Is there any point to buying a dedicated sound card in [current year]...

Is there any point to buying a dedicated sound card in [current year], compared to onboard offerings on high end motherboards?

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depends about $$$$ obviously. If youre going the MB route its going to be way more expensive, regardless of what youre using it for

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Soundcads in MB are going to be interfered with regardless, and I dont trust them. Just get something dedicated that you know will be able to convert digital into analog

Yes.

yes unless you're deaf

Music Production

If you're actually doing editing and sound/music production work you probably will, but most people won't.

No, unless you actually have a problem with your audio output (i.e. audible noise). Or you need more juice to drive high impedance headphones.

If you're a musician/you actually work with audio then you'll use an external solution. But the idea that the "audio quality" is better with a dedicated sound device is simply not true in this decade. The differences between on-board audio and anything "higher quality" are completely inaudible.

I've been a hobbyist computer musician/sound designer for around 12 years and I design audio (VST) plugins for what it's worth.

Why would you use a "Pro-Gaming" sound card to specifically do music production?

If you need to record with lower SNR, or you need to encode 5.1 on the fly for DTS or Dolby Digital, or you're using high impedance headphones and you need amped output.. There may be more use cases, but these are the main use cases why a consumer/prosumer may need a dedicated sound card over onboard.

If you don't know what d/a boxes are in the first place you'll never need anything more than on board. If your sound is unbalanced and not grounded XLR you will never need anything more than on board.

No, and the retards who say otherwise are living in 2007.

Nobody in music production buys internal sound cards any longer, for good reasons.

If OP was really going to be using it for music production he wouldn’t have made this dumb thread in the first place, asking if he needs it

sound cards can be used in place of a headphone amp?

How old are the motherboards or internal soundcards that you believe can handle internal digital to analog conversion? Depending on the MB the worlds best soundcard can be a shitty mess if its placed in a hostile spot

I just dont trust d/a boxes. Theres fucking 321084723187 electonical process going on in a relatively tiny box.

Are you a hardware person by chance? If you are just lemme know

If you gave a shit about signal to noise ratio you would not be using a sound card with an 8th in unbalanced jack

not box *tower

Do you trust your own brain then?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Obviously there was a time when they were worse. I'm not sure what time it was exactly and I'm no computer hardware expert. I just know that modern devices are measurably exceptional in any way that matters. Noise interference is still a concern though, which I think you're referring to, but if it's a problem you'll be able to hear it. It's not going to make your audio sound like low-bitrate mp3s, it will just sound like noise.

People ask that all the time actually.

I like using a USB Audio Class 1 DAC solely because of the fact they just werk. Regardless of the computer or operating system there's no drivers or other bullshit to deal with.

I have literal mental illness so no. Anyway this is the dude who turned me onto the whole "custom PCs can nullify internal soundcards" so if you want to join me in raping and killing his family?

It depends in your hearing
They offer like 10x the price/performance of standalone DACs though

Maybe not, I just no without any sort of converters, when I use nvidia playback for example there are noticable white noise and buzzing issues

USB is better for that

Yeah I use old apogee d/a and a/d. The boxes are a lot larger than soundcards though do how can sound cards compete? Gain stages are done by tiny op amps

> Nvidia playback

Why would you even allow Nvidia to even touch audio

people generally use dedicated usb interfaces now for audio

bro just rely on the chinese to build a good enough thin plastic case around the soundcard so all of the millions of processes used by your chips dont interfere

After all, PCs are just giant music machines

Or I could pay for a program that has the same buzzing issue? Whats your point? its hardware obviously

That makes no difference and there's no such thing as a balanced headphone jack.

1) You'd be surprised; lots of people get into music production without knowing a damn thing about music production. If anything the only weird thing is that he'd be on Sup Forums, but hey maybe he thought Sup Forums was the place to ask.

2) It often helps to explain to people why someone else WOULD buy/need to use something to convince them that they probably don't need to.

Do you think using headphones and youtube automatically produces the best quality?

I just don't get why the industry didn't really move forward with multichannel audio. Is 7.1 really good enough? Fucking no. For the kind of interactivity we need, we need 18 channel audio that could make it that a blind person could run around competently in an FPS with headphones.
>Fuck you, Creative, I love you. I remember my first MuVo with 256mb.

An audio interface is kinda the same shit. Maybe more useful actually.

Multichannel audio is a dead end. Even 7.1 is simply ridiculous.

You have 2 ears.
You don't need more than 2 channel audio.
What you are asking for is binaural panning functions and the like being more integrated into software, which will come.

Not really even with prebuilts that have a ground loop buzz you can get rid off it with a cheap usb dongle.

Sort of, but in a way not really. You can still feel sound as it travels through other soft tissues before they reach your ear canal, and you subconsciously process the difference.

nice meme, my friend

if you do just get a cheap one. less hassle than having and amd/dac sitting on your table, cheaper and also provide brilliant sound quality compared to the shit tier on board sound.
i personally have mine hooked up to my games consoles via optical-in as a pass though so i can use discord or listen to music when i'm chilling and playing my consoles on my monitor. i also have the optical-out going to a soundbar i use so i can have a nice movie viewing experience. all of this for around ~£120. i got my sound card for about £45 a couple years ago (soundblaster z) and the optical cables and sound bar cost the remainder. much cheaper than amp/dac for headphones and then seperate pc speaker for the pc.

sound cards are for more channels/inputs
dac is for solving audio quality issues

Depends on the features you're looking for, perhaps. I don't think all motherboards do 196 kHz, 24 bit sampling. Haven't tried a dedicated soundcard since 2004, but I'd expect them to do that. If you're doing actual studio work, you'd probably want that.

Just because it interfaces over USB rather than PCIE doesn't make it any less a "dedicated sound card".

>asking if he needs it
That's not what he asked.

Why not? Even for a musician, there's going to be a first time when he realizes he needs some particular piece of gear.