External sound cards good?

[g335]

Hello,

 

If I build a pc with a motherboard that has the 12020 or 4080 sound chip, will a external or internal sound card still be better?

[SignatureSigner]

From what I've found most motherboards these days have half decent audio stuff built in. (And if you need more usb dacs ect exist)

I really don't know what your trying to accomplish with a sound card but I doubt you need one.

[Tigerleon]

10 minutes ago, g335 said:

Hello,

 

If I build a pc with a motherboard that has the 12020 or 4080 sound chip, will a external or internal sound card still be better?

Wont really matter. If you get a good internal one it will most likely not get any interference at all.

[g335]

3 minutes ago, Tigerleon said:

Wont really matter. If you get a good internal one it will most likely not get any interference at all.

So a internal one is better than the built in ones?

[manikyath]

a *good* motherboard's audio implementation is 95% of the way there, spending 3 figures on an external amp/dac will get you perhaps 97% of the way there..

 

the biggest reason for getting an external sound 'device' is if you have some 600 ohm headphones that require more voltage than onboard can do.

[Tigerleon]

3 hours ago, g335 said:

So a internal one is better than the built in ones?

Yep

[Tigerleon]

3 hours ago, manikyath said:

spending 3 figures on an external amp/dac will get you perhaps 97% of the way there..

Not really haha. You could only spend like 50 bucks and get something way better than onboard.

[manikyath]

40 minutes ago, Tigerleon said:

Not really haha. You could only spend like 50 bucks and get something way better than onboard.

depends on what you define as 'way better', depends on what 'onboard' you compare to.

[cmndr]

TLDR: spend money on better speakers/headphones FIRST, then look into room treatment. sound cards should be a very low priority item. If you have higher end headphones, an amplifier can be worthwhile and if you're going for convenience / production there's SOME benefits to external DAC/amp combos with good dials (want to hop on a video conference? things making that better/easier help). 

 

When it comes to modern DACs, pretty much anything is "good enough" - even the $10ish iphone dongle. 
This has been a solved problem for 10-20 years now. 

It is possible for motherboard vendors to mess up their implementation (an amplifier is also added) and for there to be signal noise but this is increasingly uncommon, even on super cheap $80 motherboards.

If it seems to work alright, you're probably fine. 

I say this as someone rocking $$3000ish worth of speakers, a $1000 AVR and... usually using onboard audio (even though I have an XFi titanium-HD in good condition, in a box). It's not worth blocking the airflow in my case and a few years back it had some issues (poor sound for 10-30 seconds) when waking from sleep which bothered me. 

 

2 hours ago, Tigerleon said:

Not really haha. You could only spend like 50 bucks and get something way better than onboard.

If it's way better then the onboard audio was defective. This does happen from time to time on cheaper products with poor quality control but... 


Note, I'm mostly talking about sound cards as DACs. There's some real benefits to having an amplifier for headphones. 

[person123456789]

On 11/15/2022 at 8:38 AM, g335 said:

Hello,

 

If I build a pc with a motherboard that has the 12020 or 4080 sound chip, will a external or internal sound card still be better?

Depends on what gear you use

[Psittac]

It depends on your goals and overall budget.

 

Ranging from using a gaming headset to get the job done, to a decent headphone dac/amp all the way to a full blown hobby.

 

Onboard audio is "good enough" for most people although most people would be able to hear a difference when A/B testing between onboard and a mid-tier solution it doesn't mean that it is worth the expense to the average person.  One thing that you need to keep in mind that once you reach a certain threshold your brain will adjust what ever your using to become normal to you.  I mean they did a study a long time ago where people had "upside down" glasses so the world looked upside down to them 24/7  After enough time their brain adjusted and they could function normally, to the point that when they removed them they had to go through the adjustment period all over again.  So the brain is very good at adapting and normalizing, would be my point.

 

My personal threshold would be

Rode NTH-100 $150

Schiit Fulla $110

Antlion Modmic Uni $55

 

That's $310 worth of equipment that I would choose if I was to downsize.  Speakers would be nice too.

 

Another consideration is source material, do you even listen to thing's that will take advantage of an improved sound setup?  A little while ago I did some A/B testing and all of the improvements I could find between different equipment was non-existent when listening to music on YouTube.

 

Someone earlier mentioned that onboard will get you 95% of the way and an external solution is 97%, while I don't agree with the exact numbers I have to agree with the sentiment.  Onboard will get you a good way there and then it's diminishing returns on investment.

 

I guess the first question would be, what are you going to use for sound output? IE: as headphones or perhaps speakers

Some headphones REALLY make use of improvements to the equipment behind them, they're called transparent as a buzzword.  Other headphones don't need something other than onboard.

 

Lastly there's the bio element, everyone is different with all kinds of variance in their meat melon.  So every adventure is different

[Nick Brennan]

What I used to have was on board audio from an Asus z690p Wi-Fi D4 motherboard and a z313 Logitech 2.1 speaker system. I upgraded that to a focusrite Scarlett 8i6 and two Yamaha hs7 Studio monitors. I can without a doubt tell the difference night and day clear. In Diablo 2 resurrected alone there are so many more ambient background environmental sounds that are now showing up and able to be heard by my ears they never existed on my Logitech speakers and my motherboard's audio. It is literally like night and day difference in gaming and music audio quality crisp and clear and unbelievably separate each piece of audio it's the best upgrade I've done in a while.

[Psittac]

11 hours ago, Nick Brennan said:

What I used to have was on board audio from an Asus z690p Wi-Fi D4 motherboard and a z313 Logitech 2.1 speaker system. I upgraded that to a focusrite Scarlett 8i6 and two Yamaha hs7 Studio monitors. I can without a doubt tell the difference night and day clear. In Diablo 2 resurrected alone there are so many more ambient background environmental sounds that are now showing up and able to be heard by my ears they never existed on my Logitech speakers and my motherboard's audio. It is literally like night and day difference in gaming and music audio quality crisp and clear and unbelievably separate each piece of audio it's the best upgrade I've done in a while.

The biggest difference probably came from the speakers not the scarlett, but yeah the improvements can be huge

[spartaman64]

On 11/15/2022 at 12:03 PM, manikyath said:

depends on what you define as 'way better', depends on what 'onboard' you compare to.

i saw someone's measurement of a gigabyte z390 aorus audio output. it looked ok until the output impedance test. 78 ohms thats going to alter the frequency response of most average consumer headphones and if you get a higher impedance headphone it might not have enough power 

[Stan2292]

it depends on what your definition of "good" is. for gaming and entertainment, most people find internal sound card adequate. if you have a pair of really good headphone, care about lossless audio and/or are doing sound engineering stuff, an external DAC will do you good. the point of having external DAC are a) better audio chip for better digital to audio convertion and usually supports much higher resolution audio b) removing sound processing from the interior of a pc which is a plave riddled with electric interference to get less noise generated by nearby currents.

 

if you haven't noticed any inadequacies of internal sound card, you probably won't notice the difference when upgrade to an external DAC. but if you have, enternal DAC will do you good.