Barely better than most onboard DACs. Useful in niche situations where you don't need high-end sound and don't have onboard for whatever reason. But it really doesn't measure that well:
nwavguy.blogspot.com
If you have it and it fits your needs, awesome, but don't go calling it the master race of DACs, because it's not.
It sounds amazing for the price ($30), definitely cleaner than onboard audio or the few $xxx soundcards I've tried. I don't use the headphone output on it, the line out goes to a 1972 analogue amp.
So what's the point when most PCs come with an audio jack on the motherboard and any amplification would be done by a dedicated system?
The only value I can see to it is to do audio amplification within the PC itself and have that go directly to the surround speakers (or whatever setup is used).
It probably has amps onboard.
>>So what's the point when most PCs come with an audio jack on the motherboard and any amplification would be done by a dedicated system?
There is none if your onboard audio is good enough for you
>The only value I can see to it is to do audio amplification within the PC itself and have that go directly to the surround speakers (or whatever setup is used).
You'd need a large amp for that anyway, a sound card won't be enough
DAC's take the (ideally bit perfect) output from the computer and convert it to analogue, thats it. They usually have slightly higher quality components.
Most onboard sound or sound cards add processing, effects and other bullshit.
In theory, you get a better DAC that way. But like I said, internal sound cards are usually marketed to know-nothings. I know a guy who had an ASUS Xonar and its outputs were noisier than his onboard.
There are legitimate benefits to upgrading your DAC from onboard though. The onboard output on my old computer was so quiet that I had to turn my speaker amp all the way up just to hear dialog in movies, and when that happened my speaker amp would start to get noisy. Fixed it by going to a USB DAC.
Sometimes you can also get motherboard noise (sounds like hissing, clicking, or buzzing) if the electrical circuits around the DAC chip aren't well designed.
And on most laptops, you don't get a proper line out, you just get a headphone out, which is less than ideal for speakers or for headphones that require more amplification than the motherboard provides (double-amping isn't good.)
I use the creative soundblaster audigy fx and I get some crosstalk from my GPU (750ti) during games. But during normal use its fine
The sound the soundcard provides is generally excellent and much louder than my mobo audio, which drives my mdrv6 headphones better.
But there's still that crosstalk issue. Does anyone know a fix for this?
/thread
Yes, get a better card
My ancient Audigy 2 ZS has no such problems