Are sound cards still relevant? Yes*

[UsandThem]

So I'll preface this with a disclaimer. I'm not an audio expert, and I simply a person who enjoys listening to music on an every day basis. I do not consider myself an audiophile, I just like my music sounding really good when I listen to it. What I am going to talk about is simply my personal opinion based on my experience. You might disagree, and that's fine. Audio is extremely subjective.

Cliff note version: It would be noticeable for anyone using onboard audio earlier than the Realtek ALC1150 codec, or budget boards where they don't put a whole lot of effort into good implementation (like isolation, capacitors, and shielding).

OK, now to explain the answer to the question in the title. There is still a difference in audio quality with sound cards compared to onboard audio. After testing my various music today with the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 I recently bought, I could notice slight differences in overall quality compared to my Realtek ALC1220 codec on my Asrock Z270 Taichi. However, I will admit it is very, very close, and the majority of people would be perfectly happy with it. On the other hand, if someone uses onboard audio based on a Realtek codec older than ALC1150 (or not properly implemented like on a budget motherboard), the difference would be definitely be noticeable.

Whenever it is time for me to buy new headphones, speakers, or even audio upgrades in my vehicles, I always take a sampling of music I listen to and see how it sounds. If it's not obvious by my username or avatar, I am a huge Pink Floyd fan. I generally listen to 2-3 of their full albums (or the individual member solo albums) every week. Since I probably have listened to them hundreds, if not thousands of times since I was a teenager, I recognize many different layers of their songs that the casual listener would never really notice. Things like Richard Wright singing background along with David Gilmour, Roger Waters' bass and other background ramblings, and many things on the album Dark Side Of The Moon, which I consider the best mastered album of all-time.

So after installing the card, I fired up songs like Echoes, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, and Money, along with live versions from David Gilmour's 'Live At Pompeii' and Roger Waters' songs like 'Sexual Revolution' and D'eja Vu' They all passed with flying colors. Then throughout the day, I also listened to many different artists like David Bowie, Bob Marley, Tool, Phil Collins, Alanis Morissette's Unplugged, Eric Clapton, Talking Heads, NIN, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains. They all sounded great, and many of the songs are rather demanding with audio quality because they tend to sound muddy on bad equipment. Things were just a little clearer and dynamic, and I was able to easily hear all the things I was looking for.

Now while the audio quality was impressive, the Creative software suit is much less so. First of all, they have made it where if you plug in headphones, the card won't automatically switch to them. You have to go into the utility and change it there. And as I found out, the headphone amplifier is much more powerful than my onboard audio, and the default the sound level goes to 100, which was so loud I literally ripped my headphones off when it happened because it hurt my ears. Now I know when I first switch it over to my headphones, I leave them off and turn down the volume level to 17%, and that's about as high as I can go without it being too loud and uncomfortable uncomfortable. Both of my headphones are easy to drive, so maybe if someone had hard to drive high-end headphones like some Sennheiser models, maybe the headphone audio wouldn't be so piercing. I didn't hook up a molex connector, so the RGB doesn't work and I can't comment on how well that feature works.

Wrapping this up, I had kind of watched this sound card since it was released last summer, debating if I would try it out. I waited to see how many driver updates Creative provided, and how well they worked for all the early adapters. What finally got me to pull the trigger was the Ebay 15% off coupon code, so I ended up paying around $120 for it. Absolutely necessary? Nope. Asrock really did a good job with the audio on the Taichi, and I honestly believe most casual music fans/gamers would be better off saving the money, or buying something else that would make a difference like a NVMe drive or a better GPU. *However, I believe people who like and listen to music like I do will notice an appreciable difference in sound quality.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

No.

You should be using a USB external interface. Any internal device is susceptible to interference from the other components (fans, hard drives, GPUs) in the computer.

Professional audio capture cards are often shielded to avoid that. But a $100 "prosumer" audio interface will give you better audio than a sound card.

 

[UsandThem]

No.

You should be using a USB external interface. Any internal device is susceptible to interference from the other components (fans, hard drives, GPUs) in the computer.

Professional audio capture cards are often shielded to avoid that. But a $100 "prosumer" audio interface will give you better audio than a sound card.

True, it can. But I didn't have interference from my onboard audio or with the sound card. I've seen a few people over the years who had issues with that, but that's something I've never had an issue with.

Edit:

I guess I should add that an external DAC could also be a choice to upgrade onboard sound, but since I only tested the Creative card, I can only speak for it's performance compared to onboard sound. However, the video I linked to in my OP talks about a dedicated sound card vs. external DAC. I don't have the need to hook it up to different devices, so an internal sound card is fine for my uses.

 

[richaron]

As far as I'm concerned the convenience of having physical volume knobs is something I can't go without, I almost rank it as highly as my concerns over sound quality. I'm simply a man who likes knobs. So I also vote for an external interface.

But I fully accept a properly designed internal card with good components could provide noticeably better sound and can be a worthwhile upgrade over onboard. Though (obviously a generalization) I think external devices can provide superior sound and physical convenience. However external devices usually don't have the same level of software features and integration.

Edit: Sorry, not trying to poop your party OP. That does seem like a nice sound card and a decent upgrade. As always it comes down to user experience and how you feel about it; And I completely agree "sound cards" are still relevant.

 

[UsandThem]

Edit: Sorry, not trying to poop your party OP. That does seem like a nice sound card and a decent upgrade. As always it comes down to user experience and how you feel about it; And I completely agree "sound cards" are still relevant.

No problem. The external DAC/amp could very well be a better choice for many people nowadays. I've just never tested one since I used dedicated sound cards from the AWE64 up until I moved to Windows 10 in 2015, in which prevented my X-Fi card from working properly (Creative didn't have drivers that worked). So at that point I started using the onboard audio (ALC1150 and ALC1220) up until I bought this card.

I really just created this thread in case there was anybody out there like me wondering if aftermarket audio products (in my case the sound card) really made any kind of difference with many onboard audio solutions actually being quite good.

 

[FeuerFrei]

I appreciate the analysis. I'm not in the market for a SC but I do ask myself this very question every now and then. My current mobo isolates the sound circuitry to a dedicated area on the board, FWIW.

 

[paperfist]

I keep reinstalling my X-Fi card after each MB/CPU upgrade for better or worse.

 

[UsandThem]

I appreciate the analysis. I'm not in the market for a SC but I do ask myself this very question every now and then. My current mobo isolates the sound circuitry to a dedicated area on the board, FWIW.

My Taichi board is the same way. The audio is isolated (even each channel is then further isolated into different layers of the PCB). It's actually pretty good, and if I wasn't an old timer who had used sound cards in the past, I likely would have never tried the sound card. I just always had this "what if" in the back of my head when I read about some people still using sound cards (Sound Blaster Z and Asus Xonar, Essence).

The only reason I paid the extra few bucks for the AE-5 card over the Sound Blaster Z was I figured Creative would provide more driver support for it over the Z, which has been out quite a few years now.

I'm still testing it out with some artists while I get stuff down around the house today. Today's playlist includes Smashing Pumpkins, Led Zeppelin, Live, Slayer, Fleetwood Mac, Pat Benatar, Tesla, Dire Straights, Depeche Mode, The Cure, White Zombie, The Struts, Megadeth, Joan Jett, The Cranberries, and Marilyn Manson.

I gotta say I was worried about receiving the card, and thinking it was a waste of money/time. I'm just glad it's actually quite the opposite.

 

[JeffMD]

Lotta talk on sound cards... many of us just pipe directly to an expensive receiver. Have no issues using my rx-v481 (as well as a previous model) via hdmi, uses Burr-Brown DAC's and the amps are awesome.

 

[UsandThem]

Lotta talk on sound cards... many of us just pipe directly to an expensive receiver. Have no issues using my rx-v481 (as well as a previous model) via hdmi, uses Burr-Brown DAC's and the amps are awesome.

Well, it is a post with my opinion of a sound card I just bought.

I use a receiver and with nice speakers in our living room entertainment center, but my main PC (with the sound card) is in my home office, across my house. A receiver is another good option for some people as well.

There's no right or wrong here, just a discussion on good audio ideas to help people wanting a little better than "good".

 

[HutchinsonJC]

The last sound card I had was for a pcmcia slot. I really loved the card over what the laptop was able to do with onboard. This was back 2003 through 2006 or so.

I've never been any kind of audiophile or anything but I'm probably more aware than the average person of compression artifacts, or clipped audio signal (exceeding what an amp is really capable of in terms of boosting an audio signal - squared off wave), etc.

I like a good sound, but I guess I haven't had much of a want for a sound card on the computer. Most of my music listening is on the road where I can turn up the volume and really jam loud haha; feel that bass!

Setting up car audio for myself was probably the single biggest learning opportunity for me in terms of understanding a lot about audio, and the various terms audiophiles might talk about. I thoroughly enjoyed reading several forums and educating myself to that end, but in the end, it's definitely about personal taste!

 

[Yuriman]

My understanding of Creative's sound cards is that they sound subjectively better not because they reproduce music more accurately and with less distortion, but because Creative applies sound processing to deliver inaccurate but (on average) more "pleasing" sound.

It's like getting into older vehicles which have physical sliders for bass and treble, and seeing them cranked all the way up, because the driver likes it better. Doesn't make it any closer to what the artist intended. Not that it matters. But, you could probably achieve the same thing with software and onboard audio, if Creative would license it out to Realtek.

 

[DaveSimmons]

My understanding of Creative's sound cards is that they sound subjectively better not because they reproduce music more accurately and with less distortion, but because Creative applies sound processing to deliver inaccurate but (on average) more "pleasing" sound.

It's like getting into older vehicles which have physical sliders for bass and treble, and seeing them cranked all the way up, because the driver likes it better. Doesn't make it any closer to what the artist intended. Not that it matters. But, you could probably achieve the same thing with software and onboard audio, if Creative would license it out to Realtek.

Agreed. Filtered sound might be more pleasing to some ears, but it's not more accurate.

I suspect if processing was disabled, UsAndThem would fail to tell apart the Creative card from onboard sound from not just current motherboards, but also ones from 5-10 years ago.

For my music jukebox PC with lossless FLAC files, I use an optical digital connection to an Onkyo receiver and Polk speakers. Digital is digital so a $5 motherboard sound chip is fine for that, or a $10 USB "sound card."

I also have used analog connections from my work PCs going back to at least 2006 and for MP3 quality audio there has been no audible difference between that and the optical connection. Is is in a home office, so it's possible that I'd hear extra noise at home theater sound levels. The point is that "decent" audio is a solved problem and has been for so long that $5 sound chips are usually good enough.

For my gaming PC, I just have a cheap old Logitech analog 5.1 setup since I care less about the fidelity of monster roars and shotgun blasts.

 

[UsandThem]

My understanding of Creative's sound cards is that they sound subjectively better not because they reproduce music more accurately and with less distortion, but because Creative applies sound processing to deliver inaccurate but (on average) more "pleasing" sound.

It's like getting into older vehicles which have physical sliders for bass and treble, and seeing them cranked all the way up, because the driver likes it better. Doesn't make it any closer to what the artist intended. Not that it matters. But, you could probably achieve the same thing with software and onboard audio, if Creative would license it out to Realtek.

True, out of the box the Creative card is tuned for a "warmer" sound. However, my Realtek audio had EQ built into its utility, and I manually adjusted it until I got it just how I liked it. Same with my car audio. After upgrading my system, I sat in my car for probably an hour testing out my music, and adjusting it to it was just right. Like HutchisonJC mentioned, each person has their own personal taste on how the audio sounds.

It's just the smaller differences I am noticing. For example, in the song "Us and Them", when the chorus hits, on some systems it can get really muddy sounding because there's a lot going on. With a good system/speakers/audio, it really keeps all the different things separated, so it sounds clearer. Same thing on some other songs like Tool's ' ænema' and NIN's "I Gave Up'.

I'd personally say it's like going from decent headphones, to a premium one. Small differences, but they are there.

I suspect if processing was disabled, UsAndThem would fail to tell apart the Creative card from onboard sound from not just current motherboards, but also ones from 5-10 years ago.

It would take me a bit, but I guarantee if I was able to play several Pink Floyd tracks, I would be able to figure out which one was which. Especially if the songs were 'Echoes' and 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond'.

 

[repoman0]

I have easily heard the difference comparing onboard Realtek analog out vs an external DAC, both plugged into the same amp. People don't usually realize that while a couple dollar DAC chip is more or less an ideal device in 2018 (to the point a human can hear the difference), the surrounding electronics to amplify the signal sent to analog output still vary in quality. That's why there are higher end boards that have decent audio implementations that will be perfectly usable and lower end boards that can easily be improved upon.

I use an external DAC and headphone amp so I don't have to worry about onboard audio quality when I buy new motherboards and because I like the external volume knob. I'm sure there are boards out there that would sound just as good but now I don't have to worry about it. Plus I use 600ohm headphones which makes them fairly difficult to drive for most onboard solutions.

 

[Yuriman]

I'm not saying there aren't advantages to moving all of the other circuitry off of very busy motherboards, just that what most of what most people notice with Creative cards is the processing. I personally like how it sounds and miss my old Creative card, but I'm under no impression that the sound was cleaner than their competitors.

 

[UsandThem]

And another thing I'd like to point out here, is the various onboard Realtek codecs are only part of the story. The biggest difference is how the audio solutions are implemented hardware/component wise on the motherboards. For example, my son's PC has an Asus Z97 motherboard with ALC892 on it, and it's pretty good. However, a HP system I use for F@H has the same codec, and it sounds like absolute garbage.

 

[Lordhumungus]

Personally, I went from having a Xonar Essence STX internal sound card for a number of years, to recently trying out the Realtek ALC1220 as my daily driver (mainly due to logistics since I went to an NCase M1 ITX setup and can't have an internal sound card).

I've tried it paired with a few headphones I have (Sennheiser HD650, Philips SHP9500, V-Moda Crossfade M-100, and Koss KSC75) and much to my surprise I found that the STX completely blew the Realtek away. So much so that I actively do not like listening to music or watching videos with the internal sound card.

I never really considered myself an "audiophile" (particularly since I've had some amount of hearing loss/damage due to constant inner ear issues as a kid), just someone who appreciates nice things at a good value, but sweet Christmas, the difference is night and day. The Realtek fails on volume, clarity, separation and pretty much any other category I can think of.

In fact the difference was so noticeable that it has swung me super hard in the other direction and I am now piecing together a "proper" setup with external DAC (Geshelli ENOG PRO), tube amp (Little Dot MK III, and solid state amp (Massdrop x THX AAA 789). This way I can play around with everything and easily upgrade/sidegrade/downgrade to my liking.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> ... tube amp ...

That makes me think this is another example of preferring processed sound to the "harshness" of accurate, unfiltered sound. Which is fine, we like what we like.

 

[Alpha One Seven]

So I'll preface this with a disclaimer. I'm not an audio expert, and I simply a person who enjoys listening to music on an every day basis. I do not consider myself an audiophile, I just like my music sounding really good when I listen to it. What I am going to talk about is simply my personal opinion based on my experience. You might disagree, and that's fine. Audio is extremely subjective.

Cliff note version: It would be noticeable for anyone using onboard audio earlier than the Realtek ALC1150 codec, or budget boards where they don't put a whole lot of effort into good implementation (like isolation, capacitors, and shielding).

OK, now to explain the answer to the question in the title. There is still a difference in audio quality with sound cards compared to onboard audio. After testing my various music today with the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 I recently bought, I could notice slight differences in overall quality compared to my Realtek ALC1220 codec on my Asrock Z270 Taichi. However, I will admit it is very, very close, and the majority of people would be perfectly happy with it. On the other hand, if someone uses onboard audio based on a Realtek codec older than ALC1150 (or not properly implemented like on a budget motherboard), the difference would be definitely be noticeable.

Whenever it is time for me to buy new headphones, speakers, or even audio upgrades in my vehicles, I always take a sampling of music I listen to and see how it sounds. If it's not obvious by my username or avatar, I am a huge Pink Floyd fan. I generally listen to 2-3 of their full albums (or the individual member solo albums) every week. Since I probably have listened to them hundreds, if not thousands of times since I was a teenager, I recognize many different layers of their songs that the casual listener would never really notice. Things like Richard Wright singing background along with David Gilmour, Roger Waters' bass and other background ramblings, and many things on the album Dark Side Of The Moon, which I consider the best mastered album of all-time.

So after installing the card, I fired up songs like Echoes, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, and Money, along with live versions from David Gilmour's 'Live At Pompeii' and Roger Waters' songs like 'Sexual Revolution' and D'eja Vu' They all passed with flying colors. Then throughout the day, I also listened to many different artists like David Bowie, Bob Marley, Tool, Phil Collins, Alanis Morissette's Unplugged, Eric Clapton, Talking Heads, NIN, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains. They all sounded great, and many of the songs are rather demanding with audio quality because they tend to sound muddy on bad equipment. Things were just a little clearer and dynamic, and I was able to easily hear all the things I was looking for.

Now while the audio quality was impressive, the Creative software suit is much less so. First of all, they have made it where if you plug in headphones, the card won't automatically switch to them. You have to go into the utility and change it there. And as I found out, the headphone amplifier is much more powerful than my onboard audio, and the default the sound level goes to 100, which was so loud I literally ripped my headphones off when it happened because it hurt my ears. Now I know when I first switch it over to my headphones, I leave them off and turn down the volume level to 17%, and that's about as high as I can go without it being too loud and uncomfortable uncomfortable. Both of my headphones are easy to drive, so maybe if someone had hard to drive high-end headphones like some Sennheiser models, maybe the headphone audio wouldn't be so piercing. I didn't hook up a molex connector, so the RGB doesn't work and I can't comment on how well that feature works.

Wrapping this up, I had kind of watched this sound card since it was released last summer, debating if I would try it out. I waited to see how many driver updates Creative provided, and how well they worked for all the early adapters. What finally got me to pull the trigger was the Ebay 15% off coupon code, so I ended up paying around $120 for it. Absolutely necessary? Nope. Asrock really did a good job with the audio on the Taichi, and I honestly believe most casual music fans/gamers would be better off saving the money, or buying something else that would make a difference like a NVMe drive or a better GPU. *However, I believe people who like and listen to music like I do will notice an appreciable difference in sound quality.

Did you use the stock default setting on the on board sound or did you use the booster / equalizer to get the best sound you could?

The thing is, most folks that like to listen to music with great quality, don't use the PC as the source for listening, they use a dedicated Audio system that is often tied to a NAS that stores the music files, or has access to other inputs like LP, Tuner, etc. So the whole need for the best audio on a PC is not really even a thing for most folks.

I create music on my PC, but it is tied to my AV system for playback.

 

[UsandThem]

Did you use the stock default setting on the on board sound or did you use the booster / equalizer to get the best sound you could?

The thing is, most folks that like to listen to music with great quality, don't use the PC as the source for listening, they use a dedicated Audio system that is often tied to a NAS that stores the music files, or has access to other inputs like LP, Tuner, etc. So the whole need for the best audio on a PC is not really even a thing for most folks.

I create music on my PC, but it is tied to my AV system for playback.

I manually tweaked the EQ settings on both of the motherboards I used after I started using onboard audio. I rarely find I like the default / preset audio settings (like rock, R&B, vocal, etc) on most things (receiver, car audio, etc).

The sound was pretty good on both of the boards I used, and I think most people would have been fine with it. Even when I was listening to my various music on the PC, I never once thought "wow this sounds bad". It was just mainly when I was working on the PC and listening to Pink Floyd while I worked, I would notice small differences compared to listening to on other devices. I just figured since the card was on sale, I'd give it a shot. I figured if I didn't like it, or notice a difference, I could sell it at a small loss. I do most of music listening on the PC, so for me it made the most sense to try something there. The amp on the sound card is night and day from my onboard audio, however most of the other differences are small, but noticeable.

I'm not what I would call an "audio guy" like the ones on sites like Head-fi, where they try to find differences in $800 vs. $1500 headphones, just a guy who likes Pink Floyd to always sound really good

 

[Lordhumungus]

> ... tube amp ...

That makes me think this is another example of preferring processed sound to the "harshness" of accurate, unfiltered sound. Which is fine, we like what we like.

For day-to-day I prefer accuracy, but I've found that under some musical conditions tube amps can be fun in their own right. It just so happens I ended up with a tube amp first because I got a great deal on the LD at I believe $200 brand new from Newegg. I had been losing my mind trying to find a good deal on a good solid state amp until the Massdrop deal came up and it looks like it will be just what I am looking for (fingers crossed) and a pretty exceptional value.

So in summary, I guess you aren't wrong exactly, but I also don't lack awareness about what I am doing and leave the magic cables and similar to the "real" audiophiles.

 

[Alpha One Seven]

I manually tweaked the EQ settings on both of the motherboards I used after I started using onboard audio. I rarely find I like the default / preset audio settings (like rock, R&B, vocal, etc) on most things (receiver, car audio, etc).

The sound was pretty good on both of the boards I used, and I think most people would have been fine with it. Even when I was listening to my various music on the PC, I never once thought "wow this sounds bad". It was just mainly when I was working on the PC and listening to Pink Floyd while I worked, I would notice small differences compared to listening to on other devices. I just figured since the card was on sale, I'd give it a shot. I figured if I didn't like it, or notice a difference, I could sell it at a small loss. I do most of music listening on the PC, so for me it made the most sense to try something there. The amp on the sound card is night and day from my onboard audio, however most of the other differences are small, but noticeable.

I'm not what I would call an "audio guy" like the ones on sites like Head-fi, where they try to find differences in $800 vs. $1500 headphones, just a guy who likes Pink Floyd to always sound really good Pink Floyd always sounds good anyways.

 

[jkauff]

Sound cards seem to be a dying breed these days, as people either go with the built-in audio or an external USB DAC.

I have an ASUS Essence STX II card that I'm very happy with. It has a built-in headphone amp that has a software high/low impedance switch, and excellent shielding. 124db SNR. There are DACs with better specs, but since I don't have an external system at the moment, that would be a waste of money. The card drives my bookshelf speakers and sub-woofer just fine and blows away the "high quality" built-in audio on my ASUS TUF Z270 motherboard. The control app and drivers aren't up to date, but they work perfectly on my fully-updated Win 10 64bit system.

You can get a new one on Amazon for $233, or a used one for less than $200 on eBay.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

For day-to-day I prefer accuracy, but I've found that under some musical conditions tube amps can be fun in their own right. It just so happens I ended up with a tube amp first because I got a great deal on the LD at I believe $200 brand new from Newegg. I had been losing my mind trying to find a good deal on a good solid state amp until the Massdrop deal came up and it looks like it will be just what I am looking for (fingers crossed) and a pretty exceptional value.

So in summary, I guess you aren't wrong exactly, but I also don't lack awareness about what I am doing and leave the magic cables and similar to the "real" audiophiles.

I also prefer accurate, clean sound, but it occurs to me that a lot of "classic" rock and pop was originally mixed with the intent of it being played back on a "warm" (read: distorted/fuzzy-sounding) tube system. So on modern equipment, it just sounds wrong, and may not even really be what the artists intended it to sound like.