Sound Card or not

[Bob Skidmore]

So guys, with the current crop of high-end motherboards (Asus ROG Maximus XI Hero) providing on-board sound and sound apps my question is this:

Is it worth fitting a PcIe sound card to it and if so, which are to be recommended.

All the best
Bob

 

[b00merang69]

Post in the correct section and try search as it gets asked a lot and some have found they prefer the soundcard they bought over the onboard even though onboard is good today.

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/forums/sound-city.87/

 

[Bob Skidmore]

I thought general hardware was the correct section...why is it not so?
I did try the forum search but it brought up so much irrelevent stuff it was hard to decipher the info I was after
But, thanks for you reply.

 

[b00merang69]

I did not make the forum but "Sound city" would be all things sound related no?

 

[Nevakonaza]

imo yes,Absolutely worth getting a dedicated sound card if you like your audio to be better,dont get me wrong onboard audio these days are good but personally i dont think anything has come close to my Xonar STX yet.

If you want a good card but budget mind id highly recommend a
Xonar DX (PCI-E)
Xonar D1 (PCI)
They can be picked up for around £40-45 used.

 

[Bob Skidmore]

well, yes boomerang, I suppose you're right there

Thanks Nev, I'll have a look at those, I will only be using it for gaming

 

[ChrisLX200]

Onboard sound was OK on my new system but software control was awful/non-existant. Took me a week to decide on installing a PCIe card and chose an AE-7 in the end. Very happy with it.

 

[Bob Skidmore]

Cheers Chris, I'm not sure whether I should fit one or not as I only use the machine for gaming. I have an old set of Logitech 5.1 speackers that I use.

 

[bazzabear]

As well as better audio quality, do some research on what different systems do for usability.

For instance, Creative Z has an on-desk controller which also acts as a microphone, which can be handy if you have a use for that. But you can only swap between headphones and speakers within the software - which can be a pain as some games do not like it and you have to restart.

Sennheiser GSX1000 on the other hand switches seamlessly between headphones and speakers, and controls the volume externally too with a desktop system - but has no microphone. For most people that wouldn't matter - but I wanted to be able to use Discord either with my speakers or with my headset, depending on differnt situations. I got around it by buying a cheap desktop mike and a 3.5mm jack splitter.

Anyway, the point is that you need to think about all your usage plans, and buy somethinbg which fits them well.

 

[Phil87]

I'd suggest getting an external DAC instead of a sound card. I replaced my old Creative sound card with a Sound Blaster X3 DAC - it gives the same experience as a good sound card but with the convenience of an external unit. It can also be connected to other devices e.g. consoles and smartphones.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/crea...ard-with-super-x-fi-for-pc-and-sc-10b-cl.html

One of the best things about this is that you can use a smaller motherboard, because the only PCI-E card you need is the graphics card.

 

[EsaT]

If you want a good card but budget mind id highly recommend a
Xonar DX (PCI-E)
Xonar D1 (PCI)
They can be picked up for around £40-45 used.

PCI is dead and mummified bus and nothing should be bought for it, unless it's for old hardware retro PC.
In fact most motherboards have lacked it long time.
And 100 ohm output impedance of those cards is facepalm design, when fashion is for lower and lower ohm headphones.
From technical perspective output impedance should be at most 1/8th of headphone impedance.

 

[EsaT]

What's the use?
Speakers, or headphones?
Music alone, gaming or movies?

Getting good sound from speakers is lot about those speakers themselves.
Also room acoustics has huge effect to sound quality.
Even top level speakers won't give any even remotely accurate sound in some arbitrary concrete cube.
And in case of surround set both room acoustics and positioning should be good.
Except for EMI, all that has pretty much lot bigger effect to sound quality than how expensive sound card is.


Headphones get rid of those acoustics and space issues, but have their own things to take into account.
Stereo music is easy and really doesn't have any real accuracy demands.
In fact lots of people favour more or less seriously inaccurate reproduction.

But if you want to be able to get directionality in games, that demands lot more.
Headphones should have overall accurate resproduction and no lopsided frequency response with one end missing in comparison.
Also no matter what marketing and "audiophiles" say, headphones can't ever create any true spatial cues.
Those are formed by shape of the head causing direction dependant changes to signal received by both ears from sound source.
Those need to "encoded" in signal itself, which isn't stereo but binaural sound.
And headphones can only reproduce those binaural cues well giving good directionality and even feel of distances...
Or then trash those cues by inaccurate reproduction and collapse immersion to "head in bucket under water" at worst.
Most sound cards have had some HRTF algorithm to produce that binaural sound from 5.1/7.1 surround for over dozen years.
And that's where integrated sound cards are typically very lacking.

Though compared to money people use for parts with bad return for price/limited usage life, good sound cards are semi-free for their long possible usage life over multiple PC overhauls.

 

[Bob Skidmore]

WOW guys, there is an awful lot to think over there, thank you.

 

[JasonM]

My last Gigabyte Z370 the on-board audio was shocking terrible. It was really thin sound, but plenty of interference mixed in.

I don't mean this as a joke, as I have Sony Walkmans with a cassette tapes with better audio quality.

I just disabled it and used a sound card.

 

[Bob Skidmore]

Mine doesn’t seem too bad on the Asus Maximus XI BUT I am no real judge on it and I only use my PC for games but I would like to get the best sound for my 5.1 speakers

 

[Choimaloy75]

Same herr

My last Gigabyte Z370 the on-board audio was shocking terrible. It was really thin sound, but plenty of interference mixed in.

I don't mean this as a joke, as I have Sony Walkmans with a cassette tapes with better audio quality.

I just disabled it and used a sound card.

e my gigabyte Z370 onboard is crap my soundblaster z kicks it’s arse and that card quite a few years old now.
I use Sennheiser GSX1200 for gaming and soundblaster z and Schiit stack for music.

 

[EsaT]

Mine doesn’t seem too bad on the Asus Maximus XI BUT I am no real judge on it and I only use my PC for games but I would like to get the best sound for my 5.1 speakers

Unless you hear interference (static noise/transients) then speakers and room acoustics are more likely to be lot bigger sound quality bottleneck.

 

[JasonM]

Same herr
e my gigabyte Z370 onboard is crap.

I'm glad someone else agrees.

 

[JasonM]

Unless you hear interference (static noise/transients) then speakers and room acoustics are more likely to be lot bigger sound quality bottleneck.

Normally I would agree with this, however the on-board on the Z370 is shocking.

The sound is not even linear, really thin, then adding in bunch of interference.

It's not even up to 80's cassette players.

I'm not talking something not quite as good, or this is a little better then this, i'm talking go to a car boot, pick up a £5 Amstrad CD player from the 80's, the the £5 car boot special will be better.

If the Gigazyte Z370 on-board was a car, it with be a 20 year old Corsa with the bushes gone, dampers leaking and mismatched tyres!

One of these days i'm going to feed the motherboard audio into a high end DAC, then A / B it with another source, so everyone can hear it, then stick it on YouTube.

 

[Rroff]

Onboard sound these days is generally adequate for consumer audio but personally I find it sounds dull and generally more susceptible to noise from the rest of the system than is usually the case with a sound card.