I have recently started considering a sound card for my PC, but am unsure as to whether i will notice much of a difference from my gigabyte z77x-D3H's onboard audio.
Help/opinions appreciated!
~pipnina
It really depends on what you're doing.
Gaming: Hardcore=Yes Casual=Onboard should suffice
Audiophile=Defenitiely
Well, I'd say i fit option one fairly well.
What sound cards would you reccomend?
Maybe a Asus Xonar Phoebus or a Xonar Essence.
Personally would go with the Phoebus
I think both of those are a small bit out of my bidget range at the moment. But should i have money left after my CPU + console upgrade next year then i will consider them.
Thanks!
Easy fix for better audio if you're a gamer: connect your monitor through HDMI, use your graphics card as soundcard, have better sound quality, and if you're an audiophile also: open up your monitor, find the DA and audio PCB in the monitor, replace it with a DA+audiophile headphone amp kit for 25 bucks, less cables, more sound.
Alternative: you buy a soundcard in a music store, NOT from a computer gear manufacturer, you can have a studio grade multi channel audio interface for less than 50 USD, and it will not only work on old platforms, and you won't have driver or software issues, and the quality will be miles better than even a 1000 USD "gaming" or "audiophile" audio interface from a computer hardware manufacturer.
It's just a hype to make people spend money on peripherals, computer hardware manufacturers have no clue about audio (with the exception of Creative because they also have a professional music production hardware branch). If you're listening to mp3's a lot, a Creative X-Fi audio card is a good idea, because the DSP Creative uses is very sensible in upgrading the hoorible compressed audio quality of mp3s. There are very simple an lox cost mods to the X-Fi 5.1 pro USB for instance, to make the amplifier part audiophile grade, or you can just use the S/PDIF output to connect it to serious outboard DA and amplification.
as much as i didn't know some of those things were possible and others went over my head...
You may have a point. I will research further.
What do you think will give you the best sound:
this: http://www.musicstore.de/de_DE/EUR/Computer/PCIe-Audio-Karten/ESI-Prodigy-X-Fi-NRG-PCIe-Soundkarte/art-PCM0011682-000
for 39 EUR
or this: http://www.amazon.de/Creative-Blaster-Interne-Soundkarte-PCI-Express/dp/B009RPQA2G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1377892053&sr=8-3&keywords=asus+soundcard
for 90 EUR (with X-Fi DSP, and good but generic consumer quality audio circuits)
or this:http://www.amazon.de/Phoebus-interne-Fidelity-Soundkarte-Digital/dp/B007ZTILC8/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1377892053&sr=8-8&keywords=asus+soundcard
for 160 EUR (and has no X-Fi DSP and relatively generic consumer audio parts, but a blingy gaming branding, and is only compatible with Windows, for which it does provide a bunch of useless bloatware that bogs down the system).
The first is a studio quality audio interface with more high quality and higher spec caps and better audio circuits, and dedicated audio circuits for headphones and line-outs separately, and has the Creative X-Fi DSP processor. Just look at all the parts on the card, and the size of the caps and the way the traces are implemented, it's obviously much superior to "gamer" cards, and there is nothing that that card can't do that the others can do, in fact, it does pretty much everything a lot better and with lower latency, and it does more, besides working with Windows and OSX, it supports OpenAL, works in linux without driver (most Creative stuff does also, because they also make pro audio products, but most Asus stuff doesn't, whereas most cheap chinese stuff does too, you can actually get a USB mini soundcard that does exactly the same as an expensive Asus USB mini soundcard and provides the same audio quality, but also works in linux, for less than 10 EUR these days), supports X-Fi and adds the possibility to fully utilze the DSP for custom processing like sound effects etc... But yeah, it doesn't come in a cool gaming orientated marketing box...
These days, the less you spend, the more you get...
This is quite the revalation... Thank you for sharing your information with me.