What's the best all-purpose sound card brand?

[Phantom2022]

What's the best all-purpose sound card brand?

[emosun]

you really shouldn't need one for all purpose , it would be whatever the board or gpu has on it

[Phantom2022]

7 minutes ago, emosun said:

you really shouldn't need one for all purpose , it would be whatever the board or gpu has on it

I have studio monitor headphones and the quality of onboard sound is terrible.

[BobVonBob]

Neither. You probably don't need dedicated audio hardware beyond what's built in to your motherboard, and if you do a USB dac/amp is a better choice than a sound card.

[emosun]

Just now, Phantom2022 said:

I have studio monitor headphones and the quality of onboard sound is terrible.

So are you looking for an all purpose soundcard or a professional sound card?

[Phantom2022]

7 minutes ago, emosun said:

So are you looking for an all purpose soundcard or a professional sound card?

Prosumer card: something for pro/music/gaming/movies/TVs.

[Phantom2022]

10 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

Neither. You probably don't need dedicated audio hardware beyond what's built in to your motherboard, and if you do a USB dac/amp is a better choice than a sound card.

So what's the best 250/300 USD DAC/Amp?

[GuiltySpark_]

27 minutes ago, Phantom2022 said:

So what's the best 250/300 USD DAC/Amp?

I see you've made a handful a threads that are just "what is the best x" with no research and thoughts of your own. Understand that that doesn't always go over well as these things are far more nuanced and not nearly as black and white as you want to believe. 

 

No one is going to be able to come to a complete agreement that a single DAC/Amp combo is the overall best, it's just not going to happen. Too many opinions and too many differing wants/needs from different consumers. There will be what's better for you, but we don't know what those requirements are.

 

What I suggest doing is doing some looking around, find out what exists in the space, read others thoughts and maybe come up with some idea's that you have questions on and we can answer them. 

[SansVarnic]

@Phantom2022 There is not a Best of a category as these change constantly as technology, product and brands develop said products.

 

That sadi this and all your topic do breach the CS as each of your topics present a VS discussion.

Please stop posting these topics in this manner.

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No trolling or flame-bait.

• This includes topics such as AMD vs NVIDIA

I know you intention was not to do this but yet here we are.

 

I am not locking these topics but now you are aware.

[nanopone]

i can only vouch for the external dac/amp i have: a fiio e10k.

[GamerDude]

4 hours ago, Phantom2022 said:

I have studio monitor headphones and the quality of onboard sound is terrible.

Rather vague, what is the exact brand and model? I game with external DACs (iFi Micro iDSD Black Label - main rig, Oppo HA-1 - 2nd rig, Fostex HPA4 - HTPC) when I have to use my cans (at night usually) and such external DACs do not come with fancy 3D surround software, stereo is good enough for me.

[H713]

It depends on the application. I can't think of too many reasons to pick either EVGA or Creative.

 

If we're only talking about internal cards, the answer is probably RME (if they still make them) or Lynx. 

[Entropy.]

21 hours ago, Phantom2022 said:

So what's the best 250/300 USD DAC/Amp?

As has been said before, "Best" is subjective. However, there are a few options that many people recommend. 

 

Schiit magni+modi. Very solid stack, good performance, high-value. It's more or less been the industry standard for entry-level stacks for a few years now. 

SMSL Sh-6 and Su-6. A bit of a different, slightly more modern/ fancier stack. Performance and sound will be similar, but you'll get a different aesthetic design and more features out of the dac. 

Ifi zendac: A nice, integrated solution with an excellent knob. Amp performance isn't on par with the others in terms of power but it probably won't be an issue for you. It has unique features such as the truebass button, it's balanced design, ect. 

[Phantom2022]

On 3/12/2022 at 1:26 AM, Entropy. said:

As has been said before, "Best" is subjective. However, there are a few options that many people recommend. 

 

Schiit magni+modi. Very solid stack, good performance, high-value. It's more or less been the industry standard for entry-level stacks for a few years now. 

SMSL Sh-6 and Su-6. A bit of a different, slightly more modern/ fancier stack. Performance and sound will be similar, but you'll get a different aesthetic design and more features out of the dac. 

Ifi zendac: A nice, integrated solution with an excellent knob. Amp performance isn't on par with the others in terms of power but it probably won't be an issue for you. It has unique features such as the truebass button, it's balanced design, ect. 

Thanks for the reply.

What is the sample rate/bit rate of Schiit magni+modi?

[GuiltySpark_]

35 minutes ago, Phantom2022 said:

Thanks for the reply.

What is the sample rate/bit rate of Schiit magni+modi?

https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1

 

Higher than anyone needs.

[Phantom2022]

On 3/26/2022 at 9:13 PM, GuiltySpark_ said:

https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1

 

Higher than anyone needs.

I need 384kHz/32-bit.

[Entropy.]

14 hours ago, Phantom2022 said:

I need 384kHz/32-bit.

How come you need that? 

[GuiltySpark_]

14 hours ago, Phantom2022 said:

I need 384kHz/32-bit.

No one besides an archivist needs that and they wouldn't be looking at entry level playback DAC's if they did.

[H713]

16 hours ago, Phantom2022 said:

I need 384kHz/32-bit.

Okay, are you looking for this for audio usage or are you trying to use this for instrumentation? If it's the former, you're misinformed.

 

If it's the latter, I can understand why you'd want 384 kHz sample rates. The 32 bit aspect, however, isn't useful due to the noise floor. You won't actually get 32 bits out of it. In fact, you won't even get 24. 

[cmndr]

1. Brand shouldn't really matter outside of edge cases (e.g. ecosystem consistency). In 5 years what constitutes a "good brand" might be different. In the present different product lines in the same brand might be better or worse for your needs than others.

2. You probably want an external DAC/AMP, not a sound card

3. "I need 384kHz/32-bit." is ridiculous outside of extreme edge cases.

The most that most humans can hear up to (at a level of sound pressure that won't cause your ears to literally bleed) is around 20KHz (15-17KHz for adults). To reproduce 20KHz perfectly you only need 40Hz worth of signal. I wouldn't be surprised if you can't hear above 15KHz. 44K or 48K (often used for BluRay) is basically overkill. For what it's worth if you go TOO high with the frequency you increase the likelihood of electrical noise contaminating your sound output. You need absurd tolerances to do 384KHz (for this reason a lot of systems claiming to be 384KHz capable often down sample to something lower). Also your headphones won't do 384KHz. Also the music you're listening to and the effects in games don't go that high (to get the music to "fit" into 44KHz they add a low pass filter at 40KHz, basically everything above ~44KHz or 48KHz is attenuated to nothing). You probably want to have 24-bit processing but 32-bit probably doesn't matter (nice to save your audio at a higher bit rate if you're editing - but the data you receive as a consumer is usually lower fidelity)... in effect - OTHER things all matter more. And your headphones probably matter a lot more than the amp/DAC.



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10924/

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Humans can detect sounds in a frequency range from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz. (Human infants can actually hear frequencies slightly higher than 20 kHz, but lose some high-frequency sensitivity as they mature; the upper limit in average adults is often closer to 15–17 kHz.)

I haven't really kept up with the DAC/Amp space. 5-10 years ago I probably would've started with Schiit or Fiio (I have products from both and they're good). These days I'm lazy and I'm just plugging my headphones into my AVR. My AVR has its own DAC and amp and it's adequate. I'm almost tempted to say that you want to look at the feature set first and figure out what matters to you. I'm pretty confident that my old Fiio DAC (it's somewhere, I think... probably) coupled with my Schiit Magni would work better than my AVR but... laziness wins.

[Entropy.]

13 hours ago, cmndr said:

You probably want to have 24-bit processing but 32-bit probably doesn't matter (nice to save your audio at a higher bit rate if you're editing - but the data you receive as a consumer is usually lower fidelity)... in effect - OTHER things all matter more. And your headphones probably matter a lot more than the amp/DAC.

 

Honestly very few people need that many bits (especially since so much modern music is quite compressed). For me, as well as  everybody I know, it's damn hard if not impossible to tell the difference inbetween 16bit ~44.1khz and higher standards, at least without specalized tracks. 

 

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3. "I need 384kHz/32-bit." is ridiculous outside of extreme edge cases.

100% Dunno where they got that from, maybe they got pulled up into oversampling, or to dsd/pcm formats. 

  

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 I'm almost tempted to say that you want to look at the feature set first and figure out what matters to you. 

Most people can't tell the difference anyways haha, especially with the run-of-the-mill chip dacs and amps implemented in budget products. 

 

 

[Dogzilla07]

Motu M2 maybe ?, or Audient EVO 4, EVO 8 ?

 

Headphones, 2.0 is so easy, so many to choose from. With 5.1 there's only Creative Sound Blaster X4, once you go down in price for AV Recievers&Amplifiers.