What's the deal with sound cards? Why do people buy them?

What's the deal with sound cards? Why do people buy them?

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I bought one because I wanted better quality sound

I bought one when the integrated one on the mobo died.

mostly for recording audio I believe. do you know what latency is?

>better quality sound
I'm so confused by this sentence. How exactly is your sound better than what I have on the motherboard?

Why make another dumb shitposting thread when the archive exists?

warosu.org/g/thread/S62155938

How is default motherboard audio latency any different? Especially with high end mobos?

Just to fill up those extra pcie sluts

>what is a dac

>t. normie
Ah, the tech illiteracy of Sup Forums, beautiful.

DAC and ADC are not trivial matters, there are many things that can improve audio quality and the cheap-shit default audio cards on most mobos are just that, cheap shit.

but if you only play LoL or WoW and watch youtube videos on 5$ headphones you probably dont need one.

>tfw fell for the sound card meme in the Windows XP days.

Anyone else fall for it?

My mobo has one. Your arguments are hardly valid

Explain. Say we both listen to a high quality FLAC on high quality speakers. Only mine are connected to a good mobo and yours are connected to a good sound card. Wtf is the difference?

>meme
>hugh stop using good quality components that cost money
>it's a meme!!!!11 reee (just because I can't afford it)
classic

The sound quality that comes out of the speakers. :^)
Seriously, not sure if bait or unironic dumbass.

see
but you won't
because then you can't shitpost

>sound quality
I understand the words but what does it mean

>high quality speakers
>connected to mobo

You know nothing about audio, friend. Perhaps do some extremely rudimentary research about how digital sound reproduction occurs before shitposting like this.

But the beauty of shitposting is that you don't have to know shit about the topic and people still give you (You)'s.

They don't.
It's the current year spend your money elsewhere.

I used to buy them because once upon a time motherboards didn't have them. Then when they started integrating them they started out noticably BAD, so I kept buying sound cards.

Then several years ago a friend was playing music over her integrated sound it I could hardly distinguish the quality from the sound cards I bought. So I stopped buying them.

>retards are still falling for the placebo amp/dac meme

>How exactly is your sound better than what I have on the motherboard?
basically less noise

if you ever recorded any audio you'd know, or if you ever used a midi keyboard to drive a softsynth in a DAW. this isnt some audiophile voodoo magic. onboard soundcards are cheap shit because for 90% of the population that is completely sufficient.

as I said, unless you want to record audio / make actual music (maybe even perform live), you likely dont need anything better than your onboard card

>1999+
>buying a soundcard
roflmao

Sound cards are purchased by plebs at this point. On board audio sounds the same and only externat sound cards actually matter because of input and out ports that no pcie card could realistically have, nor do any have

That thing on your mobo, silly.

>can't hear the difference on any reasonable scale
>BUT MUH QUALITY
Audiophiles, how do they work

>less noise
That noise is inaudible.

I mean, sure, if you're going for studio quality stuff, then by all means buy the best possible equipment. Otherwise, I don't see the point.

>studio quality stuff
lol then you wouldn't buy a soundcard

Literally no reason to buy one unless you are an artist/producer/own a studio.
And the ones that are actually useful dont look like OPs pic at all

So yeah, what said is correct

they reduce CPU load. but buying an external DAC usually makes a lot more sense

There's some pretty expensive cards out there. Pretty sure they're meant for studio use

When i switched from my onboard sound (modern middle end motherboard) to Xonar D1 i could hear massive difference even with my multimedia speakers.

of course you did, otherwise you would feel like you wasted money ;)

So does it make sense to buy a soundcard as an amateur music producer?

If you say so, poorfag :)

If you dont know the diference between sound card and audio interface you shouldnt even consider producing senpai

Or just get an Ipad or a Tascam portastudio

I wouldn't unless you were reallly passionate and know you'll be producing for years. Since why buy something if you're not going to use it.

That the analog signal produced by a DAC differs from DAC to DAC and where the DAC is physically located. A higher quality DAC isolated from external electromagnetic interference (EMI) will produce a signal more truthful to the source material.

Usually it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a pair of decent DAC/Amps with headphones, but it does make a difference with the complete trash that goes onto motherboards. Particularly the bass.

embarrassing

I used to buy them because of this

I bought a Sonar DGX because the onboard audio chipset sounded terrible on my speakers (no bass, awful tinny treble) and couldn't power my m50x's either. Arguable I could have a bought an external DAC but they're expensive and I use 5.1.

Simply put, sound cards have higher quality audio components over motherboards, but if your motherboards audio doesn't bother you unlike mine did to me then you don't need one.

>creative
son..

>massive difference
Hahahaha I just shed a tear, thank you user.

Even the absolute cheapest modern motherboard you can get probably has decent enough onboard sound for most people. Just don't pair it with a diablotek firestarter kit PSU. amazon.com/dp/B017NIDYH2/

>t-thanks MSI ..

Asio is pure latency though. Nobody seriously records using it or windows

if you're low on money, creative might be the best choice around, to be honest

>Particularly the bass
I'm the user with Xonar D1. Spot on. I noticed the difference in bass first. It felt "fuller". Bass guitars suddenly had more "layers" in sound if you know what i mean.
Are you actually retarded enough to think that DAC quality doesn't matter? Or maybe you have shitty ipod earphones/cheap logitec speakers and think its as good as it gets? xD

I bought the absolute cheapest DAC I could find on Amazon and I still can't tell any difference. Ears of tin. Let's go, bitches. I can still tell a crummy 128 bitrate MP3 though.

Because people have sound autism.

Still using a card with Cmedia8738
has shitty drivers on Linux, so it's passed through to a Windows VM

It sounds better than the onboard one

VIA niggers

My mother lard has everything that sound card does on it's I/O. Asus crosshair VI.

Cheap as fuck motherboard audio chipsets will sound like shit yes. That's a given. There's a reason some boards go for sub $70 while others like mine cost $200 plus. Branding aside, the component difference is night and day.

Then again I'm not autistic like Sup Forums. I use Skullcandy Crusher headphones lol

It's an elaborate scam. The soundcards themselves aren't that expensive for what they offer. But then you're compelled to buy more expensive headphones, pay for "exclusive" .flac files, eventually move over to literally snake oil to rub your headphone cables with so that there is no interference.

>Pay for "exclusive .flac files
Nigger what?, You do realize flac is just a lossless container that a CD can be ripped into right? For free? If you own the CD, you already own .wavs which are just as large as .flac for no reason.

If you're paying extra for .flac, you're doing something wrong. Not even an audiophile but I can tell the difference between garbage mp3s and flac

I agree about the snake oil bit though. It's like once your surpass the $600 mark of audio tech, your ears fool you into thinking you're hearing more or better than before as a sort of buyers regret.

Sure. Some sited that are literally "selling music files" do offer .flac as the luxury option and cost twice as much. Not sure how rampant that is since I only ran into those when I tried googling the music that I couldn't find on youtube to download before I found out about yandex-music which I just record with audacity now (if the music doesn't exist on youtube to be downloaded with youtube-dl and converted to .mp3 with ffmpeg). :^)

Sound does not exist its all in your mind

Nothing, there is no difference.

You take every person who says there is a difference and do a double blind test, you will quickly discover they're talking out of their ass.

That is how audiophiles work. They are delusional.

autism
i want my tone generator separated from emf, that's why i prefer extern usb DAC

I bought one to eliminate sound stuttering which I thought comes from the Realtek HD. The real reason was the Realtek LAN controller, now I own both ASUS Xonar DX and Intel Gigabit LAN.

> Only mine are connected to a good mobo and yours are connected to a good sound card. Wtf is the difference?
Drive the sound to the max and you'll hear white noise on a motherboard sooner than on an audio card.

>Spend as little money as possible on motherboard
>End up buying a dedicated LAN and sound card anyway

Why fucking bother? Should have just paid more for a board with better on board sound and Intel LAN.

It didn't happen till another Windows update.
Besides, it wasn't the trashest board but Gigabyte 990X.

A sound card is an audio interface, you absolute retard.

I went from a 16bit soundblaster pci to a m-audio 24bit 96k to a 24bit 192k NI audio kontrol 1 in 16 years.

There is a difference in sound i can assure you.

whats a good dac that is cucked for not getting too much resources
vs a dac that is dedicated with its own cpu alongside of it and practicly getting a better quality

hmm

Nice reddit spacing, friend.

I bought one for my last PC because it had much less static noise on the microphone plug, and also it had less latency when outputting in ASIO for my midi keyboard

>Sound card
>No tube amps
Literally a waste of money.

The integrated sound on all the PCs I've built has been appalling. I always built a PC just expecting to get by on the integrated sound. I don't have a total poverty-tier set of speakers and headphones, but it's not too fancy either.

Big mistake. In every case, there was a noticeable screeching/hissing sound that was very obvious when I was using headphones, especially. It was tied to CPU activity and even mouse movement. Move the mouse right, screeching is a high-pitch, move mouse down, screeching is a lower-pitched kinda sawtooth sound. It wasn't an overpowering sound... you could still hear stuff, but it was damn annoying.

Drove me up the wall that a company like Gigabyte or Foxconn would make a motherboard that bad. It's not a problem for me now because I have my desktop connected to a stereo receiver with S/PDIF.

I haven't built a new PC in several years so things may have improved. Last one I built was around 2008.

Plenty of soundcards date back to XP era and earlier when hardware audio acceleration was still supported, nowadays soundcards are maybe worth it for the reduced noise and better DACs

My motherboard doesn't have onboard sound.

>better DACs
I've got news for you. All these ksps DACs are all the same cheap shit. ADC/DAC technology has exploded in the past decade. We have 14 bit 6 GSPS now. Ksps has pretty much been figured out

if you can even plug your speakers straight into a computer, then your speakers are so shit you wont tell a difference. if you need xlr or 1/4 trs or speaker cable and some banana cunts then you might be able to tell a difference, because the speaker manufacturers were kind enough to make sure you cant plug them into such a shitty fucking source. if you plug a decent pair of headphones straight into a computer's headphone jack, you probably arent powering them well enough and you need a dac and an amp. always use external dacs and amps, infinitely better shielding compared to a sound card that will be sitting right next to a gpu that generates a TON of interference. if you own a pair of jbl lsr 305s, youll know what im talking about. the slightest bit of interference in the air, and a power source, and youll always get a tiny bit of buzzing because decent audio hardware is sensitive. if you're considering a sound card, stop right now. if you just need something to work, the monoprice mda is perfectly fine. if you want something better than the mda, the nfb11 is fantastic despite being chinese. if you want something in between those two extremes, the schiit modi 2 (uber if you wamt optical) is good although it is just a dac and you will need a seperate amp, would recommend a magni 3. please, everyone itt, do not waste your money on "audiophile" corporate cashgrabs. usage of the term "audiophile" inherintly makes you an idiot, if you think you're an audiophile youre a fucking idiot. people who care about audio are not audiophiles, theyre informed consumers who want to listen to their music, games, or movies at a higher quality than dollar store ear phones. have a good day.

>if you can even plug your speakers straight into a computer, then your speakers are so shit you wont tell a difference
Stopped reading right there. Fucking audiophile retards, I swear.

It is for people with fancy setups. Normal gaming, browsing, and media consumption it is totally unnecessary.

Got one because of coil whine, turns out it was the weak psu doing this when the system was being stressed (games etc)

>if you plug a decent pair of headphones straight into a computer's headphone jack, you probably arent powering them well enough and you need a dac and an amp
Not always true, there are sound cards with better AMPs than many DAC/AMPs.

>always use external dacs and amps, infinitely better shielding compared to a sound card that will be sitting right next to a gpu that generates a TON of interference
Kind of true, but again there are some soundcards with EMI shielding that you won't really get much of an interference from.

> if you own a pair of jbl lsr 305s, youll know what im talking about. the slightest bit of interference in the air, and a power source, and youll always get a tiny bit of buzzing because decent audio hardware is sensitive.
Actually you will always get slight buzzing from lsr305, period. Because their AMP is shit.

All around you are not wrong though, soundcards mostly blow. I know exactly 1 soundacrd that is worth purchasing.

Retarded braindead poorfag.

I noticed this recently too. Just put my Xonar D2 back in because the motherboard onboard is fried. The bass was certainly better but I doubt most really would even notice.

Onboard has come along way, although only on high end motherboards where the sound quality is comparable to something like a DX. We're it not for the poor amplification then I'd use it. A soundcard is only worth it with a decent speaker setup or set of headphones. If you're listen on beats-like branded shit or god forbid tinnitus inducing ear buds then I don't know why you're complaining about soundcards being worthless in the first place since you already like listening to garbage.

Really hitting all the Sup Forums flustered defensive points there aren't you?

>the noise is inaudible
lel

oh boy, buy your mechanical keyboard, ath-m50s etc and fuck off from Sup Forums

Yeah. I hate poor people, they should get the fuck out of my board. How is being poor not a crime yet.

why there black rectangle on your picture? to the right

Where's the monster cable meme

They're a relic of the 90s when they had to be bought separately. They stuck around for a little while when the first built-in sound cards sucked, but now they're a complete waste of money. Motherboard sound is good enough now, and buying a separate card is useless because it doesn't really solve any issues (EM interference being that close to teh components, etc).

A DAC is what you want if you're serious about sound quality, and that's only if you have expensive headphones and a high quality audio library.

I wanted to plug in my guitar.

The quality doesnt matter unless your headphones cost like 1000$

what about using DAC for gaming? do games have "high quality audio"?

How does it feel to get scammed?

How many of the guys itt are apple users?

I plug my TV output into the mic input on my pc and use it as a mixer, then just big headphones... so I can play ps3 and watch YouTube while chatting over the headset all at once

It's too bad pcs don't have hdmi input though

>Why do people buy them?
Because they are mentally ill.

Sound card IS a DAC you retarded tech illiterate.
Digital to Audio Converter.

Digital to analog holy shit. This thread is making me retarded too.

cds are very high quality and they've been around since the 80s kiddo

I hope you're memeing...
Digital to Analog converter.

>You people are mentally ill!
>*uses linux*