Are Sound Cards Still Relevant? Sound BlasterX AE-5

[Emily Young]

The humble sound card was once the king of PC multimedia... Can Creative take back the crown from "good enough" onboard audio?

 

 

Buy a Sound BlasterX AE-5:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/w1EI9X
On Newegg: http://geni.us/TQistKg

 

Buy a Beyerdynamic DT990 PRO:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/bV2An
On Newegg: http://geni.us/bHAa

 

Buy an Audeze LCD-2:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/3y1hAc
On Newegg: http://geni.us/oW91CnK

[ExplodingTNT]

what if... "good enough" was actually "good enough" for everyone, even audiophiles?

[manikyath]

21 minutes ago, ExplodingTNT said:

what if... "good enough" was actually "good enough" for everyone, even audiophiles?

a dacia sandero is good enough to drive to work, i see more mercedes AMGs around than dacia's.

--

on topic: i have an extreme allergy of desk clutter, if i cared about better audio i'd be into this. unfortunately i'm not in a position where i have time to sit in a dark room with my eyes closed to listen to FLAC format audio files.

[Dackzy]

Kek, was this video meant as a joke or? You guys choose to show the audio thread that is focused on headphones and not the also pinned post that is about DAC and amps. Well done. 

Dennis is wearing the LCD2 backwards and I have zero idea how she got the pads to sit that way on the LCD 2. Furthermore the chip it uses isn't that great neither is the implementation of it, the same goes for the amp part.

There are countless mistakes in this video and I think that you guys should reach out to people that actually know their stuff, instead of making a very misleading video. 

[Tomat0]

I don't trust Creative for one damn second after the shit they pulled back in the 00s.

 

When it comes to GPU/CPU wars I usually don't mess with ethics but Creative has a special place in my heart for disgusting me.

[MattMatt]

.

[minervx]

External sound cards are better.

 

Just get an audio interface, because you can plug in an XLR microphone too

[Ordinarily_Greater]

1 minute ago, minervx said:

External sound cards are better.

 

Just get an audio interface, because you can plug in an XLR microphone too

Yeah because you can stream with better sounds than sound cards, Asus and AsRock has their own Sound system in their board

[Loot]

ive havent bought a soundcard since soundblaster live!

[Princess Luna]

I mean personally speaking I think it is a good thing that video cards handles sound just fine, it'd be a hassle and expensive to have to get sound cards for gaming.

[Bananasplit_00]

1 hour ago, Loot said:

ive havent bought a soundcard since soundblaster live!

i have one, and a ZS eX platinum and now also a Z  

 

I can at least say that Scout, non 2.0, is actiually fairly good, its not amazing but better then not enabled if you ask me. it really derps out MEGA HARD as soon as you have anything but voice chat and your game playing though, everything gets distorted, wierdly boosted and audio level controll just goes out the window at times

[Drak3]

In this day and age, the onboard of a half way decent mainboard is like a Honda Accord. Anything less than a professional sound card is the same Accord, with a flare kit and a Ferrari exhaust.

 

They've become irrelevant for a reason, and in this case, "good enough" actually is good enough.

[Skanky Sylveon]

My Schiit doesn't play nicely with windows 10.

The software EQ could prove handy for me.

I'll keep an eye on this.

[Max_Settings]

5 hours ago, Dackzy said:

Kek, was this video meant as a joke or? You guys choose to show the audio thread that is focused on headphones and not the also pinned post that is about DAC and amps. Well done. 

Dennis is wearing the LCD2 backwards and I have zero idea how she got the pads to sit that way on the LCD 2. Furthermore the chip it uses isn't that great neither is the implementation of it, the same goes for the amp part.

There are countless mistakes in this video and I think that you guys should reach out to people that actually know their stuff, instead of making a very misleading video. 

You see exactly my point, I really wish Linus would actually learn about audio stuff before he reviews it, especially considering the size of his audience. And just because something uses a good DAC chip means nothing. Serveral hundred dollar DACs use a DAC chip that costs under $1 in it's raw form. It's all about the filters and circuitry and a whole bunch of other stuff. The same goes for Amps.

[Max_Settings]

28 minutes ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

My Schiit doesn't play nicely with windows 10.

The software EQ could prove handy for me.

I'll keep an eye on this.

What Schiit do you have? Modi 2? or 2U? If you have the 2U use the optical that will solve your problem.

[Skanky Sylveon]

52 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

What Schiit do you have? Modi 2? or 2U? If you have the 2U use the optical that will solve your problem.

Modi 2

[Max_Settings]

5 minutes ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

Modi 2

I thought the Modi 2 was class 1? It has no drivers as far as I know so you shouldn't be having any issues.

[Max_Settings]

1 hour ago, Max_Settings said:

Serveral hundred dollar DACs use a DAC chip that costs under $1 in it's raw form. It's all about the filters and circuitry and a whole bunch of other stuff. The same goes for Amps.

Just to prove this point, here's the DAC chip that's in the $2300 Schiit Yggdrasil. It's $5.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1PCS-AK4113VFP-E2-IC-RCVR-DGTL-AUD-30VSOP-4113-AK4113-/192190405622?_trksid=p2385738.m2548.l4275

[Skanky Sylveon]

23 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

I thought the Modi 2 was class 1? It has no drivers as far as I know so you shouldn't be having any issues.

http://www.schiit.com/drivers

Quote

Gen 2/Gen 5 Drivers for Modi 2, Modi 2 Uber, Bifrost, and Gungnir

 

[Max_Settings]

31 minutes ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

http://www.schiit.com/drivers

 

 

31 minutes ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

http://www.schiit.com/drivers

 

Those are optional

[Skanky Sylveon]

24 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

 

Those are optional

It wouldn't function without them on ether windows 7 or 10 for me.

 

Edit: I'm not the only one that has had problems with Schiit and windows 10.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/windows-10-schiit-modi-drivers.776100/

http://www.just-hifi.com/help-with-Schiit-Modi-drivers_10038996.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/3j8e35/windows_10_and_schiit_modi_not_working/

 

[Tcrumpen]

12 hours ago, GabenJr said:

The humble sound card was once the king of PC multimedia... Can Creative take back the crown from "good enough" onboard audio?

 

 

Buy a Sound BlasterX AE-5:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/w1EI9X
On Newegg: http://geni.us/TQistKg

 

Buy a Beyerdynamic DT990 PRO:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/bV2An
On Newegg: http://geni.us/bHAa

 

Buy an Audeze LCD-2:
On Amazon: http://geni.us/3y1hAc
On Newegg: http://geni.us/oW91CnK

Watching the video i'm left with a question if i want to go external for sound do i need a DAC 'AND' Amp or just one of them?

[System Error Message]

they still are relevant. my experience with creative however has been terrible. I'd rather design my own soundcard with its own CPU and software to offload some tasks. While people think that soundcards are useless when it comes to offloading tasks this isnt really true. A true soundcard will perform the mixing asynchronously from the main PC but some sound systems actually consists of a PC to do that processing and is just connected to various other kinds of outputs like XLR with many channels.

 

The 1 simple thing that creative soundcards should do other than bring good audio quality is to provide hardware processing for the various options in the software. Being able to add all the effects you want in various sequences and have the soundcard do the work rather than CPU is actually better and is something that can be done. Its only directx sound that cannot be hardware accelerated anymore. However i tested a soundcard that had creative x-fi chip in and the soundblasterzxr and neither of them actually did what soundcards should which is provide sound processing offloaded from the CPU and low latency audio. Even my friends macbook had much lower latency from connecting a guitar to the pc speakers while my desktop with the soundblasterzxr had 1-2seconds or more of delay for the same task with both the guitar and speakers connected to the same card.

 

Soundcards are still relevant, creative however isnt.

[Dackzy]

1 hour ago, Tcrumpen said:

Watching the video i'm left with a question if i want to go external for sound do i need a DAC 'AND' Amp or just one of them?

good thing that there is a post that explain DACs and amps . If you buy a DAC then you need a amp to power your headphones, but if you buy a amp, then you can either use your onboard as a DAC or hook it up to a analog source. There are combo units like schiit fulla 2, NFB 11.28, soekris 1541 and many more.

[Tenelia]

@GabenJr Could you guys do audio reviews using this format: http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-quality.htm

 

Without those measurements, it's no different from getting a gamer to sit and observe game performance... And using the observations as benchmarks...