are sound cards useless ?
my friend landed me his sound blaster Z, and to be honest i really can't tell the difference with my on board codec.
i have fairly decent headphones (Bayerdynamics DT990) so technically i should be able to hear a difference.
>he fell for the audiophile meme
sound cards are pretty useless unless you actually know what you're buying
for almost all intents and purposes an external DAC will do you better purely because of isolation from the inside of a case
if you skimped on the mobo and got a shitty onboard sound with interference then internal soundcards are fine as are external ones (usb, firewire, whatever)
if you didn't skimp on your headphones and bought the wrong headphones for the wrong system and have high impedence then an onboard soundcard will be a tad better, as will external ones
the problem is when people buy internal(/external) soundcards when their onboard works fine - internal is going to be fine for driving 99% of headphones/speakers and isn't going to have an issue, dedicated soundcards usually try to appeal by having more amplification or by having better recording or by having more channels/connectors etc
the main difference between internal and external is that external soundcards, especially usb, suck for latency (which makes a difference when recording) -- to not get shit latency on external you need a firewire one and you need to spend a shit ton (>£80-100) minimum whereas even the cheapest of the cheap internal soundcards have almost no latency
will a shitty DAC outperform the one inside the computer?
i don't really use recording so, i can't speak about that
Idk. I have an Asus xonar dgx and really like it
Anyone else have this meme?
placebo effect, if i were you i'd sell it to some fool and get something thats actually useful.
>can't tell the difference with my on board codec.
I have SB ZxR and it's the only soundcard that I have used that doesn't produce constant low volume static noise
That's like the 212 evo of sound cards
>are sound cards useless?
It depends on how good you on-board audio is.
Yep. Cheap and it gets the job done.
I just found out that the onboard sound on my motherboard (Realtek ALC 898) is actually better than the Xonar DGX
JUUUUUST
ikr.
Idrc though I'll just keep using it.
Placebo is a real thing.
A $30 Behringer will.
you don't need it unless you're a musician or a video editor (or want that e-peen)
i bought one for audio production and it lets me fine-tune everything, and goes at a volume much higher than my on-board sound
bump
Buy a DAC and a amplifier. Buy a decent headphone.
Profit!
Sound cards is a meme.
Wait, you have the soundblaster Z? And A DT990? Honestly the Z with SBX Pro Studio is so much better than onboard... I can immediately tell the difference...
look up the tom's hardware review
it essentially stated that in the comparison between a range of DACs, the onboard DAC of most modern computers is essentially compatible in quality to the DACs you pay over $2000 for
the more expensive dacs have more features, but overall quality of signal is not substantial, i.e., you will never hear the difference
>with SBX Pro Studio
just fuck my audio quality up senpai
beside, you can get the same sound "enhancement" on any dac with some plugins
like this one : fxsound.com/dfx
Not useless, but not worth it when you don't run extremly good headphones.
I bought a Xonar STX for my T70 and its a bit of a difference, but the onboard ASUS sound codec (Maximus V) was better than usual too.
Those lowend 30 € sound cards are not worth it, they sometimes use the same Realtek chips as your onboard audio, they are only meant for those without onboard.
The main use of a sound card is proper amplifying. Headphones like the DT series have 250 Ohm, some have 600, so you would have to turn your onboard audio to 100% all the time.