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onboard sound vs dedicated sound card

tobben
By tobben
in Audio
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I was just wondering if you guys could help me out abit. Currently i got msi Z77A-GD55, and was wondering if it would be worth buying something like ASUS xonar dx or possibly even essence STX, let's just assume dx for now. Assuming i have decent quality equipment to compliment it, headphones and whatnot, would there be a noticable difference? what's the benefits? is it worth buying? for now my impression is that the onboard sound quality is pretty good

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Definitely! I use an Asrock P67 Extreme 4 Gen 3, and got a cheap soundcard (€30-40) and my headphones sound a lot better! :)

i5 2500K - Asrock Extreme4 Gen3 - G.Skill RipjawsX 8GB- Asus GTX660 Ti - Crucial M4 256Gb

 

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A huge difference will be made if you do have said decent quality equipment - even without, cheaper headphones will still sound MUCH better than onboard! I refuse to ever go back since I got my first Xonar DG

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  • Author
A huge difference will be made if you do have said decent quality equipment - even without' date=' cheaper headphones will still sound MUCH better than onboard! I refuse to ever go back since I got my first Xonar DG[/quote']

kk good to hear, was just thinking how the improvement would be because as far as i know the onboard sound i got is pretty good, but i guess it still doesn't compete with a dedicated sound card. then again if i got good quality onboard i wonder what caliber sound card i would have to buy to make it worth buying

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The noticeable difference between sound cards is limited by how good your audio equipment is. If you only have moderate headphones, then no, you will not notice much of a difference between onboard audio and a dedicated sound card, other than (maybe) a little bit less background static.

However, if you have high quality or good headphones, then yes, there will be a huge leap in performance. Especially if you have headphones that are pushing 80-600 ohms of impedance.

Remember, if you only have moderate headphones, you should not bother going for the Essence STX. You will spend a ton of money for something that will not offer much in terms of quality sound improvement. However, if you have really nice headphone, go for it. It can make a huge difference, and the STX is insanely good for headphones.

Some information about the audio equipment you have would be really useful so we can better determine what is right for you.

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