Do any of you duders own and operate sound cards? Are they necessary or even practical? Are the audio quality improvements noticeable?

The headphone jack on my PC case is getting pretty worn out from years of 3.5mm penetration and I've been cautiously interested in upgrading my PC audio for a while now. So I think it's finally time for me to pull the trigger on a sound card purchase. I think that I'd like to get a USB solution, so that I can easily transfer the kit to my next PC and so that I can get some easily accessible audio hookups right on my desk.

So what kind of sound cards do you all use and what would you recommend? I'm gonna need an S/PDIF output for my trusty Logitech Z-5500 speakers.

Thanks in advance for any and all responses.

to get a noticeable difference, you really need to step up into the prosumer bracket of things and it gets very expensive quickly. my recommendation would be to not worry, dont bother with brands like creative or other gamer branded hardware. onboard sound is fine, but if your pots are worn (both front and back) to the point of it being a problem, grab a cheap xonar or something like that.

it'll be the same as the realtek chip in your mobo, worth it if you've gotta.

You can probably just replace the headphone jack if everything else works just fine.

I'm by no means an expert in sound cards, but I had to buy one when I built my PC earlier this year. The sound on the motherboard was awful, practically unlike anything I have ever heard before. I tried installing drivers three or so times and it still sounded the same.

I bought a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX PCIe 5.1 Sound Card because it was cheap enough it was worth trying it out. It made a huge difference, although it is not the best sound I have ever heard coming from a computer.

Not sure if this was an issue with my specific motherboard or if I missed something stupid, but I kinda needed that sound card, and $40 isn't too much to fix that problem. (Certainly better than rolling the dice on a $200 sound card)

I haven't had a sound card in probably close to a decade. Since they started putting decent audio chips on motherboards (and figured out how to shield them properly), a separate card hasn't made any sense to me. I'm sure there's still a case to be made for specialized pro audio cards, but if all you're doing is listening to game audio and music, I don't see the point.

For gaming i don't see a point in them anymore, so unless you do audio work i think the onboard chips are more than good enough. I still use a Creative extigy like a audio receiver though the digital optical cord for my speakers, so i would think anything creative should be good enough (this thing is from 2002 lol)

Not worth it IMO.

If you really want upgraded audio for your PC I'd look at an external DAC. I have a small USB one from FiiO for my headphones and it's great.

i think it depends on what you're piping it out to and what you're using it for- if you have a USB headset you use frequently or cheap earbuds, there's no point. if you're pushing studio monitors, high quality headphones or a surround system, that's different. if it were me i'd probably just grab a dragonfly dac and call it day (i'm only really interested in 2.0 sound and music playback).

e: FWIW if you're just looking for a quick and easy way to get clean audio out of your pc (if the headphone jack is busted, for example) i've always heard this behringer is pretty good bang for your buck.

I'd get a dac over a dedicated sound card.

I don't like using the front input jacks on my system for that same reason as they wear out too quickly. I've simply invested in a simple 3.5mm splitter for my headphone / left right channel audio. It lets me keep both speakers and headphones hooked up at the same time so there's very little wear and tear on the connection.

I don't think my first PC I got in 2000 even had one. I've had a motherboard or two out of about six that made a little too much noise but I happened to get a headphone amplifier/DAC one Xmas (best surprise gift I ever got) that nulified the issue until the next PC. Last few motherboards I've had make a point of mentioning how clean the audio capicitors are or something, and I haven't had a problem with onboard audio since about 2010. I'd go the DAC route again if I had to (cons: the battery life lasted two seconds for anything but plugged into USB and just introduced too many wires into my routine. It was a FiiO).

I really appreciate all the input. The rear audio jacks on my PC are pretty much unused and should work fine, but I don't want to crawl back there every time I want to plug/unplug something. And I want to get some 5.1 audio from my PC, which I can't do at the moment because the latest version of Windows 10 doesn't support 5.1 through optical and splitting an audio signal from the HDMI won't work since I don't have a receiver.

Something like the Creative Sound Blaster X-FI 5.1 Pro seems like an OK enough solution, even though the thing only supports 16-bit/48kHZ surround audio. Or then I'll invest some more money towards an internal sound card that can manage higher bitrates and just draw an extension cord to my keyboard for the headphones.

found a probable fix for your 5.1 optical issue. (i havent tried to use 5.1 in win10 yet, but i have similar issues like this daily)

LedHedJul 17, 2016, 8:40 PM

Guys the answer is actually very simple. Windows 10 allows a very high bit-rate audio, so much so that it will actually exceed the specs if you have it at 192KHz and 24-bit in stereo and want to switch to 5.1. The max for 5.1 is 96KHz at 24 bit. If you change this setting it should now avoid the error message you will commonly see about this device doesn't support ....

You can find this if you right click your sound device in the "Sound" part of the Control Panel and hit properties in the drop down. Then go to the advanced tab and select 96 KHz at 24 bit, now it may need to be lower depending on the specs of the DAC.

I am using a Creative ZxR on Windows 10 Pro x64 and coming from Windows 7, I am very impressed with the new audio stack design. Windows 7 didn't even natively have a 24 bit 192 KHz option, although you could force it in foobar or similar. GL guys!

and buy a male to female 3.5mm audio cable at an appropriate length.

edit: and also, instead of jacking in/out your headphones, disable them in playback devices.

I assume this is a "they've not released a new driver for my chipset" issue and the Win 7/8 driver refuses to work on Win10. Because Win10 should work like before when it comes to 5.1 audio. You need a custom driver (because the default ones that Windows pre-installs never include Dolby Digital Live of DTS Connect) and then to select that tech (real-time encoding of a DD or DTS signal to compress a 5.1 source down the limited bandwidth of a TOSlink cable) to enable it. At which point all sound-cards are identical (from a hardware perspective) as a DD or DTS signal is perfectly transmitted down TOSlink (it is a digital cable without graceful degradation - either the signal arrives at the other end perfectly and every 0 and 1 arrives or it doesn't and you get no audio at all). The only exception is stuff like DVDs where the DD/DTS is already encoded on the media and so can be streamed without DDLive/DTSC encoding (it just throws the 0s and 1s on the disc in the 5.1 mix down the TOSlink cable) so that shouldn't have been broken, even by a driver that doesn't support encoding 5.1.

You'll know if the driver supports DDLive/DTSC because in the advanced tab of the properties of the (S/PDIF) playback device, the Default Format list will include that encoding technology along with the list of channels, bitrates, and frequencies.