Sound card or not

[ingeborgdot]

I bought a new mobod from gigabyte.
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD4-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Audio ChipsetRealtek ALC889Audio Channels8 ChannelsI have a sound card already from HT Omega Claro 7.1 I venture to guess that the Omega is a better route than the onboard? Anyone care to comment?

[wazza300]

it might be slightly better but the onboard sound is pretty good anyway,i dont notice much difference between my soundcard and onboard

[engmod]

Very much depends what you do!
If you play music or watch movies, then its fine.

I have a simulator what has a large amount of sounds which swamps the onboard sound, more than 3 sounds at the same time and the sounds get put in a queue.

I only bought a Creative x-fi titanium and it can handle about 20 sounds at the same time.

Cheers

[LinkinMcOwnage]

it might be slightly better but the onboard sound is pretty good anyway,i dont notice much difference between my soundcard and onboard

That's because the Xonar DG is an entry level soundcard and anything Logitech plus speakers is generally garbage. In short, your sound set up can definitely be improved.

OP: Go for it. Spend as much as you can. You will reach a point of diminishing returns.

Keep in mind that the following influence overall sound quality:

Source (CD/MP3/FLAC etc)
Sound Card
Speakers/Headphones
Any interference or noise
Isolation
Amplification

Example: on my titanium card, unless I mute the front and rear mic ports, I get terrible hiss on 100% volume. This is why it defaults to about 30%. I however do not care for default settings or manufacturer recommendations :)

[wazza300]

dx is a mid range card,and logitech are good speakers,lots of software can improve your sound too,just dont believe spending £100's on sound equipment when mb sound is just as good imo,plus i heard creative sound drivers are a pain

[engmod]

>plus i heard creative sound drivers are a pain

Heard from who?

They work fine on my system

Cheers

[wazza300]

from what ive read on the net,anyway if you want a sound card go ahead and buy one,its just my opinion that modern mb's onboard sound is more than enough for any everyday user,coupled with good quality speakers and headphones, plus software,i just found it a constant pain in the arse to keep having to fiddle with the xonar dx sound options to get the best sound from it,whether it was gaming/movies or music,with onboard i can set it and forget it

if your card works fine on your system then good for you,im not gonna get into an arguement about it

good software i find is jetaudio for films/music

ac3 filter for movies is awesome

[profJim]

Google search using: creative driver problems
gives 178,000,000 hits
Maybe their newer drivers are better, but in the past their were many issues.

Onboard sound? Decent if you're not very demanding and/or have mid to lower end speakers or headphones.
Logitech speakers = garbage? No way!
Are their better speaker systems high fidelity? Nope, but some of their systems deliver excellent sound reproduction.

My hearing isn't great; too many decades of motorcycle riding where wind noise has taken a toll.
I've used the HT Omega Striker 7.1 and Claro plus+ pci sound cards for several years with my Z-5500 Logitech speakers and the sound is superior to onboard sound, especially with my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones.
HT Omega tech support is excellent; fast replies that are well written and they provide information that deals directly with your questions.

A quality sound card's output will have a superior signal to noise ratio, better dynamic range and lower distortion.
Some sound cards are better than others when it comes to special sound effects in computer games.

That's my 2 cents.