Comments on: Onboard Sound vs Sound Cards

By: Johnson

Johnson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:07:05 +0000

If you are into gaming, you might want to get the Creative Labs Audigy 2 Sound Card with EAX “Enviromental audio extensions” feature built in since a lot of games have EAX capablities for increase realism for sound.

But, onboard is good for system sounds, movies and music.

By: Alex Forbes

Alex Forbes — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:50:36 +0000

I use the Reaktek AC’97 onboard audio controller on a recent high end ASUS board. I’ve read elsewhere that the onboards may outperform some of the consumer audio boards. I hope so, because I’ve aready recorded over 144GB of WAV from my CD’s. I can’t hear a difference between source CD and PC in play tests through midprice or high-end Klipsch.

So the difference can’t be powers of ten, but I always wonder. I know some onboard processors are or were really bad, and used to use Creative instead, but I found them and their drivers pretty high maintenance hardware.

I pipe the Realtek audio out directly to good quality receivers, so I don’t need or want the audio controls that come with some of the external USB audio processors. Do you and your readers feel I’m selling my audio short? What expansion slot audio is recommended?

Thanks — Alex

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:18:33 +0000

If you’re an audiophile, you will notice a difference between onboard audio, and expansion slot audio. Bass sounds are more subdued from onboard, simply because the onboard audio system does not have as much power as the PCI bus does. For functionality, onboard serves its purpose but not much more.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:54:22 +0000

I’m using onboard right now but my preference is a card. If I could I’d get a motherboard with just PS2 ports on it, no onboard anything else, but nobody seems to do that anymore.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:54:22 +0000

I’m using onboard right now but my preference is a card. If I could I’d get a motherboard with just PS2 ports on it, no onboard anything else, but nobody seems to do that anymore.