Sound cards really needed?

my $83 gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L came with the realtek azalia HD sound built in.

192Khz@24 bit...

The need for a discrete sound card even for audiophiles is getting smaller and smaller nowadays.

My new Intel board came with 7.1 built on and it blows away any 200 dollar sound card I ever bought before. I see no reason to go buy a sound card unless your built on audio does NOT perform some certain feature you need.

icoola77 said:

Yes that would be true if it werent for built-in obsolescence, as demonstrated so well by Creative, who refuse...

Admittedly Creative's tactics are completely underhand and all that really tells me is to never buy a creative product. There are many more companies out there that simply can't AFFORD to implement that kind of policy, since they would just go out of business when people moved to competitors products.

Take Asus for example - Their cards are pretty high priced, which means that they are likely to be selling a lot less of them than say creative with its Soundblaster LE series, which are cheap and cheerful. That means they are likely going to want to keep their customers happy with what they have bought - it's unlikely they are going to be able to sell them two cards, unless they prove that their cards + software are worth it for a second/third/fourth pc. Case in point - this card is actually pretty old now, having been released in September of 2007 (old in comparison to how often Creative "refreshes" its line of cards, anyway), and yet there was a driver update just a few days ago fixing bugs and enabling more functionality on it.

Do you have a GOOD sound system, meaning something other than computer speakers (even better ones)? Do you use analog outputs or output everything digitally to an external DAC and amp? These are the important questions.

If you have a nice proper hifi setup and use analog outputs then a better soundcard will make a very noticeable difference in audio quality. I have a SB X-Fi in my system and it's obvious it doesn't hold a candle to my FireWire Echo AudioFire4 audio interface in sound quality and for audio recording the X-Fi is laughably bad.

If you're using digital output from the soundcard then even the onboard ones should be good enough since the digital to analog conversion is made on an external amp with its own DAC.

If you're using computer speakers then the onboard card will be good enough. You may notice some improvement by going to a better soundcard, especially when it comes to noise, but other than that the speakers will usually limit the quality.

I beg to differ, actually. Check my system specs to see what I have.

I use (and try) both TOSLINK S/PDIF and analog out with shielded cables and my onboard azalia out... I find TOSLINK is actually worse quality then the analog outs because of the limitations of TOSLINK (IIRC 96KHz but don't quote me on that).

IMO the problem with your comparison is comparing a creative product to a much higher end one - there's your problem... try something nice like an HT OMEGA card and then compare :) I find my onboard isn't quite as good as a decent HT OMEGA card (or the like) but it's way better then any other sound device I have access to nowadays (the HT omega was a loan)

I have everything from SB16 ISA jumpered to SB AWE32 jumpered to crystal audio built into my libretto 70CT to ALC850 (IIRC) that is in my nforce4 ultra a64 x2 system to a creative labs MP3+ (SB16 on a USB bus with TOSLINK out) to the SB16PCI I have stashed away... and on and on.

z3r010 said:

IMHO most onboard sound now is more than good enough.

True --especially with the HD audio codecs even built in to LAPTOP computers.

The weak links of computer sound systems are usually the "Boom Box" type of speakers -- they tend to be modelled on pumping out lots of "Boxy Bass" rather than decent Hi-Fi sound (aks Mission or Bose speakers at a nice wallet busting 1000- - 1500 USD "a pop").

For people used to listening to highly compressed mp3 sounds on bud earphones attached to an IPOD or similar device then the computer system will be OK. Also for movies and games then probably OK too.

High quality music listening requires a rather different type of speaker system for "the ultimate" experience.

However the answer to the question - do you need a dedicated sound card -- now not really any more.

OT - Consider using built in Video cards as well.

Unless you are a dedicated gamer most built in video cards are more than sufficient these days as well -- on one system I use with a 22 inch monitor the built in graphics handles 1680 X 1050 with no problems.

For really huge monitors or extreme gaming that's another issue bit for typical "Boring" normal applications an extra video card is also unnecessary in most cases.

cheers
jimbo