Ode To Sound Blaster: Are Discrete Audio Cards Still Worth the Investment?

MojoKid (1002251) writes "Back in the day (which is a scientific measurement for anyone who used to walk to school during snowstorms, uphill, both ways), integrated audio solutions had trouble earning respect. Many enthusiasts considered a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. It's been 25 years since the first Sound Blaster card was introduced, a pretty remarkable feat considering the diminished reliance on discrete audio in PCs, in general. These days, the Sound Blaster ZxR is Creative's flagship audio solution for PC power users. It boasts a signal-to-noise (SNR) of 124dB that Creative claims is 89.1 times better than your motherboard's integrated audio solution. It also features a built-in headphone amplifier, beamforming microphone, a multi-core Sound Core3D audio processor, and various proprietary audio technologies. While gaming there is no significant performance impact or benefit when going from onboard audio to the Sound Blaster ZxR. However, the Sound Blaster ZxR produced higher-quality in-game sound effects and it also produces noticeably superior audio in music and movies, provided your speakers can keep up."

Comments

No.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Onboard sound is finally Good Enough*, and has been Good Enough* for a long time now.

* YMMV, offer void in Tennessee.

Re:No.

[jandrese]

The /. writeup sounds like audiophile wank to me. I would be surprised if this Soundblaster could justify its price in a proper double blind study on real world data (music, games, movies, etc...) vs. the built in audio on your mobo.

Re:No.

[shadowrat]

The results of my study with a sample of 1 is: I can't tell the difference. I stopped buying discrete cards a long time ago.

Re:No.

[AmiMoJo]

People who really care about audio quality don't buy Creative hardware anyway. That's for gamers. If you want sound quality there are many cards with cheap but excellent chipsets. Via Envy24 codes and Wolfson DACs are the preferred combination, and cards with them cost under a tenner.

Much better to spend the money on better speakers or a headphone amp. If you really want high end sound get an external DAC.

Re:No.

[Guspaz]

And those noise problems don't matter if you're using digital audio connections, say over HDMI or TOSLINK or S/PDIF. In fact, if you're doing digital audio over HDMI, you're not even using your onboard sound, you're using your videocard's sound output.

Even then, the signal-to-noise ratios of onboard has been good enough for years now. Sure, you might notice a slight difference with a good pair of headphones, but in practice, not so much.

Re:No.

[Mike Buddha]

Soundblaster cards don't have the imaginary qualities audiophiles look for?

Re:No.

[techno-vampire]

I believe the word you want is "audiophule." You know, the type that claims that they can hear differences that an oscilloscope doesn't show?

Hasn't been true for a while

[Hamsterdan]

Yes, a discrete card might have *better* specs (especially analog components, which was a problem on older integrated soundcards), but I haven't felt the need to use a discrete card since my nForce 2 board (Soundstorm).

Besides, it saves me from using Creative's bloatware.

Re:Hasn't been true for a while

[gsslay]

Besides, it saves me from using Creative's bloatware.

This is what comes to my mind whenever I hear of Creative. Nice enough hardware, but shockingly bad software, 80% of which no-one ever had any need for. And it would invariably all be set up to load at boot-time, sucking up resources and RAM.

Creative can suck it.

[buback]

I'm still bitter about Aureal.

Wouldn't use a soundblaster...

[Zarquon]

...but discrete soundcards, especially external ones, are still alive and well if you record. The noise floor of internal sound cards hasn't gotten that much better (a PC is very noisy RF environment), and if you need mic preamps, quarter inch jacks, optical in, etc, they generally don't fit on a PCI card or laptop.

But for general gaming or home theater use? Nope. Send the audio out over the HDMI out, or SPDIF for DVI/VGA rigs, and let the amp sort it out.

-R C

Re:Wouldn't use a soundblaster...

[thegarbz]

But for general gaming or home theater use? Nope. Send the audio out over the HDMI out, or SPDIF for DVI/VGA rigs, and let the amp sort it out.

This right here is a key point. Many people now don't rely on their PC to actually do any audio, just send the data somewhere else. Many hifi rigs are hooked up into digital inputs, many TVs and computer displays will support HDMI audio and do the conversion in the device. In some cases like mine people even opt for external streaming devices like a Roku to get music though that doesn't work for generic sound.

Re:Yes

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Onboard sound sucks.

No, onboard analog outputs suck. By using a digital connection such as USB (or S/PDIF, Firewire, Thunderbolt, HDMI, DisplayPort etc.), you're passing a digital bitstream and moving the digital to analog conversion to an external device that usually has a much better signal/noise ratio.

Even the cheapest onboard sound chipsets can pass a perfect digital bitstream along via S/PDIF, even if the analog components are shit.