Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Redstreblo on January 25, 2012, 01:15:56 am
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I have an 8x PCI-E slot available and I was thinking of putting in a sound card to replace my on-board audio. I have looked around and most sound cards use the PCI interface. I found the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional card and saw some videos/reviews of it and it seemed like a good choice. But now Creative has come out with a newer card, the Sound Blaster Recon3D fatal1ty Professional. This other card is roughly the same price but has a built in headphone amp. The Recon3D also only has 5.1 Audio instead of 7.1 (but I will not need 7.1 anyway) and doesn't have XRAM whatever that is.
I don't really understand the specifications of audio cards as I don't know much about them. I just know that a dedicated sound card will blow away any on-board solution. Which of these is the better solution? Or do you know of a different card within the same rough price range (X-Fi ~ $120 - $130 / Recon3D ~ $140) as these that will work better for me?
EDIT: ***The Recon3D is $140 with a microphone included with it - you can get the card by itself for about $100***
Keep in mind that the only slot available to me is PCI-E and I need to be able to plug in my regular speakers (I've seen sound cards that work only with headphones/sets).
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional (http://asia.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=872&product=17791&listby=usage)
Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional (http://asia.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=872&product=20886&listby=usage)
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i havent bothered with soundcards ever since onboard sound got non-suckey, your better off buying really badass computer speakers and **** the sound card.
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unless things have changed drastically recently, i would seriously look into a non-creative card. from a pure hardware viewpoint, creative is very good. my x-fi xtreme music sounds outstanding, noticeably better than the still quite good onboard sound through $70 logitech 5.1 speakers. however, the software and features available from creative simply BLOW. my card doesn't have front panel audio connections, digital out (but it has a ****ing gameport, wut?), and damned if i know how you're supposed to get the 7.1 out of it, because it only has the 3 5.1 ports (gold, black, green) plus a shared port that is either mic in or aux out or something like that. i won't go into details on the drivers, but suffice to say all the rage you've probably heard on the internet about them isn't as much of an exaggeration as you would think.
unfortunately, i don't really know how many other options there are for high-end sound. i keep hearing about the asus xonar, but those are almost all about gaming, and i have a hard time believing a general hardware company could put out something that truly rivals dedicated sound guys. way back in the day turtle beach was a good alternative to creative, but last time i checked they are pretty much gone.
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, and damned if i know how you're supposed to get the 7.1 out of it, because it only has the 3 5.1 ports (gold, black, green
same as you did with the old audigy 2 zs too, the 3.5 mm jack that goes in the rear speaker port has 5 rings, and the cable has 5 leads. scratch that, i think its actually 4 rings on both the cable that goes to the subwoofer and 4 on the cable that goes to the rear speakers. in any case, its a convoluted mess at best. thing is, i dont remember if its universally supported by them speakers or only by creative's speakers...
[edit]have an image of what i mean:
(http://lh3.ggpht.com/_UiD8F79jssM/Sx6XVAoQB6I/AAAAAAAABFY/5i64JvEV_48/pinout-full.jpg)
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unless things have changed drastically recently, i would seriously look into a non-creative card. from a pure hardware viewpoint, creative is very good. my x-fi xtreme music sounds outstanding, noticeably better than the still quite good onboard sound through $70 logitech 5.1 speakers. however, the software and features available from creative simply BLOW. my card doesn't have front panel audio connections, digital out (but it has a ****ing gameport, wut?), and damned if i know how you're supposed to get the 7.1 out of it, because it only has the 3 5.1 ports (gold, black, green) plus a shared port that is either mic in or aux out or something like that. i won't go into details on the drivers, but suffice to say all the rage you've probably heard on the internet about them isn't as much of an exaggeration as you would think.
unfortunately, i don't really know how many other options there are for high-end sound. i keep hearing about the asus xonar, but those are almost all about gaming, and i have a hard time believing a general hardware company could put out something that truly rivals dedicated sound guys. way back in the day turtle beach was a good alternative to creative, but last time i checked they are pretty much gone.
i dont think its a gameport. its the same general shape of a gameport but with more pins. its for an external box (sold separately of course) that has extra connectivity for professional audio. creative dropped the game port after audigy. theres also a proprietary header on the board for a 5.25" internal version of the breakout box.
same as you did with the old audigy 2 zs too, the 3.5 mm jack that goes in the rear speaker port has 5 rings, and the cable has 5 leads. scratch that, i think its actually 4 rings on both the cable that goes to the subwoofer and 4 on the cable that goes to the rear speakers. in any case, its a convoluted mess at best. thing is, i dont remember if its universally supported by them speakers or only by creative's speakers...
i kinda think the 4 ring minijack is becoming a defacto standard for computer speakers, and im sure adapter cables do exist (save money and get then 3rd party, me personally i make my own from junk).
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I am quite happy with my X-Fi (whatever version it is anyway... I don't get the feeling it matters all that much lately), but I recommend ignoring Nuke's advice and ditch the onboard device - It most likely does not support the later EAX versions, for example. Also, you can do great things with Creative's CMSS 3d function. If you have stereo headphones, but tell windows itself and every game and just about everything but the Creative sound driver that you have 7.1 speakers, you get excellent positional sound everywhere. With stereo headphones. Which is great.
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same as you did with the old audigy 2 zs too, the 3.5 mm jack that goes in the rear speaker port has 5 rings, and the cable has 5 leads. scratch that, i think its actually 4 rings on both the cable that goes to the subwoofer and 4 on the cable that goes to the rear speakers. in any case, its a convoluted mess at best. thing is, i dont remember if its universally supported by them speakers or only by creative's speakers...
i kinda think the 4 ring minijack is becoming a defacto standard for computer speakers, and im sure adapter cables do exist (save money and get then 3rd party, me personally i make my own from junk).
whoever said i'd ever buy that :p
salvaging stuff ftw.
except for transistors from dead fluo lamps. those are a ***** to get out of the PCB without frying their internals -.-
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If you're looking for PCI-E sound card, look no further than Asus Xonar DX. Do note that good sound cards REQUIRE good speakers and/or headphones, otherwise you won't get their full potential. I would stay clear of Creative's sound cards.
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Frankly unless you *don't* have an S/PDIF on your on-board chipset, a soundcard is a waste of money. Even then, unless you're a musician who need MIDI capabilities (though nowadays things have moded to softsynths) you just want a basic card with an S/PDIF out.
Why? Because if you want a good sound system you're going to need a proper amplifier. Any modern amplifier will accept digital input at which point the D-A properties of your PC are absolutely moot. If all you have is a couple of low quality gaming speakers than getting a sound card won't make any difference. (...and frankly even the D-A quality of on-board chipsets are good enough for most people).
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If you're looking for PCI-E sound card, look no further than Asus Xonar DX. Do note that good sound cards REQUIRE good speakers and/or headphones, otherwise you won't get their full potential. I would stay clear of Creative's sound cards.
Agreed. I admit, I have a Creative card right now, but that's because I found a cache of Audigy2 Value cards for free. Well, that, and before that I bought a creative based store-brand card before I knew better. The Asus Xonar DX cards are absolutely wonderful though, and reasonably priced at that. (Read - cheaper than both of those Creative cards you listed, and outperforms or matches them as well) Look up some reviews, they're all glowing.
If you really want to spend that much on a card, again, go for any of the more expensive Asus cards. Each and every one of them gets excellent reviews and compares favourably with their Creative counterparts.
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Frankly unless you *don't* have an S/PDIF on your on-board chipset, a soundcard is a waste of money.
Not quite. Onboard sound card still cannot achieve the audio quality and number of concurrent sounds that a discrete sound card can.
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Why? Because if you want a good sound system you're going to need a proper amplifier. Any modern amplifier will accept digital input at which point the D-A properties of your PC are absolutely moot. If all you have is a couple of low quality gaming speakers than getting a sound card won't make any difference. (...and frankly even the D-A quality of on-board chipsets are good enough for most people).
to be honest, a lot of people are going to notice the noisyness of integrated audio, which is hilariously enough, mostly evident when you're playing stuff a bit more on the silent side.
but honestly? is it worth shelving out $130 for a soundcard? no. not by a long shot. better invest that money in some better speakers/amplifiers. the only reason why i'm still using my old audigy 2 zs is due to the fact i got it for somewhere in the are of $5 and i'm using the kX drivers for ULTIMATE CUSTOMIZEABLENESSS!!!!11
yeah, psychosis and all that.
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Yeah, basically what I was trying to say:
Just get a soundcard. It does not have to be an expensive one. THe simple existence of a sound card in your computer is well worth it.
it boosts performance too, by the way... On board uses your CPU. YOu also get less sound issues in games (due to the sound card being able to handle more concurrent sounds), and EAX. Having EAX in any game (Especially the older ones, be wary that you might need a bit of a workaround to get those to work with Windows 7, such as ALchemy) is highly, highly worth it IMO.
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do note that a ton of "discrete" sound cards are just **** that still uses your CPU for actual audio processing.
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the one integrated into your motherboard.
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it boosts performance too, by the way... On board uses your CPU. YOu also get less sound issues in games (due to the sound card being able to handle more concurrent sounds), and EAX. Having EAX in any game (Especially the older ones, be wary that you might need a bit of a workaround to get those to work with Windows 7, such as ALchemy) is highly, highly worth it IMO.
well yeah theoretically it boosts performance by offloading sound from the CPU, but the effect is so miniscule it is unnoticeable and you can't really call it a performance boost. and i find EAX in older games is fantastically ****. in games like HALO and FS1 it sounds SO unnatural and, well, bad. it's like when EAX was relatively new, all the developers went "oooooohhhh, shiny!" and just threw a ****load of audio effects in. in fact even in newer games EAX doesn't sound all that great. it screws up the audio balance in favor of kicking quiet sounds and basses WAY up (like footsteps or heartbeats). i've learned to just leave my creative drivers in music playback mode all the time, which IIRC disables some of the EAX stuff. but shooting a rifle sounds like shooting a rifle again.
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I like my Asus Xonar D2X. It sounds pretty good, but i have it connected to a good receiver and good speakers, so i couldnt tell you what it will sound like with regular damn speakers.
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I like my Asus Xonar D2X. It sounds pretty good, but i have it connected to a good receiver and good speakers, so i couldnt tell you what it will sound like with regular damn speakers.
Connected digitally/via optical cable? Then as far as I know, you are using the receivers hardware to decode the digital signal from your computer, not the soundcard, and could as well have plugged it into your onboard sound without possibly being able to hear a difference, right ?;)
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nope, i have 4 stereo cables going from my sound card, behind my tv, connected to stereo -> red/white cables which go to the analog inputs on the receiver.
Finding a receiver with 7.1 analog inputs was pretty tough. Seems like everyone wants to just throw on optical and HDMI and be done with it.
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unfortunately, i don't really know how many other options there are for high-end sound. i keep hearing about the asus xonar, but those are almost all about gaming, and i have a hard time believing a general hardware company could put out something that truly rivals dedicated sound guys. way back in the day turtle beach was a good alternative to creative, but last time i checked they are pretty much gone.
Repeat after me:
Auzentech, Auzentech, Auzentech.
Dedicated sound card manufacturer. They use Creative chips on their own boards, and write their own drivers. And they're reasonably priced. I have an Auzentech Prelude 7.1 and the sound output is incredible. http://www.auzentech.com/site/company/about.php
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As far as I know they make their own customized UI frontend for the drivers. They're creative's hardware, so undoubtedly it follows that the drivers must also be pretty much the same.
What Auzentech does is sort of how GPU manufacturers compete in making the same products with slightly different PCB, cooler, and clock speeds, but they all end up using the same driver (even if the manufacturer has their own drivers, the unified drivers released by the chip manufacturer are usually recommended).
This of course applies to Xonars, too. They use C-Media something audio chip, and on Linux my Xonar DX actually identifies as C-Media audio device (and, notably, work perfectly aside from many of the fancy gizmos like the spatialization effects.
Now, I don't know how much stabler the Auzentech drivers can be than Creative's own. I would say it depends on the depth at which the problems of Creative drivers are located - are they core functionality issues with the chip, or are they superficial, user interface based issues? Or has Creative allowed Auzentech engineers full access to the source code or specification of their X-Fi chips? I really doubt the latter, so I have to assume that any fundamental driver issues with Creative X-Fi cards would be present with Auzentech X-Fi cards too.
Or maybe, just maybe, Creative are just full of fail and manage to sabotage their products' stability and useability with just the interface frontend stuff they slap on top of the actual driver that interfaces the chip with the operating system.
I wouldn't actually be surprised at this, but make of this what you will. Don't have any personal experience using a proper X-Fi chip, either Creative or Auzentech branded, so I can't say what exactly is the case here...
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Frankly unless you *don't* have an S/PDIF on your on-board chipset, a soundcard is a waste of money. Even then, unless you're a musician who need MIDI capabilities (though nowadays things have moded to softsynths) you just want a basic card with an S/PDIF out.
Why? Because if you want a good sound system you're going to need a proper amplifier. Any modern amplifier will accept digital input at which point the D-A properties of your PC are absolutely moot. If all you have is a couple of low quality gaming speakers than getting a sound card won't make any difference. (...and frankly even the D-A quality of on-board chipsets are good enough for most people).
ive done this before and it works quite well. it also keeps the signal digital till its clear out of the computer.
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I use a X-Fi Gamer.
It's great in older Games which use EAX well like Battlefield 2 or Battlefield 2142.
But nowadays most Games don't support EAX any more (blame it to X-Box and PS3) so I wouldn't buy a internal Soundcard any more.
An alternative would be a good USB Headset from Creative - maybe wireless, because:
Also, you can do great things with Creative's CMSS 3d function. If you have stereo headphones, but tell windows itself and every game and just about everything but the Creative sound driver that you have 7.1 speakers, you get excellent positional sound everywhere. With stereo headphones. Which is great.
It's amazing - in BF 2142 First Strike I'm able to locate a TIE Fighter only by it's sound.
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i own an old pci xfi xtreme music, but i really dont use it. onboard works fine for me and i use an ancient stereo amp that i got out of the dumpster, and $2 full range speakers from a thrift store. besides using top notch **** isnt kvlt.
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As far as I know they make their own customized UI frontend for the drivers. They're creative's hardware, so undoubtedly it follows that the drivers must also be pretty much the same.
What Auzentech does is sort of how GPU manufacturers compete in making the same products with slightly different PCB, cooler, and clock speeds, but they all end up using the same driver (even if the manufacturer has their own drivers, the unified drivers released by the chip manufacturer are usually recommended).
This of course applies to Xonars, too. They use C-Media something audio chip, and on Linux my Xonar DX actually identifies as C-Media audio device (and, notably, work perfectly aside from many of the fancy gizmos like the spatialization effects.
Now, I don't know how much stabler the Auzentech drivers can be than Creative's own. I would say it depends on the depth at which the problems of Creative drivers are located - are they core functionality issues with the chip, or are they superficial, user interface based issues? Or has Creative allowed Auzentech engineers full access to the source code or specification of their X-Fi chips? I really doubt the latter, so I have to assume that any fundamental driver issues with Creative X-Fi cards would be present with Auzentech X-Fi cards too.
Or maybe, just maybe, Creative are just full of fail and manage to sabotage their products' stability and useability with just the interface frontend stuff they slap on top of the actual driver that interfaces the chip with the operating system.
I wouldn't actually be surprised at this, but make of this what you will. Don't have any personal experience using a proper X-Fi chip, either Creative or Auzentech branded, so I can't say what exactly is the case here...
what i called creative's driver problems is really the frontend. the card works fine and sounds amazing, the problem is that creative just doesn't give a rat's ass about delivering a superior product all around. they are quite content to pump out the good hardware and leave the users to suffer from the half-assed frontends lacking in features you'd expect for the price you paid for the hardware (i can't even adjust channel volume independently, the closest i can come is using the fade slider to boost the rear speakers), and then the whole business we went through when they up and refused to make their drivers/software/whatever compatible with vista. even NOW they are still relying on the alchemy quick kludge fix to support win7.
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yea thats another reason i dont use my x-fi. well that and my video card blocks a pci slot and my wi-fi card takes up the other. i do have a pcie 1x slot but cant move anything to it because all my cards are old skool pci. i had intended to get a pcie wifi card and use the xfi but it was too expensive and i dropped it from my build.
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what i called creative's driver problems is really the frontend. the card works fine and sounds amazing, the problem is that creative just doesn't give a rat's ass about delivering a superior product all around. they are quite content to pump out the good hardware and leave the users to suffer from the half-assed frontends lacking in features you'd expect for the price you paid for the hardware (i can't even adjust channel volume independently, the closest i can come is using the fade slider to boost the rear speakers), and then the whole business we went through when they up and refused to make their drivers/software/whatever compatible with vista. even NOW they are still relying on the alchemy quick kludge fix to support win7.
And this is where Auzentech's stuff simply shines. I've never had any trouble with it, and it's quite feature-rich.
In fact, I recall a while back that Auzentech temporarily locked their driver downloads because some users were downloading them to run their Creative cards. No idea if you can still do that or not.
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yea thats another reason i dont use my x-fi. well that and my video card blocks a pci slot and my wi-fi card takes up the other. i do have a pcie 1x slot but cant move anything to it because all my cards are old skool pci. i had intended to get a pcie wifi card and use the xfi but it was too expensive and i dropped it from my build.
"Old skool"? Man you are making me feel old. ISA is old school to me. :p
(Sorry, had to toss that in)
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I use an older X-fi xtrememusic and Creative drivers have generally been okay, but on XP loading EAX 4/5 games often breaks the global reverb effects I use for music. This is par for the course, as every Creative card I've had since 2000 had this exact same issue in some form or another. :p Apparently it happens if the game does not "close" the EAX hooks properly, and the only way to fix it is to reboot. In some ways it's a good thing that EAX no longer works on Windows 7, as I don't have to deal with this hassle anymore. Although EAX did sound better than the audio in modern games, at least in the few games that were fully designed around it.
Whether a sound card is needed or not depends a lot on what you're listening to it through. I use good headphones and it's a massive improvement over onboard sound, especially at the extreme ends of the frequency range and with some of the card's processing features enabled. I notice the difference all the time when I listen to music off my laptop at work, although it's more worthwhile for music than games. It's a good thing we have alternatives to Creative today.
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yea thats another reason i dont use my x-fi. well that and my video card blocks a pci slot and my wi-fi card takes up the other. i do have a pcie 1x slot but cant move anything to it because all my cards are old skool pci. i had intended to get a pcie wifi card and use the xfi but it was too expensive and i dropped it from my build.
"Old skool"? Man you are making me feel old. ISA is old school to me. :p
(Sorry, had to toss that in)
thats just how i differentiate traditional pci from pci express. i remember isa too, but thats a different story.
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nuke, if you listen to music via your PC i would highly recommend trying to squeeze that card in somehow (do you really need the wifi in a desktop?). it really is an amazing improvement over onboard for music, especially after fine-tuning the EQ and various x-fi features. for games only though, yeah, probably not worth it. i've almost always found gaming sound to be limited by the quality of the audio files of the game itself, not the hardware playing it back.
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Frankly unless you *don't* have an S/PDIF on your on-board chipset, a soundcard is a waste of money.
Not quite. Onboard sound card still cannot achieve the audio quality and number of concurrent sounds that a discrete sound card can.
How? If you've got an S/PDIF then a digital signal is sent to the amplifier. Talking about "audio quality" at that point is utter BULL****. Number of concurrent sounds? Could you back that up in any shape or form? We're not living in the '90 anymore, games' polyphony is no longer sound-card limited.
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NEW vote option:
ASUS Xonar D2X (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132005)
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If you've got an S/PDIF then a digital signal is sent to the amplifier.
Actually, you do raise a good point.
When using analog output, onboard sound card falls far behind a discrete card in number of concurrent sounds produced. In some games those sound quality settings affects exactly that in addition of increasing audio khz. Limits of concurrent sound effects produced can be (or at least should be) found in chipset technical specifications.
While you did mention S/PDIF, do remember that most home computer speaker setups still today use analog inputs. Only the surround sound setups generally use S/PDIF, but not 2.0 and 2.1 which are far more common. However, when using S/PDIF I actually do not know if those concurrent sound limits apply anymore. My knowledge of S/PDIFs and amplifiers is shaky at best because I've never owned a speaker setup with S/PDIF or any other kind of digital input. If when S/PDIF is used, all audio is processed by an amplifier, then I guess the concurrent sound limit doesn't apply. But if the onboard sound chip still does some of the processing, it just may apply. I have no interest in looking into the matter though because I do not own S/PDIF setup.
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Also bear in mind that, while you might not notice on lower end speaker systems, you are fairly likely to hear the difference on any half decent set of headphones running off the analog outputs. I know, myself, that while the difference isn't that great on my cobbled-together speaker system (2.1 Altec lansing set on the front-speaker outputs, mid-80s Scott amplifier into Sanyo tower speakers on the rear-speaker outputs - making it a 4.1 system), I did notice the difference on my good headphones before I wore them out.
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Concurrent sound limits still apply. That's the amount of digital sound samples that the sound card can mix into one signal on-the-fly.
S/PDIF only means that the digital signal is sent directly to the speaker hardware through digital connection, where the on-board amplifier does the conversion from digital to analog and plays it through the speakers.
With analog speakers the signal is first converted to analog on the sound card itself and then simply given to the analog speakers to handle.
Here's the rub: DAC quality matters quite a bit with digital audio. So basically if you are looking for ideal sound, you would probably want to optimize the digital to analog conversion quality.
If you are using analog speakers and on-board HD audio chip, what happens is that the onboard DAC will have to do the digital-to-analog conversion, and it usually doesn't do half as good a work as the DAC in-built in a speaker setup that has S/PDIF input, and definitely nowhere near the DAC quality of a dedicated soundcard.
That means that you will definitely get better sound quality if you use a dedicated sound card with analog speakers, or with headphones - because the DAC quality in a dedicated soundcard is typically very much superior to onboard audio chips'.
However if you happen to have digital speaker setup (like home stereo), and you choose to use that input option, then the digital to analog conversion is done in the speaker amp hardware itself. What this means is, quality-wise it doesn't matter whether the digital audio signal comes from onboard HD audio chip or a dedicated sound card. Digital signal is digital, so as long as the onboard card is capable of producing the same digital audio data, the output from the speakers will be identical.
Where you can have differences, then, is what the actual stuff in the digital audio signal can have, if you're comparing onboard HD audio chips with a dedicated sound card. Typically, like Fury mentioned, dedicated sound cards have more processing power and can handle more bit depth, higher sample rates, more concurrent samples (which is quite important in gaming) and they also usually have better support for things such as speaker virtualization (downmixing surround sound to headphones so that it still sounds like surround, for example).
So, dedicated sound card can still give you better sound in some cases even with digital speakers, but if you for example play CD audio (44kHz16bit stereo PCM wav) through your onboard sound card and dedicated sound card, and you use digital speakers - then there should not be any difference at all.
...except for the fact that if you use something like ASIO instead of Windows Audio Service, you'll get better sound quality, because windows audio service doesn't preserve the waveform, while ASIO does it exactly bit-wise until conversion to analog signal. And if your sound card supports ASIO (or equivalent bit-wise playback mode) you don't need to dick around with workarounds to get that working (ASIO4ALL works on pretty much all sound solutions but is somewhat more fiddly than driver level supported ASIO).
Also something to note: If your dedicated sound card has a better DAC than your digital speakers, you might actually get better audio quality by letting your sound card do the digital-to-analog conversion, and using analog cables to output the signal to your speaker setup.
Yes, digital signal is practically immune to interference. Yes, technically you should want to keep the signal digital as long as possible. However, I for one wouldn't automatically trust that the DAC built in the speakers can do as good a job as the sound card on my PC, so I would probably at least test things with S/PDIF as well as analog cables. If there's no palpable difference, then the digital cable is (obviously) a lot more convenient.
Also, with the advent of HDMI cables, most GPU's these days also double as sound cards. Granted they probably don't have very glorious list of options, but they definitely are HD audio devices, and they output the sound via HDMI connection so if you are looking for the most reduced amounts of cable hell, that would probably be your pick...
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Frankly unless you *don't* have an S/PDIF on your on-board chipset, a soundcard is a waste of money. Even then, unless you're a musician who need MIDI capabilities (though nowadays things have moded to softsynths) you just want a basic card with an S/PDIF out.
Why? Because if you want a good sound system you're going to need a proper amplifier. Any modern amplifier will accept digital input at which point the D-A properties of your PC are absolutely moot. If all you have is a couple of low quality gaming speakers than getting a sound card won't make any difference. (...and frankly even the D-A quality of on-board chipsets are good enough for most people).
Not quite. Using a A/V receiver, most from the last 2 decades have S/PDIF Coax or Optical inputs. Most computers also have at least one S/PDIF output--but the majority of the time the output is limited to 2 channel PCM; your sound chip (integrated included) as well as receiver must have compatible encoding schemes to do 5.1 or 7.1, usually via DTS or Dolby Digital.
Now then, a modern AVR is a compendium of 3 distinct components: a surround processor (a D/A converter that can decompress DTS, Dolby Digital, AC3, etc.), a preamplifier (to control volume & source), and an amplifier (to actually drive unpowered loudspeakers). The headphone output is usually overlooked because they're meant for use in a cheap home theater and manufacturers like Sony, Pioneer, Onkyo, NAD, and others know that using them at your desktop computer with headphones is very uncommon.
I personally use a standalone DAC, headphone amp, and headphones with my computer. I don't even have cheap computer speakers hooked up (though I am considering buying some, if just for Netflix).
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nuke, if you listen to music via your PC i would highly recommend trying to squeeze that card in somehow (do you really need the wifi in a desktop?). it really is an amazing improvement over onboard for music, especially after fine-tuning the EQ and various x-fi features. for games only though, yeah, probably not worth it. i've almost always found gaming sound to be limited by the quality of the audio files of the game itself, not the hardware playing it back.
well i absolutely need wifi, router is upstairs (thats where the dsl line comes in for some reason) my computer is downstairs, theres no way of running cable between them. i really have 2 options here, get a pcie sound card, or get a pcie wifi card. the later would be the cheaper solution. but i have zero income right now.
*edit*
after thumbing through my mobo manual was wrong about the number of pci slots i had, seems i only have one, and 2 pcie-1x slots (one of which is obscured by the video card). though this still gives me the same options as before. and il have to give up my e-sata bracket too :( but its worth putting on my get list anyway.
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I've got an x-fi titanium and I like it. I can run my amp to full without getting blasting (but then my speakers are rated higher then the amp, so ya...) where as my onboard has to stop at about 70% due to blasting. There -IS- a diference, even at low sound levels.
Don't bother with this fata1ty crap, it's nothing more then a brand logo and a fancy pastic cover for the card, and certainly not worth the extra it cost. If you're going to get an x-fi titanium, save a few bucks and get the normal one (with black PCB, the blue ones suck)
NOTE: No sound card takes more then a x1 slot. Do NOT waste a x8 on it as that will probably mean your vid card in the x16 will have to now become an x8 as well (unless you have a high end board).
Frankly unless you *don't* have an S/PDIF on your on-board chipset, a soundcard is a waste of money. Even then, unless you're a musician who need MIDI capabilities (though nowadays things have moded to softsynths) you just want a basic card with an S/PDIF out.
Why? Because if you want a good sound system you're going to need a proper amplifier. Any modern amplifier will accept digital input at which point the D-A properties of your PC are absolutely moot. If all you have is a couple of low quality gaming speakers than getting a sound card won't make any difference. (...and frankly even the D-A quality of on-board chipsets are good enough for most people).
Not quite. Using a A/V receiver, most from the last 2 decades have S/PDIF Coax or Optical inputs. Most computers also have at least one S/PDIF output--but the majority of the time the output is limited to 2 channel PCM; your sound chip (integrated included) as well as receiver must have compatible encoding schemes to do 5.1 or 7.1, usually via DTS or Dolby Digital.
Now then, a modern AVR is a compendium of 3 distinct components: a surround processor (a D/A converter that can decompress DTS, Dolby Digital, AC3, etc.), a preamplifier (to control volume & source), and an amplifier (to actually drive unpowered loudspeakers). The headphone output is usually overlooked because they're meant for use in a cheap home theater and manufacturers like Sony, Pioneer, Onkyo, NAD, and others know that using them at your desktop computer with headphones is very uncommon.
I personally use a standalone DAC, headphone amp, and headphones with my computer. I don't even have cheap computer speakers hooked up (though I am considering buying some, if just for Netflix).
The majority of onboard chips are Realtek which not only have optical, but can do 7.1. This is labeled on every single motherboard box you can find at a computer store.
Also, I use my Tactic Sigmas through the amp, just like with speakers it makes a huge difference compared to playing them through a normal 3.5 jack as well. Just about every receiver I've seen has a 6.3mm headphone jack in front, or at least every Yamaha, and a 6.3 to 3.5 converter is not that expensive.
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Frankly unless you *don't* have an S/PDIF on your on-board chipset, a soundcard is a waste of money. Even then, unless you're a musician who need MIDI capabilities (though nowadays things have moded to softsynths) you just want a basic card with an S/PDIF out.
Why? Because if you want a good sound system you're going to need a proper amplifier. Any modern amplifier will accept digital input at which point the D-A properties of your PC are absolutely moot. If all you have is a couple of low quality gaming speakers than getting a sound card won't make any difference. (...and frankly even the D-A quality of on-board chipsets are good enough for most people).
Not quite. Using a A/V receiver, most from the last 2 decades have S/PDIF Coax or Optical inputs. Most computers also have at least one S/PDIF output--but the majority of the time the output is limited to 2 channel PCM; your sound chip (integrated included) as well as receiver must have compatible encoding schemes to do 5.1 or 7.1, usually via DTS or Dolby Digital.
Now then, a modern AVR is a compendium of 3 distinct components: a surround processor (a D/A converter that can decompress DTS, Dolby Digital, AC3, etc.), a preamplifier (to control volume & source), and an amplifier (to actually drive unpowered loudspeakers). The headphone output is usually overlooked because they're meant for use in a cheap home theater and manufacturers like Sony, Pioneer, Onkyo, NAD, and others know that using them at your desktop computer with headphones is very uncommon.
I personally use a standalone DAC, headphone amp, and headphones with my computer. I don't even have cheap computer speakers hooked up (though I am considering buying some, if just for Netflix).
The majority of onboard chips are Realtek which not only have optical, but can do 7.1. This is labeled on every single motherboard box you can find at a computer store.
Also, I use my Tactic Sigmas through the amp, just like with speakers it makes a huge difference compared to playing them through a normal 3.5 jack as well. Just about every receiver I've seen has a 6.3mm headphone jack in front, or at least every Yamaha, and a 6.3 to 3.5 converter is not that expensive.
The problem then being how the 6.3mm jack is powered. A half-decent $100 headphone amp will beat almost any preamp, amp, or receiver up to about the $5000 mark. Thus my suggestion in all of this would probably be a Asus Xonar DX ($85) and a standalone headphone amplifier ($80-200). Or just the DX & whatever other equipment the OP wants to run for loudspeakers.
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If you've got an S/PDIF then a digital signal is sent to the amplifier.
Actually, you do raise a good point.
When using analog output, onboard sound card falls far behind a discrete card in number of concurrent sounds produced. In some games those sound quality settings affects exactly that in addition of increasing audio khz. Limits of concurrent sound effects produced can be (or at least should be) found in chipset technical specifications.
While you did mention S/PDIF, do remember that most home computer speaker setups still today use analog inputs. Only the surround sound setups generally use S/PDIF, but not 2.0 and 2.1 which are far more common. However, when using S/PDIF I actually do not know if those concurrent sound limits apply anymore. My knowledge of S/PDIFs and amplifiers is shaky at best because I've never owned a speaker setup with S/PDIF or any other kind of digital input. If when S/PDIF is used, all audio is processed by an amplifier, then I guess the concurrent sound limit doesn't apply. But if the onboard sound chip still does some of the processing, it just may apply. I have no interest in looking into the matter though because I do not own S/PDIF setup.
afaik, audio channels are mixed digitally on the sound card before being pumped out the dacs for pre-amplification and then piped to the outputs (there is probably some analog switching too because port configs vary). when a digital output is used the data which would normally have been fed to the dac is packetized and piped directly out the digital port. at the other end the data is de-packetized at the receiver and its dacs are used. the signal doesn't need any preamp (this is meant to make the signal strong enough to run along a long stretch of cable with minimal attenuation) and can be fed directly into the receiver's amplifier. you do get a quality improvement if you use a high end amplifier with higher end dacs (i think the s/pdif spec is 24 bit resolution, and the dac should also be 24 bit, so higher end == better signal-noise ratio) than your sound card. though this isnt always the case.
all the mixing should be done on the soundcard's electronics. the number of sound channels it can support are directly related to the chip specs. and yes on board probibly supports fewer channels than something high end, but i dont know how many more channels would be supported by my xfi over my onboard sound for example. sound channels ultimately determine game sound performance. like i said earlier it really doesnt matter that much to me.
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NOTE: No sound card takes more then a x1 slot. Do NOT waste a x8 on it as that will probably mean your vid card in the x16 will have to now become an x8 as well (unless you have a high end board).
The only slot I have available is the PCIe 8x slot at the bottom of my board - the PCIe 1x slot I have available is blocked by a motherboard cooler - see pics below:
[attachment deleted by a basterd]
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So slot #1 is blocked--what's in slot #2? Just curious--because putting anything in slot #7 will kick slot #5 into x8 mode.
(I'd personally go out of my way to avoid doing that--to the point of at least considering a <$15 WiFi adapter for slot #1 so that I could use a sound card in slot #2.)
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i read an article about PCI-e lane width sometime a few months after 2.0 started being used, that basically discovered that GPUs don't get anywhere near the bandwith limit of PCI-E. according to their graphs, performance didn't see a hit you could call non-trivial until they got to PCI-E 1.0 4x. running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
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i read an article about PCI-e lane width sometime a few months after 2.0 started being used, that basically discovered that GPUs don't get anywhere near the bandwith limit of PCI-E. according to their graphs, performance didn't see a hit you could call non-trivial until they got to PCI-E 1.0 4x. running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
I'm unfamiliar with what cards he's using. A pair of HD6990's or GTX590's would be more severely affected than lower-end cards. From the past round that I saw (PCI-E 2.0-based), you saw about a 1% hit from x16 to x8 and another 5% from x8 to x4. I've never seen such an assessment for multi-card benchmarks--how CrossFireX or SLI are affected by differing combinations of x16, x8, & x4 slots. It'd be an interesting benchmark to do--fairly cheap too.
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well unless you use the very highest-end motherboards, crossfire/SLI already knock you down to 8x. sometimes you see a 16x/4x setup.
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So slot #1 is blocked--what's in slot #2? Just curious--because putting anything in slot #7 will kick slot #5 into x8 mode.
(I'd personally go out of my way to avoid doing that--to the point of at least considering a <$15 WiFi adapter for slot #1 so that I could use a sound card in slot #2.)
i read an article about PCI-e lane width sometime a few months after 2.0 started being used, that basically discovered that GPUs don't get anywhere near the bandwith limit of PCI-E. according to their graphs, performance didn't see a hit you could call non-trivial until they got to PCI-E 1.0 4x. running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
I'm unfamiliar with what cards he's using. A pair of HD6990's or GTX590's would be more severely affected than lower-end cards. From the past round that I saw (PCI-E 2.0-based), you saw about a 1% hit from x16 to x8 and another 5% from x8 to x4. I've never seen such an assessment for multi-card benchmarks--how CrossFireX or SLI are affected by differing combinations of x16, x8, & x4 slots. It'd be an interesting benchmark to do--fairly cheap too.
x1 slot number 2 has my WiFi adapter in it, and it doesn't fit in x1 slot number 1. (If anybody knows of a WiFi card that fits in a short x1 slot that has wireless N capabilities do tell. - I am currently using "D-Link DWA-556 Xtreme N PCIe Desktop Adapter"
I am using 2 GTX 560 Ti graphics cards in SLI btw bob-san. I also heard that having a graphics card in an 8x slot vs a 16x slot doesn't affect performance all that much, I'd be interested in hearing if that is true.
EDIT: Because it is getting relevant my board is GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R, i7 960 (@3.2GHz) (Cooler Master V8 Cooler), 12GB RAM (1333Mhz), 2 GTX 560 Ti SLI, Corsair AX1200 Power supply and boot drive is Corsair Force 3 120 GB SSD
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Right now you have x16/x16. When you add the sound card to the last pci-e slot, it'll become x16/x8. That shouldn't impact performance noticeably. Again, if you buy SoundBlaster, skip the Fatal1ty crap and just get the normal version of the X-Fi Titanium or Recon3D. All Fatal1ty is is a plastic cover and it being 'certified' by a popular gamer.
As for those who say 'its useless having better then x8/x8' cry me a river. A single card, no, x8 vs x16 isnt that big a hit till you get into the high end. But it does have an impact on SLI/Crossfire. It's performance that you don't have to lose in some cases. Here though, its inevitable.
From the past round that I saw (PCI-E 2.0-based), you saw about a 1% hit from x16 to x8 and another 5% from x8 to x4.
Is just flat wrong. x4 is a HUGE impact on today's cards. x8 is still a fair impact on higher end cards. Theres a reason they're getting PCI-e 3.0 out the door; 2.0 x8 isn't cutting it any more and MB manufacturers really don't want to lay in the extra lanes.
I would like to see where logic in cutting the data transfer rate the first time is a 1% hit, and then cutting it in half again is only 5%... when did -50% bandwith mean only -5% performance when the first cut is already eating into the cards ability?
running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
This isn't for Nuke :wtf:
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i actually do have a mini pci-e wifi card i salvaged from an old laptop, turns out they sell an adapter card for 8 bucks. of course for 2 bucks more you can get a real pcie card. so much for putting salvaged junk into my computer. :D
running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
This isn't for Nuke :wtf:
i think everyone is confused because we both have a similar problem more or less. i cant use my sound card cause its pci, but that slot is taken up by a pci wifi card. my solution is obvious, get a pci-e network card. but im a cheap bastard and can live with onboard audio.
If anybody knows of a WiFi card that fits in a short x1 slot that has wireless N capabilities do tell.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320074
there are cheaper ones if you google around for it.
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NOTE: No sound card takes more then a x1 slot. Do NOT waste a x8 on it as that will probably mean your vid card in the x16 will have to now become an x8 as well (unless you have a high end board).
The only slot I have available is the PCIe 8x slot at the bottom of my board - the PCIe 1x slot I have available is blocked by a motherboard cooler - see pics below:
trust gigabyte to **** up with atrocious southbridge coolers. my old ma-78g-ds3h has the soutbridge smack dab above the GPU chip, also known as the hottest spot on the "underside" of the gpu. and the ****ty cooler cant remove the heat if you blast it with compressed air. -.- raaaargh!
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If anybody knows of a WiFi card that fits in a short x1 slot that has wireless N capabilities do tell.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320074
there are cheaper ones if you google around for it.
Excellent, now I will buy a new WiFi card put that in PCIe 1x slot number one and put the sound card in PCIe 1x slot number 2 on my motherboard. Now I see a lot of votes for Asus D2X and a lot of people to go for the X-Fi cards (not the fatal1ty ones) - they are the exact same cards, just with no cover on them?
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833180078
I'm looking at that one myself--my current wireless card is PCI and I'm in a similar boat--my Sabertooth X58's NB heatsink may block a longer PCI-E x1 card.
I'm still recommending the DX and a desk headphone amplifier (if you have half-decent cans).
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If anybody knows of a WiFi card that fits in a short x1 slot that has wireless N capabilities do tell.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320074
there are cheaper ones if you google around for it.
Excellent, now I will buy a new WiFi card put that in PCIe 1x slot number one and put the sound card in PCIe 1x slot number 2 on my motherboard. Now I see a lot of votes for Asus D2X and a lot of people to go for the X-Fi cards (not the fatal1ty ones) - they are the exact same cards, just with no cover on them?
they might have an extra gimmick or two (like onboard RAM for supposedly increased gaming performance), but on the whole yes. same chipset and an endorsement.
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running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
This isn't for Nuke :wtf:
i think everyone is confused because we both have a similar problem more or less. i cant use my sound card cause its pci, but that slot is taken up by a pci wifi card. my solution is obvious, get a pci-e network card. but im a cheap bastard and can live with onboard audio.
Oh, ya that does kinda suck. On the other hand, this is what you get for going mini-ATX :lol:
trust gigabyte to **** up with atrocious southbridge coolers. my old ma-78g-ds3h has the soutbridge smack dab above the GPU chip, also known as the hottest spot on the "underside" of the gpu. and the ****ty cooler cant remove the heat if you blast it with compressed air. -.- raaaargh!
Northbridge in this case. Both of mine (990FXA-UD3 and 890GPA-UD3H) were just out of the way for that top x1. I'm also pretty sure you're supposed to blast it with the stuff that comes out when you hold it upsidedown, not the air itself. It works a bit better considering it freezes that target in question.
Now I see a lot of votes for Asus D2X and a lot of people to go for the X-Fi cards (not the fatal1ty ones) - they are the exact same cards, just with no cover on them?
Well, the Fatal1ty ones also cost more. Use that money on the small x1 wireless card? Assuming you don't go Xonar that is which is a very viable choice. I'm just saying avoid the Fatal1ty brand.
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running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
This isn't for Nuke :wtf:
i think everyone is confused because we both have a similar problem more or less. i cant use my sound card cause its pci, but that slot is taken up by a pci wifi card. my solution is obvious, get a pci-e network card. but im a cheap bastard and can live with onboard audio.
Oh, ya that does kinda suck. On the other hand, this is what you get for going mini-ATX :lol:
this may be a shock to you but i prefer smaller cases for a number of reasons.
1. my last computer was way too big, you couldnt move it without breaking it. i did not want a repeat of that situation.
2. if i ever move, i dont want it to cost a fortune to ship the thing.
3. small cases have better airflow characteristics
4. lack of space. its now possible to get the damn thing off the floor so it collects less dust.
only time microatx really sucks is when your case manufacturer deviates from spec.
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running 2.0 8x should be fine, especially considering nuke doesn't have a top-line card IIRC.
This isn't for Nuke :wtf:
i think everyone is confused because we both have a similar problem more or less. i cant use my sound card cause its pci, but that slot is taken up by a pci wifi card. my solution is obvious, get a pci-e network card. but im a cheap bastard and can live with onboard audio.
Oh, ya that does kinda suck. On the other hand, this is what you get for going mini-ATX :lol:
this may be a shock to you but i prefer smaller cases for a number of reasons.
1. my last computer was way too big, you couldnt move it without breaking it. i did not want a repeat of that situation.
2. if i ever move, i dont want it to cost a fortune to ship the thing.
3. small cases have better airflow characteristics
4. lack of space. its now possible to get the damn thing off the floor so it collects less dust.
only time microatx really sucks is when your case manufacturer deviates from spec.
And the lack of sockets on the board (what I was aiming at), but yes I get the logic behind it. I'll still argue that smaller cases have crap cooling capabilities (even with the theoretical better airflow) for a number of reasons though. The idea for why they should be better makes sense, but they arent. There's also no room for any good aftermarket air cooler and the odds of even fitting an H50 are small, but that's a different needs thing.
And if I were to move, theres no chance in hell I'd be shipping a computer... Thats begging for trouble.
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NOTE: No sound card takes more then a x1 slot. Do NOT waste a x8 on it as that will probably mean your vid card in the x16 will have to now become an x8 as well (unless you have a high end board).
The only slot I have available is the PCIe 8x slot at the bottom of my board - the PCIe 1x slot I have available is blocked by a motherboard cooler - see pics below:
trust gigabyte to **** up with atrocious southbridge coolers. my old ma-78g-ds3h has the soutbridge smack dab above the GPU chip, also known as the hottest spot on the "underside" of the gpu. and the ****ty cooler cant remove the heat if you blast it with compressed air. -.- raaaargh!
That's actually the Northbridge heatsink. I agree that it can be a PITA but you make a decision on what board you buy based on your intended uses.
Anyways, same thing goes with your chassis. I like my Lian-Li K58W but I think it's a bit too big, actually. I should have bought a K56W. So long as your chassis has a 120mm fan on the back, you can probably fit a small water-cooling kit. If you don't have clearance, you can probably have the fan pull air instead and use the additional height to clear the expansion slots.
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And if I were to move, theres no chance in hell I'd be shipping a computer... Thats begging for trouble.
not if you pack it well and get the shipping insurance. last time they broke my rig they ended up buying me a whole new set of guts. of course i kept the drives with me so i didnt loose any data.
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If you've got an S/PDIF then a digital signal is sent to the amplifier.
Actually, you do raise a good point.
When using analog output, onboard sound card falls far behind a discrete card in number of concurrent sounds produced. In some games those sound quality settings affects exactly that in addition of increasing audio khz. Limits of concurrent sound effects produced can be (or at least should be) found in chipset technical specifications.
While you did mention S/PDIF, do remember that most home computer speaker setups still today use analog inputs. Only the surround sound setups generally use S/PDIF, but not 2.0 and 2.1 which are far more common. However, when using S/PDIF I actually do not know if those concurrent sound limits apply anymore. My knowledge of S/PDIFs and amplifiers is shaky at best because I've never owned a speaker setup with S/PDIF or any other kind of digital input. If when S/PDIF is used, all audio is processed by an amplifier, then I guess the concurrent sound limit doesn't apply. But if the onboard sound chip still does some of the processing, it just may apply. I have no interest in looking into the matter though because I do not own S/PDIF setup.
afaik, audio channels are mixed digitally on the sound card before being pumped out the dacs for pre-amplification and then piped to the outputs (there is probably some analog switching too because port configs vary). when a digital output is used the data which would normally have been fed to the dac is packetized and piped directly out the digital port. at the other end the data is de-packetized at the receiver and its dacs are used. the signal doesn't need any preamp (this is meant to make the signal strong enough to run along a long stretch of cable with minimal attenuation) and can be fed directly into the receiver's amplifier. you do get a quality improvement if you use a high end amplifier with higher end dacs (i think the s/pdif spec is 24 bit resolution, and the dac should also be 24 bit, so higher end == better signal-noise ratio) than your sound card. though this isnt always the case.
all the mixing should be done on the soundcard's electronics. the number of sound channels it can support are directly related to the chip specs. and yes on board probibly supports fewer channels than something high end, but i dont know how many more channels would be supported by my xfi over my onboard sound for example. sound channels ultimately determine game sound performance. like i said earlier it really doesnt matter that much to me.
For reference: In Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, you can set your audio channels. When using any value over 32 channels using my Realtek soundcard, any A-10 rocket barrage would crash my PC (whilst with 32 channels the sounds of my jet would cut off...) . My Soundblaster X-Fi is able to handle 128 channels.
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but 32 channels is more kvlt :P