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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."
Onboard sound is finally Good Enough*, and has been Good Enough* for a long time now.
* YMMV, offer void in Tennessee.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
And past this post, no further information from Slashdot ever reached my location.
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.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
For the average user, onboard is just fine.
For a power user (gamer/developer), onboard is probably good enough.
If you're an audio pro and/or you're building a semi/professional audio rig, onboard isn't going to cut it 99% of the time.
FWIW, plug in sound cards are actually more common than a lot of people think, because a lot of people seem to think that if it doesn't go into a PCI slot, it's not a sound card.
The Rocksmith cable, with its built-in discrete audio unit, is a prime example, one that I use almost daily.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm still bitter about Aureal.
No.
Back in the day, integrated audio was the frickin' PC speaker that could only produce one square wave at a time with no volume control whatsoever, apart from software 'hacks'.
And Creative Labs were far from the first ones, learn a bit of history and get off my lawn.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
People who know and value quality audio are willing to buy discrete audio cards even though it costs them more money.
However, they don't realize that the improvement they see is because they are also willing to pay more money for quality cables. It's the solid gold Monster Cables that they buy because the salesperson at Fry's recommends them that is really the source of the improved audio quality.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Any money spent on a sound card is better off spent on speakers and a good DAC, which often come together.
High end sound systems and speaker systems these days have digital inputs, thus an onboard DAC. If you're using a digital output on your motherboard to connect to a digital input on the speaker, the onboard sound card has ZERO effect on the quality of the audio. The bits are traveling directly, unmolested from the application generating them to the amplifiers in the speakers.
Now, if you have audiophile-type equipment that uses analog inputs, then YES, the analog sound you feed into those inputs needs to come from a high quality DAC. High end sound cards tend to have good DACs, but you can get the same effect by using an outboard DAC, which has a digital input and analog outputs, and is also AWAY from your PC, so your analog audio is less likely to be affected by interference from the motherboard or power supply.
You can get DACs with USB inputs, but USB adds latency so is best avoided for gaming. For music, go to town with a USB DAC; it won't matter there.
The gist of it is, the most important component is the DAC. The DAC completely determines the quality. Everything else is just hype. :)
...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
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
I can't wait to buy a shiny new Sound Blaster ZxR so I can get that noticeably superior audio. It'll be great for my collection of 128 Kbps MP3s!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
2001 would have been before the capacitor plague hit hard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
If you look down to the industrial espionage part, I heard the story a little different. Instead of a worker stealing the recipe and copying it wrong, I heard there was a hacking incident and sabotages files were purposely placed in the areas the hackers were looking at. The faulty electrolyte recipe was supposedly on of them and they used it to pinpoint which manufacturer was trying to steal information. But that could have just been rumor.
I was once horrifically stung (what I realize was a very long time ago) with an Abit "audiomax" soundcard that came with my motherboard. Quite horrific interference amongst the many problems. In a fit of pique I bought an Asus Xonar that solved all my problems immediately.
Since then, I've been through a few motherboards, but plugged that Xonar in, and it's definitely 'better'
Now if I didn't have that Xonar, then I'd be as happy as the proverbial Larry with my on-board sound I can get today. On-board sound is quite definitely 'good enough' now, but seems a shame for people not to realize (if they care) they can make it a great deal better for a pretty low price.
And, I've carried this card with me for quite a while as my GPUs have come and gone. The price I've paid for my slightly better sound is now practically nothing per year.
I think people still care about sound, but it's just another check-box on your slightly more pimped mobo - in much the same way as a I got a deluxe board with an Intel network adaptor in addition to the Realtek.
It doesn't really matter that much, I don't expect most people to care, but to say that on-board is good enough for all simply isn't true.
My current on-board is wired to my desk speakers for the day to day stuff I want to listen to, and the Xonar is connected to my silly-number-of-speakers gaming headset.
Which integrated audio is it comparing to?
Let's use Realtek as an example, because they're a very common one. They have a variety of chips, ranging from the ALC231 to the ALC1150,
The ALC231 is rubbish. Four output channels (two stereo outputs), four input channels, and a 97dB SNR on output. But even that is probably enough for most users.
A good "middle-end" chip is the ALC861. That brings you up to 7.1 audio out, and a pile of sound-processing features (EAX, A3D, all that - including Creative's own standards). You still only have a 90dB SNR, but on a clean line that's tolerable. And it's cheap enough to be seen on sub-$150 motherboards.
Their top-end ALC1150 is basically the same, adding a few more output channels for some reason, a second ADC, and a 115dB SNR. That puts you above the low-end SoundBlasters, and within spitting distance of the high-end ones. On an integrated chipset. For anyone not doing professional audio work, that's probably enough. And you can find it on motherboards that cost less than this discrete card alone - sometimes even with advanced features like swappable op-amps.
It gets worse, because the main advantage of a discrete card is the SNR. Problem is, S/PDIF over TOSLINK is becoming a more common feature. And that means your computer's DAC doesn't matter - it's done on the sound system itself. Line noise isn't an issue, because it's fiber-optic. Every single Realtek chip I looked at supported this - probably not every implementation does, but it's something that doesn't cost the manufacturer any more than the cost of the connectors. That's another blow against them.
This isn't like video cards, where integrated can handle light users but any remotely intensive task requires at least a low-end discrete card. Probably not even one in a thousand users will need a discrete sound card - the ones who need more than the low-end integrated chips, like gamers, will be buying mobos that already have a higher-end audio chip.
Strong caution with USB audio. There is a metric buttload of cheap USB adapters, While they technically work, they typically lack analog filtering that gets rid of higher harmonics. If you look at the output on an oscilloscope, instead of a smooth wave, you see the actual steps. Better audio hardware should have filters to smooth this stuff out.
Another MAJOR thing is inducing noise into the output. This is not just for USB cards, but all audio solutions. You need some pretty good filtering between the digital and analog power domains -- yet another area where cheap sound can skimp. Hey, let's shave $0.05 off by dropping this capacitor and inductor!
The original article really touches on two separate areas:
1) Audio processing
2) Higher quality audio circuitry
SoundBlaster (and other gaming-oriented cards) typically do both. However, do you really NEED both? The audio processing stuff is supposed to provide an API that games can use to make thing sound more realistic, or offload audio processing from software to hardware, or both. It can typically decode various dolby flavors, and do some other fancy DSP-ish type stuff. Do you really NEED all of that? If so, then maybe a gaming card is for you.
However, what if you want the best sound possible, the lowest noise possible, and don't really game or use the various audio enhancements? You just want a plain-vanilla sound card, but with the highest quality audio. Where to do? Skip the computer store, but go to your local MUSIC store (not the ones that sell CD's, the ones that sell GUITARS). Those cards skip all of the DSP bells and whistles, but have the best-quality DACs and filtering that you can find. You can find some really good USB solutions that will blow on-board audio out of the water for about $100 or so. Of course, you can go crazy and spend $500 or more if you want. If it is good enough for a music producer to use in a studio (who makes his or her living off of the sound), it is probably good enough for YOUR music and movies.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Everybody listen to Harrkev.
Working as an audio professional, and electrical design hobbyist who has designed many audio circuits, I agree 100% with his statements.
USB in particular is some noisy shite if it's not done properly and corners are cut, it can also be really great for the price if done right.
And yes, spending $100 on a used pro audio interface at a music shop can get you the quality of a brand new $500 interface if you know whats what.
Don't forget the RF shielded optical fiber interconnects, for true fidelity at high frequencies, and a mellow bass.
Old and busted. I don't know how you can tolerate listening to the harshness and small sound stage caused by RF shielded optical fiber interconnects that aren't impedance matched as well.
There's no need to spend that much. A lot of motherboards have S/PDIF outputs, and with a good coax/TOSLINK DAC (like the ~$40 FiiO D3), pristine noise-free stereo sound is both easier and cheaper than buying an expensive sound card.
Eat the rich.
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.
Eat the rich.