Sound Cards. (help)

[thrilledtear]

Im looking to upgrade my brothers PC for Christmas because he just got into audio production. Could you tell me some sound cards that are good and also cheap...

thanks

[dragoon20005]

budget?

[skimmilk5]

Which one do you want? Good or cheap?

[zinton]

Good <<<<<>>>>> Cheap

 

Choose one

[thrilledtear]

Good <<<<<>>>>> Cheap

 

Choose one

 

Which one do you want? Good or cheap?

 

budget?

around $80 and decent... he is running on a laptop and he has some usb "sound card" thing

[skimmilk5]

around $80 and decent... he is running on a laptop and he has some usb "sound card" thing

He's going to need a full out desktop to take advantage of any sound card.

[thrilledtear]

He's going to need a full out desktop to take advantage of any sound card.

ive built him a pc......

[skimmilk5]

For PCIe, a Sound Blaster Z-series card will work. If you want to treat him to a little bit more by paying up a little bit more, then you can get an Asus Xonar sound card.

[sobe]

The general go-to for cheap sound cards tends to be the base Sound Blaster Z.

 

I'd have to ask though, since cheap is what you mentioned, what speakers or headset/headphones is he running? And also what motherboard is in the desktop so that we can assess the onboard capabilities in comparison with adding a sound card.

[Donk Quixote]

I have a Xonar DGX that I got for about $35 that I really like, especially after I replaced the stock driver with the Xonar UNI driver.  It has a built in headphone amp that actually works.  There is no noticeable improvement in sound quality on headphones that are easy to drive however.  That's not a bad thing, it's just it is really hard to notice an improvement over good onboard sound.

 

Depending on what it is you probably won't be able to do better than that USB sound card thing he already has for that budget.  It's usually better to have an external DAC anyway because it's away from the internal computer noise that can cause interference.

 

For specific recommendations, this isn't within the budget you set but if I upgrade it's going to be the ODAC+O2 amp/DAC, or maybe the ODAC with a different amp, or maybe the Schiit stack.

[Guest]

Do these need to drive headphones? If not, the Asus Xonar DX is the obvious choice.