. As you've already said, set the SB Z as the default output and set the Realtek for microphone.

Ok, thanks. Wasn't sure if it would work or if Windows would have something to say about it.

I wonder if it's something that's required or more common with newer boards?

I've still got an Ivybridge CPU. Friend of mine has a Skylake; might ask him if he had to disable the onboard audio.

X99 is just fussy. Sometimes it seems the slightest change will cause grief. I don't even like changing stuff in the bios too often, just incase it takes issue with it .

I've done some tweaking to the creative. Main problem was hiss on the audio & low volume, searching it seems like without noise reduction ticked, hissing is almost guaranteed, but others complain with it, sound is bad. Might depend on mic, but noise reduction seems ok on mine, audio sounds fine. Raised the gain and audio level seems fine. Only use it for talking to friends, so as long as it's loud and clear for them, it should be fine.

If not, I'll try onboard and sbz together. Wish realtek would just fix the issue though, would be so much easier.

 

[Armadillo]

I have to disable my onboard sound on my X99 Krait to get the SBZ control panel to work.

Just tried it, to test difference between the two mic inputs and I get the same .

With the onboard enabled, the creative card doesn't even show up in playback devices and trying the control panel I get "compatible device not installed" or something along those lines. Disable the onboard and it's fine.

So at least on X99 it's one or the other I guess. Unless it's creative and their drivers just disabling if another sound card is detected. After testing side by side and and a few recordings. Mic input is probably pretty equal and a little disapointing on both. Creative needs noise reduction ticked or hiss. Realtek can go louder, but above +10db sounds awful.

Might have to look into usb options. Maybe it's just too noisy inside my case to get a decent clean mic feed (5820K & vapor-x 290, so probably a fair bit of noise in there).