Are sound cards worth it?

[Aphelion]

For what it's worth, I still have not heard my on-board sound system on my Gigabyte motherboard so I cannot tell you how good or bad it is. I simply prefer standalone soundcards.

My two cents.

Even though I'm in total agreement regarding 3rd party sound cards being the best solution for quality audio.... the latest Realtek offerings are far superior to what they were putting out 3-4 years ago. The recent chips have a built in hardware equalizer that can fine tune the sound, plus the noise floor has been reduced. Bass can still be a bit flabby and the highs a bit muffled, most of that can be corrected using the eq.

What I hear in the quality cards is a type of transparency & clarity, almost as if the sound were three dimensional... this a partly from quality electronics (filtering) and circuit board design.

Ap

 

[snipermouse]

What type of Logitech speakers? The best 2.1 Logitech speakers are the Z-2300. For the money they are probably the best PC multimedia speakers you can get.

What motherboard do you have so that we know which onboard you have? Most Realtek is decent audio. My Asus P5Q PRO Turbo has good VIA onboard audio.

I would avoid anything with Fatal1ty in it's product name.[/QUOTE]


My mobo is a Gigabyte P55A-UD5 with onboard Realtek HD audio which wasnt bad at all, but i just wanted more clarity and better overall sound reproduction. so far so good the new card sounds awsome even with my old logitech X-230's. Ive been lookin at the Z-2300's, can you recomend them?? Was looking at a set of BOSE speakers but soooo over priced and was shown a demo at a store and they did not sound any where near $500 worth, crap realy...sorry BOSE used to be a fan.

cheers agian for every1's thoughts and "sygnus", I did read your review..very good thanx for that, this is my first sound card and couldnt be happier with it.

 

[sygnus21]

I would avoid anything with Fatal1ty in it's product name.

Well.... the card we're talking about.... has "Fatal1ty" in its name..... and it's a rather good, and highly rated, card

 

[BugMeister]

hi all, with todays mobo's and onboard HD sound are sound cards still worth the money?
I'm currently looking at a Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium PCIe Fatal1ty Pro for around $175 AUD. My pc is mostly used for gaming and listening to music. I'm pretty fusy when it comes to sound quality and not real happy with the music quality out of itunes. Gaming sounds good though espesially in BFBC2 (sounds awsome, but thats in the game with 1 processor taken up by sound alone...great job EA!!!) The speakers i have at the moment are a pair of logitech desktop speakers and a floor sub. Would buying better speakers improve the sound or should i upgrade to a soundcard and new speakers??

Any thoughts guys would be great on brands, setup and experiences good or bad?
Are the drivers for sound cards a pain in the a*#s??
Almost forgot, whats the power draw on these things?

cheers

- if your motherboard has a slot for it, the the answer is YES..!!
- onboard sound is pretty basic, rudimentary stuff..

- explore the net and get the best card that your board will take..
-it makes a MONSTER difference..!!

 

[AaronDude]

Yeah so I got a question myself about sound cards. For the people that have notebooks and netbooks that have the new onboard sound such as IDT or Realtek, are the external ones worth it? Personally I got IDT HD on a new compaq notebook(2.2 ghz sempron, 250 gb harddrive, 2 gb DDR2 ram) I got a creative x fi SB1100 USB sound device and I really can't say I notice the difference. It's kind of a shame since it costed 50 dollars. I've tried it with the generic windows drivers and the creative drivers and actually I think the plug and play drivers sound better with it. What exactly is in this card that would make it worth that much? I've noticed there's many other external sound cards going for just a few bucks. Am I weird for not liking the sound? Should I just try to get used to it?

 

[mickey megabyte]

AaronDude, you listen to whichever one sounds best to you!

there is a high degree of relative judgement here - use the one you prefer.

what about your speakers though? poor quality speakers will always sound poor, even if combined with a $5000 soundcard (if there were such a thing..)

 

[Aphelion]

what about your speakers though? poor quality speakers will always sound poor, even if combined with a $5000 soundcard (if there were such a thing..)

There is!

Ap

 

[thefabe]

I think it's a combination of both the dedicated card and the speakers. You can have a great dedicated card and lousy speakers and have wasted your money. I'm still using a Creative audigy 2zs which years ago was the card to have but I also have Logitech Z2300 speakers and they are great. It's just a 2.1 setup but the quality is really good and even better on blu ray DVDs (THX certified speakers). I also have a set of Quite comfort Bose headphones that were a gift cause I would never have spent 300 dollars for them. Also with the right dedicated card you can have applications avalible with more optons to fine tune the sound to your liking.
Just like everything do your homework and read reviews and comparisons, then decided if it's worth the money. But once again you can have the greatest dedicated card and crappy speakers and have defeated your purpose.JMO. Fabe

 

[Reilly]

I think a sound card is worth it for gaming

 

[AaronDude]

I have a two speaker set of some pretty good creative speakers. It sounds great if I plug my mp3 player into it or if I'm playing music off my computer. I have lots of headphones and earbuds that I've been collecting recently, always looking to see why people like certain ones. I gotta say I think the cheap no name generic brands(merkury innovations, meelectronics) sound better then those 100 dollar audio technica headphones I got or even the creative aurvana earbuds.

I'll just continue enjoying the onboard sound on my new laptop. I guess I like cheap sound lol.

 

[Zepher]

I am currently using the onboard Realtek on my Asus P5Q Pro since my Audigy 2 ZS stopped working a couple of weeks ago.
I am using a pair of Alesis M1 Active MK2 speakers which are slightly expensive, $300/pr and I can't tell a difference bewteen the onboard and the Audigy. Music, games, movies sound excellent with either onboard or the Audigy.

 

[smarteyeball]

I gotta say I think the cheap no name generic brands(merkury innovations, meelectronics) sound better then those 100 dollar audio technica headphones I got or even the creative aurvana earbuds.

What model of audio Technia? Personally I find my AD900 has a great soundstage that craps all over the yum-cha headphones I have lying around here.

It's almost a crime to my ears when I unplug and switch to my 5.1 HTIB speakers

 

[AaronDude]

I gotta say I think the cheap no name generic brands(merkury innovations, meelectronics) sound better then those 100 dollar audio technica headphones I got or even the creative aurvana earbuds.

What model of audio Technia? Personally I find my AD900 has a great soundstage that craps all over the yum-cha headphones I have lying around here.

It's almost a crime to my ears when I unplug and switch to my 5.1 HTIB speakers

I use a pair of ANC7 which are of course over the ear and ckm50 earbuds. I mean they don't sound bad but they don't knock my socks off either. I guess they're well balanced and I was just expecting something magical out of them. I tend to either like a lot of mids, highs, or lows, but only one of them. They're just too balanced for my taste.

 

[noobvious]

I gotta say I think the cheap no name generic brands(merkury innovations, meelectronics) sound better then those 100 dollar audio technica headphones I got or even the creative aurvana earbuds.

What model of audio Technia? Personally I find my AD900 has a great soundstage that craps all over the yum-cha headphones I have lying around here.

It's almost a crime to my ears when I unplug and switch to my 5.1 HTIB speakers

I use a pair of ANC7 which are of course over the ear and ckm50 earbuds. I mean they don't sound bad but they don't knock my socks off either. I guess they're well balanced and I was just expecting something magical out of them. I tend to either like a lot of mids, highs, or lows, but only one of them. They're just too balanced for my taste.

Those are the noise-canceling ones, right? NC 'phones never sound as good as the regular ones, except in those places where you really do need the NC.