Do add in sound cards make a difference? Please read OP.

[Archer0915]

I had an old ASUS board that had some sort of additional shielding / signal isolation on the audio channels. It was a cleaner sound than I'm used to. I have run into issues with some motherboards where you can hear mouse movements as electrical interference through the headphones. I currently use an Optical DAC (SMSL Q5 Pro) to power speakers, and I use a USB headset. In most instances, a quality DAC and external amplifier running through onboard optical is going to sound better than the headphone out of even the highest end sound cards. And passive speakers are going to require an external power source any way.

If you're a true audiophile, the chances of using the onboard stereo out is pretty slim. Because good speakers won't work on that output (need external power and thus a receiver or amplifier), and good headphones won't sound as good as possible from the onboard headphone jack. Unless there is a special case (like 384KHz sample rate, or a specific input/output), I don't see a sound card being the best option for most people. External audio components that improve the onboard signal will be more useful in future, and likely give noticeably better results.

I have moved to USB headphones. Razer and Creative. I know there are much better out there but those are for the laptops.

 

[Niku-Sama]

i've never been a fan of the onboard audio options. not for their implementation but more for their lack of noise filtering and power output.

i've always picked up some sort of background humm/noise from any onboard audio i've used and it kinda sucks. i thought for a while it was my speakers and headphones but nothing i've done has changed it and i dont get any interference when i use some of this stuff on other equipment. if i plug directly into the front of my receiver i dont get any of that.
i also thought it was from other cheap components like videocards, most of the cards i've had in my life exhibited some sort of coil whine. some worse than others. but since i stopped cheaping out on cards and getting decent quality stuff, my cards dont whine any more but i still get audio issues.

it doesn't help that it seems most of the market has dried up for this sort of thing so there isnt much out there. sure theres still creative, but like some one earlier said they dont support their stuff for very long and theres often no generic drivers that work with them.

i know i can hear this stuff unusually well compared to most but not every one can by deaf to this feedback/hum that most of these onboard setups have.

 

[Archer0915]

i've never been a fan of the onboard audio options. not for their implementation but more for their lack of noise filtering and power output.

i've always picked up some sort of background humm/noise from any onboard audio i've used and it kinda sucks. i thought for a while it was my speakers and headphones but nothing i've done has changed it and i dont get any interference when i use some of this stuff on other equipment. if i plug directly into the front of my receiver i dont get any of that.
i also thought it was from other cheap components like videocards, most of the cards i've had in my life exhibited some sort of coil whine. some worse than others. but since i stopped cheaping out on cards and getting decent quality stuff, my cards dont whine any more but i still get audio issues.

it doesn't help that it seems most of the market has dried up for this sort of thing so there isnt much out there. sure theres still creative, but like some one earlier said they dont support their stuff for very long and theres often no generic drivers that work with them.

i know i can hear this stuff unusually well compared to most but not every one can by deaf to this feedback/hum that most of these onboard setups have.

I have hears tale of those same realtek controllers doing awesome jobs on add in cards.

I really feel that some board manufacturers do better than others when it comes to implementation of the AUDIO.

I have never had issues with GIGABYTE and ASUS.

 

[freakdiablo]

I have hears tale of those same realtek controllers doing awesome jobs on add in cards.

I really feel that some board manufacturers do better than others when it comes to implementation of the AUDIO.

I have never had issues with GIGABYTE and ASUS.

Well, the Realtek ICs themselves may be pretty good, it's just a matter of the overall circuitry - and likely more the placement.

I tend to have the same complaints as NS. A lot of mobos and laptops I've used had a trace amount of background hiss - I even grabbed a cheap little USB DAC for my HTPC to wire in my receiver for that reason. Don't really notice a difference in overall sound quality, but no hiss with the DAC vs fair amounts at mid to high volume when using the onboard.

I'll admit my current MSI laptop isn't bad in terms of background humm/hiss, but it has trouble driving larger/higher impedance cans at higher volume. That though I can understand, it's a laptop - more often than not someone's gonna be using IEMs.

 

[Niku-Sama]

i just wish there were more internal card options in all honesty. even if its a niche market right now it might get some of these integrated audio designs to be a little better.
i wonder if putting it on a M.2 would help like they do with some wifi cards on mobos, especially the tombstone design so the processing perpendicular to the board that might be causing interference, plus it could be an upgrade path too...

any way thinking about this, i dont notice any hiss or hum on my laptop. Its a little different than most. its an HP Elitebook G4. Its an odd duck, enterprise laptop with some serviceability in mind. i bought it cheap off lease from ebay and it does the trick.

 

[Tyerker]

i just wish there were more internal card options in all honesty. even if its a niche market right now it might get some of these integrated audio designs to be a little better.
i wonder if putting it on a M.2 would help like they do with some wifi cards on mobos, especially the tombstone design so the processing perpendicular to the board that might be causing interference, plus it could be an upgrade path too...

any way thinking about this, i dont notice any hiss or hum on my laptop. Its a little different than most. its an HP Elitebook G4. Its an odd duck, enterprise laptop with some serviceability in mind. i bought it cheap off lease from ebay and it does the trick.

The tough part with m.2 audio would be I/O, though you could theoretically implement a processor there.

 

[Woomack]

These are just some comments on earlier posts.

MSI has problems with audio software. If you have humming or other weird noises, then simply install the audio driver and (it's optional as not always required) the manufacturer's software (usually Realtek). Optionally, wait until Windows installs the driver and don't touch other software/drivers. Don't install MSI software or any additional things from their website. It often causes issues with sound quality or drivers (I had the same in at least 3 different MSI mobos). It's not a rule, and works fine on some motherboards.
The same for all motherboards, you may have problems after installing Nahimic software. It also causes issues for other brands like ASRock. It's not a rule, sometimes it works fine.

New motherboards have, for some reason, worse audio than the last gen. I mean, most mid-Z790 mobos now have ALC897. Most Z690 have ALC1220. Only ITX and the top series from the last gen, have ALC1220 or 4080. Manufacturers hide that, specifying audio as "HD Audio" or "Realtek Audio CODEC" and nothing else. You can see that even (in theory) better mobos, like ASRock Z790 Steel Legend or Gigabyte Z790 Elite AX, use ALC897. This is quite sad. The audio quality isn't bad, but we could expect something more, considering how much all new motherboards cost.
ASUS and Gigabyte have (typically, at the same price) better audio quality than other brands. It's because of their specific audio design (often better DAC, caps, and other things) and software. Even if they use an older codec, then everything around it causes audio quality to be better.

In the end, a lot depends on your speakers/headphones. Even older codec is very good for most of them. I would say it doesn't really matter for most popular speakers what codec is in use (assuming it's from the last ~5-7 years). It more matters about how the motherboard is designed. At least for maybe 7-10 years, I see no point in add-on sound cards, unless you need any specific setup, additional ports, or optical connection. Some new motherboards are cut-down to ... 2-channel audio, so not yet, but soon users may need more add-on sound cards.

 

[Niku-Sama]

well so interesting thing i noticed today.

EVGA no longer lists their audio cards on their website. they did last week but now they are gone.
Kinda wanted one, now people are gonna scalp the crap outa them

 

[Woomack]

I don't think there will be a problem if they're still available in other stores. These are not popular products, as for most users, integrated audio is more than enough. There are no scalpers for low-demand products, but who knows how the market reacts if EVGA discontinued all audio cards.
I see that audio cards are still listed in the EU store, but nothing is available.
Maybe EVGA wants to release something new and just cleared the inventory.

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Evga NuAudios are hard to come by on ebay. And honestly, even add-in cards that are Win10 compatible are just Realtek or Creative DACs on a nice board. Unless you have a ALC800 series or earlier, I see little point in going with an internal sound card. And if you can use optical or audio over your digital video cable, you bypass all the analog issues from inside the case.

Personally, I won't buy mainboards unless they have an ALC1200 or 4000 series at least, and having an ESS DAC and gold plated outputs is a bonus. But that's me and I'm picky.

That said, unless you have good headphones or speakers, I'm guessing most would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a cheap audio subsystem and a nice one.

 

[Niku-Sama]

I don't think there will be a problem if they're still available in other stores. These are not popular products, as for most users, integrated audio is more than enough. There are no scalpers for low-demand products, but who knows how the market reacts if EVGA discontinued all audio cards.
I see that audio cards are still listed in the EU store, but nothing is available.
Maybe EVGA wants to release something new and just cleared the inventory.

there must be a demand in the states because some of the prices are a little crazy for used products.

Evga NuAudios are hard to come by on ebay. And honestly, even add-in cards that are Win10 compatible are just Realtek or Creative DACs on a nice board. Unless you have a ALC800 series or earlier, I see little point in going with an internal sound card. And if you can use optical or audio over your digital video cable, you bypass all the analog issues from inside the case.

Personally, I won't buy mainboards unless they have an ALC1200 or 4000 series at least, and having an ESS DAC and gold plated outputs is a bonus. But that's me and I'm picky.

That said, unless you have good headphones or speakers, I'm guessing most would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a cheap audio subsystem and a nice one.

funny you mention the chipsets because both systems use 892's and they both exhibit the same problems even with some advertised audio improvement to the board with some tiny BS caps
I have some audio technica headphones that are pretty decent, ATH Pro5x and ATH A500X.
neither of which are high impedance but i'm not looking to the system audio to push power hungry cans on my head i just want it to sound decent and these both sound decent, just not on any computer i've got right now.

i mean hell the Pro5's make better sound on my switch lite than my pc

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

I'm sure an 897 can sound decent with good pcb design and nice associated parts. And I'm sure 4080 can be made to sound terrible with the opposite.

 

[EarthDog]

I'm sure an 897 can sound decent with good pcb design and nice associated parts. And I'm sure 4080 can be made to sound terrible with the opposite.

True, but, it's still an 897. You generally do not see a dated, low-end codec paired with DACs or a slew of audio caps to improve what's there. Whereas with the mid-range+ codecs, (think ALC1200/4080+) typically come with the caps, and the higher-end ones have some sort of DAC. The audio separation line is on every board I can think of, but the # layers typically don't have much to do with audio either (in that, they don't add layers for audio, but more for power and other routing).

So, that can happen, but, I don't think board partners do that. It's an 'it is what it is' situation (I'd rather buy a mobo with a better codec than to recap budget audio).

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

You're right. No one is going to waste the effort and parts trying to make an older codec sound good. And they sure aren't going to waste an entire pcb layer to do it either.

 

[Niku-Sama]

it'd be nice if they did, i could see some niche markets for things like this and maybe now is the time for manufacturers to try new things they can add as up sells to boards since almost every one is missing their quarterly targets.

maybe it can come around to, well video performance is amazing right now but the audio is crap so lets focus on this...
man it seems so long ago now that a sound card was the big gaming component in a high end pc build

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Like this, eh?

 

[Niku-Sama]

yea kinda...

just a little more than a 16 bit bus

 

[Archer0915]

Well... honestly, my experience has improved greatly. I think the issue was with the onboard audio solution.

 

[thobel]

I know my thought and feelings and they will not change, they are based on data and personal experience.

On-board audio is great for general usage but on many motherboards I find it lacking. Either the included audio software sucks giving little control or it is lacking features. That is my opinion backed by experience.

Some is good, none is great and most is meh.

What are the thoughts of the rest of you?

I have the ASUS Rog z790 hero and the sound is supposed to be premium, but the volume is way too low I installed the AE-9 and Its night and day difference. example threw MB I play games at 100% volume and find it lacking threw AE-9 I play at around 20-25% volume and its amazing.

 

[EarthDog]

but the volume is way too low

What cans are you using? I have and use the same board/audio amd this isn't an issue. I play games around 75% but, mkre than that is too loud..