Quick Soundcard Upgrade Question.

[Shegokigo]

I have

This MB as my current sound and it absolutely sucks, tons of problems and compatibility issues. I'm basically looking for a new 5.1 or better sound card that's not gonna be more than 80$

Any advice oh sages of the RL forums and computer all knowing?

Saw this and was wondering the quality or any opinions

[HolyRunner]

If you do mostly gaming, go with Sound Blaster, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102002. No need to pay Creative a ton of money, just getting a dedicated sound card will help tremendously over on-board sound.

If you want good music playback and decent gaming go with M-audio, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829121122

[Deacon]

getting a dedicated sound card will help tremendously over on-board sound.

That's a ridiculous blanket statement. I haven't owned a dedicated sound card in years. The last two (at least) motherboards I've owned had on-board sound, and they've been excellent.

[Martin Blank]

It's a blanket statement, yes, but not ridiculous. By and large, people using the sound on their motherboards do get inferior sound. 3D effects, in particular, suffer due to the lack of features, and can sometimes hit overall performance because the CPU may be utilized to make up for a lack of effects.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Just because you picked up a motherboard with (what you believe to be) good sound capabilities doesn't mean that much of the rest of the world has great sound from their motherboards.

[Deacon]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Actually, yes, it is. It is a point of data, and multiple points along with research and an understanding of what's at play overall can certainly lead to an educated stance. They're also simply points of data that help to support, in a personal and real-world way, the conclusions reached through those various sources. And while you seem to have lately been bandying about that phrase more often, I find it fascinating that you counter with generalized blanket statements as well, avoiding "anecdotes" by getting even worse and just throwing around possibilities.

I certainly used to be very strongly against anything being built onto the motherboard, from NICs to sound cards to everything else. But it became more and more common for hard drive and floppy drive controllers to be built into the motherboard, and more components followed. At first it was nearly always the rule that any such solution was meant for the POS Compaq buying masses, and as someone who had to deal with that, professionally and first-hand on a massive scale for a few years in the late 90's, I found myself very biased against it as an entire concept.

Eventually I came to see the concept being executed on a much higher level of quality solutions, even in some server systems where uptime and durability are crucial. When handled properly, advantages begin to surface such as a ability to decrease the overall size of of the computers, to make them slimmer (which is beautiful for racks, of course, but also good for consumer desktops and such), to involve fewer failure points (improperly installed or poorly seated cards, anyone?), to restrict airflow less, to involve fewer cables and expansion slots, and so on. And as sound cards began to be easier and less expensive to manufacture they began to be included on nearly every consumer motherboard sold. Yes, it's possible to purchase a motherboard with a sound card that doesn't deliver every feature you could ever want, but to say that any hardware built into the motherboard is necessarily inferior to hardware that's purchased separately is a helluva stretch and inaccurate far more often than not--and to say that a sound card plugged into an expansion slot is necessarily more suitable is certainly a poor statement.

It's particularly distressing to me that you respond to my pointing out a blanket statement by then telling me that an opposing blanket statement isn't true--a statement I never said nor implied. I don't know if you just have a problem with me personally or what, but I don't consider it an appropriate response and falls short of the generally inflated expectations you create for yourself, especially when you're in the process of calling me out for some alleged logical failure. And insulting my awareness of sound quality and such isn't exactly necessary. For reference, my current on-board sound card is piping out via optical to a Yamaha home theater receiver which has real speakers attached to it. And it sounds magnificent. And the mobo I had before this one had Creative's SB Live 7.1 built in on-board, and that was great, too. The one before that has been a few years, and I don't recall off the top of my head, but I don't think I had an add-on sound card, and this is someone who gamed quite a bit and used it as a TV since my roommate at the time had a girlfriend who constantly monopolized the one in the living room.

The sound card that's built into that motherboard is the Realtek ALC888. I've done some research and found that generally it's well-received by its users, it doesn't "steal" CPU time like some would accuse it of doing, and that for those who initially believed the sound card was inferior it was common that it turned out to be something else. Some were using it to drive sound on their home theater PC and found it to be quite up to the task. But it's difficult to say what the actual problems were from the OP, and it's impossible to say whether any problems were legitimately due to the ALC888. All he said was "it absolutely sucks, tons of problems and compatibility issues." Neither of those sound very convincing, and neither are known issues inherent to the ALC888 chipset itself. Hell, he doesn't even mention the use(s) to which he puts his sound card nor whether he's ruled out the speakers or anything else as the part that "absolutely sucks."

In the end, "just getting a dedicated sound card will help tremendously over on-board sound" is indeed a ridiculous blanket statement. Most blanket statements are, but this one's even more ignorant and full of empty internet tech bravado than most. I don't think it was a hostile statement or one intended to create a problem, rather it was simply an inaccurate statement of the sort that so often misleads those who don't know enough to recognize it as such.

[Aerdan]

You can argue yourself blue in the face, Deacon.

Onboard sound cards are invariably crap compared to what you can get as an expansion card. Except if the expansion card in question is an X-Fi, that is; the emu20k1 is an emu10k1 done in firmware with a crystaliser added for lulz.

[I'd like to point out, though, that onboard sound is usually only sufficient for business-case scenarios, and so generally isn't particularly useful anywhere else. Additionally, because it's onboard, it's unlikely to have its own dedicated hardware to perform particular tasks, like mixing. [Of course, mixing is being done in software in Vista and Linux's ALSA and OSSv4, but still.]]

[Deacon]

Onboard sound cards are invariably crap compared to what you can get as an expansion card. ... I'd like to point out that onboard sound is usually only sufficient for business-case scenarios, and so generally isn't particularly useful anywhere else. Additionally, because it's onboard, it's unlikely to have its own dedicated hardware to perform particular tasks, like mixing.

It's exactly this kind of ignorance and misinformation that I'm trying to correct.

[HolyRunner]

Yeesh guess I should've attached "In my own opinion and personal experience" to the post. Yes Deacon, I will agree some onboard sound is decent but for the most part they are indeed crap. This is especially true with computers from Dell, HP, etc. The average consumer can't hear the difference so throw the cheapest chipset in there and now you have sound. Do you see motherboard manufacturer bragging about their sound chipsets? No, they brag about overclockability and stability. Sound is just something there to slap on and say we have it since everyone else does too.

Experience wise unless the motherboard included a decent sound chipset, ala VIA's Envy24, I've always gotten better sound quality from a dedicated sound card. Listening to music from a Realtek chipset vs. Creative or VIA, the Realtek always sounded worse to me. Yes hearing is subjective, but a lot of people tend to agree with this.

[Arc Orion]

Do you see motherboard manufacturer bragging about their sound chipsets? No, they brag about overclockability and stability.

I do. Not all, of course, but most of the high or mid range boards advertising their awesome "such and such" audio solution. Mind, it's never the main thing advertised by a board, but then it's not the main purpose of the mainboard. Get what I main?

On another note, my usual advice to somebody is to try out the onboard audio first, and then get a standalone solution if it's not up to snuff. Despite what people here seem to think, most onboard audio solutions are perfectly good, and in fact, about equal to a low or mid-range audio card.

[Martin Blank]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Actually, yes, it is.

No, it's not. An anecdote is an unverified statement or story that may have a bias attached to it, whereas a data point is something more carefully measured.

My point stands. There are some good sound chips integrated in motherboards now, but they are by far the minority. HP, Dell, and other major vendors ship far more systems than are custom-made, and when you factor in notebooks, which are notorious for using poor-quality sound chips (why put in something expensive when most people use the integrated speakers anyway?), the number of inferior sound implementations dwarfs the number of good implementations.

Congratulations on picking a good one. Most people aren't so lucky.

[Deacon]

My point stands. There are some good sound chips integrated in motherboards now, but they are by far the minority. HP, Dell, and other major vendors ship far more systems than are custom-made

How is this at all relevant? What does this have to do with it at all? It was a ridiculous blanket statement and clearly inaccurate and incorrect even if it were just this one case.

and when you factor in notebooks, which are notorious for using poor-quality sound chips (why put in something expensive when most people use the integrated speakers anyway?), the number of inferior sound implementations dwarfs the number of good implementations.

He doesn't have a notebook. Notebooks haven't been discussed. That said, even notebook sound can be "serviceable" or "great" depending on the model chosen, just like how on-board graphics can be shitty or awesome.

PS The quality of components integrated into my motherboard (both "core" components such as the chipset and "accessories" such as sound and such) had nothing to do with luck.

[Martin Blank]

Coming from one who makes blanket statements on a fairly regular basis, your response is somewhat amusing. Of course it's inaccurate to some extent; all blanket statements are, including your own about, say, Democrats.

I included notebooks because notebooks almost always have integrated sound on the motherboard; there are options for dedicated hardware, but these are comparatively uncommon. They do exist, though; I just bought a dedicated card with my new notebook.

In the end, you have hardware offloading, support for 3D sound structures such as EAX and (before Aureal's unfortunate demise) A3D which can and do produce better audio immersion in games supporting the features, and sometimes (but not nearly always) more physical ports. Frequently, stand-alone cards also support more audio streams than do add-in cards, and also are more up-to-date on the standards. A gigantic portion of motherboards sold still support only AC'97, and its replacement, HD Audio, is still in a fledgling state in terms of market share.

There are a lot of things that a dedicated sound card can bring to the table over integrated.

[Deacon]

Coming from one who makes blanket statements on a fairly regular basis, your response is somewhat amusing. Of course it's inaccurate to some extent; all blanket statements are, including your own about, say, Democrats.

lolz blanket statements. Like what? Can you give an example (even a "I think I remember you saying once"), even if it's just about Democrats or Republicans?

In the end, you have hardware offloading, support for 3D sound structures such as EAX and (before Aureal's unfortunate demise) A3D which can and do produce better audio immersion in games supporting the features, and sometimes (but not nearly always) more physical ports.

Yes, you have all of that with many of the on-board sound options. Thank you for pointing that out. Though A3D hasn't been around for quite a while.