Where Did SOUND CARDS Go?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 23 гру 2019
- Thanks to monday.com for sponsoring this video! Sign up for an extended 30-day free trial at lmg.gg/09Nm0
Why are sound cards no longer a must-have item?
Buy Sound Cards
On Amazon (PAID LINK): geni.us/SIxA
On Newegg (PAID LINK): geni.us/TP74FeA
Techquickie Merch Store: www.lttstore.com
Follow: / linustech
Leave a reply with your requests for future episodes, or tweet them here: / jmart604 - Наука та технологія
Don't need a sound card..can't hear above 60fps.
Batman hears what you did there...
Technically 60 frame per sec is 60 hertz well in human hearing spectrum so you sir are incorrect
Um stop spreading mininformation.
Human ears can hear above 144 FPS but after that is diminishing returns.
@@scivirus3563 not really how digital sound works but ok
@@jonasls the how does it work my friend like to hear this
In 2030:
"where did GRAPHICS CARDS go?"
Man, I already feel old talking about sound cards, don't do me like that, lol
@@lynnmckenney1987 Sound cards are still somewhat relevant, so I would not say that talking about sound cards should make you feel old.
You can already play high end games without a GPU. There are monthly gaming services that stream games to your PC. Their GPU's do all the work. Apparently it works great if you have a good internet connection.
wow, i bet it will happen, or mabey streaming will be the thing
I do not think Intel and AMD will though Zhaoxin might put a good enough GPU into their chips to replace the graphics card and/or China might mandate that graphics cards are illegal and require their population to move over to whatever Zhaoxin has for integrated graphics.
"They even come with RGB"
*I'LL TAKE YOUR ENTIRE STOCK!*
Bet
The more RGB the more fps :D
Seriously am i the only one that hates rgb? im happy with my base being black and not putting our a bunch of blinding lights.
@@GalironRunner were making fun of people that use too much rgb we arent serious.
@@GalironRunner Ye I too honestly dislike RGB. I prefer a nice clean looking workstation computer, black or white. But I woulden't mind having a little RGB on my computer, but I would keep it at a solid color like blue or whatever fits, just so you can see inside.
I bought a sound card as I work with music composing, but I noticed that I would never again play games without it. Damn, the experience improved a lot.
Which one did you bought ?
100% this.
Which one did you get?
Even supposed high-end motherboard audio is honestly trash compared to a halfway decent pci-e soundcard or external dac.
I had a sound blaster sound card (some gamer edition that i dont remember) pair that with creative labs 5.1 surround speakers, and i could hear things like my chainmail rattling as i ran in world of warcraft... im pretty sure my onboard sound on my current pc doesn't have that...
My favorite is people who spend $200-$300 on a sound card...then use USB headphones.
Or use their monitor's speakers with it.
My favorite is teenage lesbitwin gymnasts.
Lmfaoo
Uhm. I do that. And there's a reason. I occationally write and play music live. You want a dedicated sound card for that, to get as low latency as possible, lower than what onboard sound can do, often by hundreds of milliseconds. That matters when you want immidiate response from your instrument. But i also use the same computer for gaming and UA-cam, and if you are awake late at night when other people are sleeping, you don't want to wake them up. Besides, mixing and mastering music should ideally be done on a multitude of sound sources, like studio monitors and a headset.
@spartanscheats But he's telling you that he does use it. First two sentences... he says he wants a dedicated sound card to reduce latency when playing live music. Then he goes on to say that he uses USB headphones for gaming and using the computer late at night.
“Early integrated speaker didn’t sound great as you can hear”
*can’t hear because LTT won’t shutup long enough to let me listen*
Andrew Capps This happens in so many of their videos. They don’t bring the music level up high enough . Though, I guess they’re not really trying to appeal to music enthusiasts or musicians.
probably kept talking to avoid a copyright strike from UMG
Seriously
did you just call james an entire channel
I legit didn’t even realize he was actually playing it until reading this
"LIMITED TO JUST BEEPS AND BOOBS"
Not a bad deal in my opinion.
@laser325 - "LIMITED TO JUST BEEPS AND BOOBS". sounds like most girl friends.
lmfao
A portion of history that seems to be overlooked here, is when the soundblaster cards integrated MIDI and the game port onto the cards as well. I first got a sound card in the early 90's, and the same device that was allowing me to control Lara Croft's movement was also allowing me to hear her lovely voice.
0:59 "as you can tell", no we can't tell because you were talking over it
Q: Where did sound cards go?
Music Production community: Wut?
SingularityMedia Not really, the guy picked up on it and is right, studios will have external sound cards.
@@slapmyfunkybass key word being sound cards
SingularityMedia But external sound cards are mostly called audio interfaces.
@@slapmyfunkybass yes they are, but they still retain the same purpose. Some of us still call them soundcards
People got sick of one particular well known audio card maker who did not support their products properly, never updated drivers, and didn't bother to support the current version of Windows at one particular point. With the latter Microsoft actually wrote a driver for the users of those sound cards.
My experience is similar. I built two PCs using mostly the same parts. One has a sound card from the "well known audio card maker" (main PC) and other just uses the AC97 onboard audio (LAN gaming PC). Playing downloaded video files on the main PC would result in random BSODs and the same files on the LAN PC would play perfectly. Tracing the BSOD info revealed is was an issue with the sound card driver. Checking the maker's web site only had the same driver I had on the CD when I bought the card. There were no updates to the driver in many years. Onboard audio drivers are updated by the mainboard makers when problems are encountered. I changed the audio output on the main PC to the AC97 and never had issues since. Both PCs are still on offline use and LAN gaming PCs for myself and my son.
My ears cannot pick the difference between the onboard audio and the dedicated sound card. Onboard audio chipsets are more than good enough for most people and are more reliable as they are better supported than dedicated sound cards.
Don’t forget that the first generation audio cards also hosted fm soundchips and were able to host soundfont files. Music in games of the early days was not integrated as audio data, but more like MIDI data. For that you needed a card that could translate that data to instrument like sounds instead of the beeps and bleeps of a pc speaker. Like the Soundblaster AWE32 I had back then. It was an AWEsome card for that time.
Late 90's to mid 00's they also had hardware acceleration for sound (EAX), until MS killed it on Vista.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing
@@SomeAngryGuy1997 there was other feture as well.
I remember some game that used to sound card to handle mic effects.
Like in a Milsim game if you was standing next to someone and spoke it would sound like you was next to them speaking.
if you was like 600 meters away (you had to use the radio) and at 600 meter sounded fine just a bleep at the start and end.
now move into the basement at the other end of the map and it was now more static then voice.
I hope you printed out the NATO phonetic alphabet because that was the only way to communicate at this point.
and all that was handled by the soundcard had it been done on the main CPU it would had killed the performance.
I also remmber my DnD group using the sound card and its effect for stuff like changing our voices (old man, elf, dwarf, scout, drunk and so on).
I remember playing Alone in the Dark on a computer with no sound card. Sounded like an Atari game but with at the time cutting edge graphics.
lol, good times with pc speaker beeps playing epic pinball but pinball fantasies actually made full use of that thing somehow.
« Alone in the Dark », wonderful game that inspired « Resident Evil » amongst others...
People basically are playing like this nowadays
Best 90's game.
I just download some extra sound when I need
is that from the same place you get your RAM? did it come with RGB?
@@pugo7925 The 2GB of sound I downloaded did not come with rgb. Won't be shopping there again.
@@flameshana9 what a scam!
@@pugo7925 Just download more CPU fool
I know you jest, but the last soundcard I bought needed a separate download (with proof of purchase) for the dolby digital live / dts connect addin. Until I had the addin installed my DD amp and speakers were stereo only. I literally downloaded extra sound
any of you around way back when you played Doom shareware version with integrated PC speakers?
when my parents bought our first computer it didn't come with a sound card, so it was a BIG DEAL when we eventually upgraded to one. I could finally listen to E1M1 in glorious 16 bit audio
I remember playing around with the PC speaker audio. I can't imagine having to use that as my old audio source. I was lucky in that my 486 came with an SB16.
Yep - still recall how I spent £119 on a SB16!
@@Fifury161 I recall being in awe when I played Wolfenstein 3D on a PC and the enemies actually SAID WORDS... Mind blowing.
I had the Gravis Ultrasound. It was pretty sweet for Doom. Much better than the SB16.
Used to rock out to doom through a Roland MT-32 Synth and nothing sounded better!
Yeah, I remember when a bunch of advanced audio features basically vanished overnight.
Like hardware accelerated 3d positional audio.
AFAIK the death knell of standalone sound cards appears to have been HDMI encryption standards.
Encrypted HDMI was a demand made by film studios to make bluray harder to pirate.
That's all well and good but that means suddenly a whole heap of PC components have to support encryption/decryption.
That alone rendered a ton of hardware partially obsolete overnight.
Suddenly motherboards (in theory) had to encrypt PCI bus traffic.
Monitors had to support HDCP decryption. Operating systems had to support HDCP.
Obviously graphics cards now needed to be able to do HDCP encryption...
Oh, and graphics cards needed audio processing hardware. - hardware that's only in use when you have HDMI audio in play.
Upside is this is digital processing only.
Downside is graphics card companies didn't care about sound (at least compared to sound card manufacturers)
Plus all tgat encryption means the sound card is completely out of the loop now...
Rendering it 100% redundant except where the user has an analogue audio path enabled.
There are likely other factors...
But forcing HDCP to be implemented on the PC was a big one with many other negatives as well.
And all to appease film studio paranoia.
Joy.
cant be that hard to put an extra connection onto the graphic card where you could connect to your soundcard. ....
It's like DRM and all copyright protection features ruin computing and the people that have them implemented just don't care.
@@Luckma1 You wouldn't think so.
But that's not what happened.
Don't ask me why not, but it just isn't.
I refuse to buy components with HDCP, except where it is absolutely unavoidable, like with graphics cards, because I oppose all forms of DRM.
I don't think anyone forces audio to be HDCP though. Too many people use headphones which do not go over HDMI, or speakers which don't go over it, and it's a bit easier to take advantage of the analogue hole with audio anyway, since at the end of the chain, there is only one electrical signal to deal with. I've never heard of audio which requires HDCP, but if anyone has any examples of any, please tell me.
@@KuraIthys gffffujh
There is not a single sound sample in the whole video. Not even a "what did the PC Speaker actually sound like" for the younger audience.
@@pygmalion0451 what? Can't hear it over this guy talking
Copyright
@@esecallum Ahh yeah, classical music and its damn copyright.
@@billybobjoe198 In this case, the author of the 'arrangement' of that piece, 'for IBM PC Speaker', could indeed make a copyright claim.
@@davidskidmore3442who the fuck would care enough to enforce copyright for 1982 PC speaker sound demos in 2020?
While sound cards are always better than on-board audio, you have to praise the makers on-board for the huge increase in quality in the last few years. Problem is finding a midpriced soundcard is almost impossible these days. The only cards sold are either dirt cheap garbage or expensive audiophile cards with features hardly anyone outside a studio would use.
the thing is the onboard sound of most motherboard fall right in that mid tier range.. making them kind of redundant -
Actually entry level external home studio audio interfaces are sub 100 USD now. They do sound way better than integrated ones.
I suppose if you can't tell the difference, or don't need to record or play through good monitors or phones.. Integrated sound these days is adequate for most people.
htomega.com
Fenix is 100 bucks. Cmedia Chip. toslink out/input, RCA, 7.1 3.5mm output.
No linux support. My second HT Omega card .
I had a card fail after 3 years, and they replaced with no problems.
The soundblaster AE-5 is only $120 on amazon. If you're doing a decent mid-high range PC, it's comparatively cheap to all the other hardware you'll be buying
Soundcard: EVGA NU AUDIO Pro 7.1. (just released and shipping)
Incredible quality and sound for gaming!
Commodore 64 had a built-in sound chip, the SID, since 1982.
Hi. My name is _Sam,_ the Software Automatic Mouth, for your _Commodore 64_ computer! I could _always_ do *lots* of _amazing things!_
To be fair, the SID was a synthesizer, whereas the Sound Blaster could also process sampled audio... like the Paula chip on the Commodore Amiga.
@TheUtuber999 - Actually, the SID chip could do a decent job of playing back samples in the right hands. I once had a program that played a few seconds of "Slow Ride" which was crystal clear. Unfortunately, that's all there was room enough in memory for, which was the main stumbling block to using samples on the C64.
Check out the game Slimey's Mine, which uses sampled speech during the game. :)
@@lurkerrekrul I've played Kennedy Approach, so I know what you're referring to.
Confirmed by Jesus (us -a) at year 0.
Nigel knew his corners. If only a Gremlin could assist us today.
Merry xmas? I love you.
I still think back fondly to my Gravis Ultrasound.
and the gamepads you could get with it
Gus MAX had totally noiseless mic input. I had SB Live afterwards and it was unusable to record anything because of excessive ground noise it added to everything.
"Way back in the '80's"
...well, it's official now ...i'm old.
So like me, you were around before the invention of mobile phones, fax machines, internet, computers still had massive floppy Disc drives and green only coloured screens?
Yeah I'm feeling old now
1990 was 30 years ago. 😕
Rick _ r/hedidthemonstermath
I got my first computer back in the 80's and I was over 30. I'm not old, I'm positively archaic !
First went online via an acoustic coupler (Google it) at 200 Baud (bytes per second) and thought it was really cool just to get one computer to speak to another even though it took five seconds to send a 1k file, and that's if you had a good connection.
I'm still rocking a Sound Blaster!
same (SB Live!, non-5.1, X-Gamer or Platinum)
The original 8 bit one?
I still have a Live 5.1 from 2002, all hail the gameport.
Me too
It sound better
I'd probably still have an SB Live if it weren't for PCIe and the absence of 64-bit kX drivers. The flexibility that the DSP manager allowed in kX was unbelievable.
External sound cards aren't needed at all, but I actually recommend having one... I was surprised at the difference between my PCs built in sound card and a cheap Focusrite interface.
Having a cheaper external processor is great. Isolates a lot of noise from the overall system, adds a lot of features, and allows you to control audio quality a lot more.
My external let's me plug in all sorts of synths and samplers without having to bend down to the pc (nightmare lol). Yeah the sound difference & latency is good :)
@@stevehewitt8791 I have my system set up more as a broadcast station, allowing many analog and digital audio connections for different hardware and software. I have about 70 channels of I/O currently. A very nice thing with external interfaces is that they are pretty easy to scale up if you need more.
@@corvisanatares408 Absolutely. 70 channels - nice! That sounds a headache to manage, I've got llike 10 lol. Now I want an upgrade haha
"Aren't needed" is relative. You don't really need them for listening to music, I couldn't work without one for low-latency recording and mixing music ;)
"as you can tell, the speaker didn't sound that great" I can;t hear it cause you don't shut up for a second. BREATHE, man
I didn't even realise it was playing in the background...
I feel like the volume level on the Bach sound is set too low making it hard to hear above his voice.
This is an editing problem not him lol
Damn wtf is this? Can yOu English?
@@DrHiplop1 It is if he didn't shut up during a demonstration. That was the case
It's amazing how long it took to get sound right and even now I'm dealing with a sound issue with recording Zoom through OBS. The drivers and the way they interact with the microphone and sound for virtual applications such as Zoom can often be a problem.
I was using the onboard audio in my new pc for a while and turned on my old pc that had a sound blaster x-fi and it was noticeably wayyy better sounding than the realtek. I don't have a slot for it on my new pc so I got an external usb Sound Blaster X-Fi HD. Very happy with it.
I'm curious of what motherboard you have ?
Not just the clear audio, x-fi ae5 here for sound enhancements and get banned off more servers ,,
as the old pci-e x-fi fatality was effectively broken due to vista new driver model drivers worked ish but buggy (bsod crashes) and sound enhancements didn't really work any more witch creative didn't want to fix or couldn't without a new sound card hardware (witch was the ae5 and other USB sound cards they sold)
@@Tony-cf7cp I have an HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop 690-0040. Their website calls it the "Sunflower" motherboard.
Here’s a topic for the future: redo this video and actually talk about modern sound cards and DACs
Wait. That would be dangerously close to being informative and entertaining. Can't have that.
honestly i just want a cheap replacement sound card for my mother board (got fried up) that is compatible with windows 10... every thing is so damn expensive if you're not using vista or windows xp
@@MjkL1337 Get a Creative PCIe sound card.
I would be surprised if anyone at LTT is qualified to talk about DACs/ADCs or (especially) the entire sound card. I'd hazard a guess that maybe 1% of the people watching this video understand what harmonic distortion actually is.
@@H-77 Then they should not even make this video, much less the one I talked about them making.
I've been building gaming machines for over 20 years, and I currently have a SoundBlaster SBX Pro sound card in my gaming rig because it sounds FAR better than ANY on-board audio solution, hands down.
I starting using an external DAC (Audioengine D1) on my gaming rig a couple of years ago. It's one of those things that definitely makes the gaming experience richer, especially in games with more subtle sound design, though decent speakers are needed to take advantage of this. It is is of course also great for music and movies but - like trying to go back to 1080p after gaming in 1440p - I really noticed the difference when returning to using the on board sound on the motherboard ... as I did when I was away from home for a while and using someone else's computer. Sound just seemed flat and thin compared to what I was used to and I kept turned up the volume looking for more (which didn't help in the least :) ).
I remember when for every single game I had to check and set up the ADR 240 IRQ 5 DMA 1 values...
Welcome to Hell.
I remember when it was 220/7/1....depending on how you configured the jumpers on the card.
Yep, almost universally Address 220, IRQ 5 or 7 and DMA 1.
ah you must mean the joystick port card
In the days prior to ATAPI CD-ROM, sound cards were also the most common way of attaching a CD-ROM over the Panasonic / MKE / SLCD interface.
Joystick port? I believe you mean MIDI port.
@@jercos It was game/midi port.
I still use soundcard only for it's gameport for my old steering wheel&pedals, still works in w10 even tho the wheel is made in 1997
@@NuffMan_ Wait, what? A wheel from 97'? Whats that i'm curios
@@R3ddyyg it's an old thrustmaster.. idk about the model number
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
IRQ 5, DMA 1. Ms Dos
IRQ 7 is a better choice for a Sound Blaster under DOS as some games are hard-coded to expect it.
I stumbled across my Sound Blaster card in storage and it gave me a hearty lol. In fact its same one you show at 2:00.
I always assumed that people who even cared about internal sound cards back in the day, just moved to external DAC/AMP setups.
99.9% did.i think this video goes to younger people to know about the bits and bytes around sound on a Pc.
Cost still favors internal cards in the sub $200 dollar range. An AE-5 will compete with a Schitt stack (IMHO sounds better) and cost quite a bit less.
DAC+AMP is not a solution, it is only better than the alternative, we need companies to bring back Hardware Accelerated Audio, I have enough of this shit with digital audio
My Sound Blaster ZxR has seen 4 generations of GPUs so far. It is currently plugged next to my 2 RTX 2080s SUPER NVLinked.
Most DACs can't do true 5.1/7.1 surround and the ones that do cost an arm and leg.
I remember hearing that new myth. That onboard audio had become good enough that you don't need one. Dead wrong. The aorus 7 x470 mb was said to have the best onboard audio. A cheap sound card 34$ I ordered 2 months later reminded me what I had been missing.
How hard is it to install a sound card??
@@ItsFrostyRages not hard. Just match the pci port and install the software.
. i kinda have a old motherboard so idk
what sound card did u buy
@@0wner03 creative sound blaster audigy. It takes a bit of tweaking to get your sound preference I should add but it feels so much better.
I still own one of my first ISA sound cards, collecting dust in the attic. Ah, the days of configuring interrupts...
That brings back some memories... I used to play paratrooper as a kid.
In my late teens to early twenties a sound card was a critical component of a gaming machine, especially for games like Dungeon Keeper(which won awards for its awesome in-game sound).
I picked up a EVGA Nu Audio card recently and it absolutely blows away the Crosshair VI Hero's integrated SupremeFX audio (which is considered pretty good for on-board audio). It doesn't have to hide from external DACs either (in the same price range). And I personally don't like having another wall-powered box (bus-powered isn't gonna cut it for high-impedance headphones) sitting on my desk, so I love this card.
Got one myself for audio work. I agree, blows any "realtek" to dust.
Bought one on sale from EVGA. My motherboards SPDIF wasn't processing surround and the Sounblaster software was shite! I was floored by the massive improvement in sound quality and now I finally have actual 5.1!
Wait there is actual difference? I mean I am using a sound card more for a joke since I found a Soundblaster Live (like on the thumbnail) and yeah might as well utilise these pci ports on my MB. But I didn't think that modern sound cards are that much better. Most people just recommended me USB DACs.
@@deathbornderhatkid2997 ,
EVERYTHING in the loop must be great to have great audio. The audio music or video source. The hardware processing the audio. Then the speakers driving the audio. You also need time to adjust since we are prone to dislike changes so better audio might not be obvious until you listen for a while then switch back... but assuming you have a great FLAC audio file then what you can expect from a superior sound card is better sound separation making you hear things you didn't hear before, less muffling possibly, superior bass (low frequency) if your subwoofer can show it off etc... plenty of my music sounds the same to me comparing an inferior to superior sound solution but some of my music sounds way better simply because it's capable of sounding better... also, most music is created intentionally for the limits of EAR BUDS so isn't ideal to show off a good range
@@photonboy999 well put 👍
I made the test between my motherboard (asus rampage) and my xonar essence STX audio. Saying the STX's audio is better is a major understatement... It's literally night and day!
People just accepted bad audio over the years I guess.
You are of course, right. People in the PC world mostly pretend that there is no difference, while never dreaming of saying that about on board video vs dedicated graphics cards. then they all pat each other on the back like peacocking fools.
@@Dennzer1 nah they plug their gaming headset into both and hear no difference, gueas why
@@vnyggi621 Literally no one does that and hears that, unless the "gaming" headset is a piece of trash. Which is the case if they are claiming "no difference". Lol
Enjoy their useless half shield that made for marketing and doesn't block shit!
@@Dennzer1 or you take the "gaming" headset from beyerdynamic^^ (or dt 700) i have mine since around 4 years or so. the first mmx 300 and yes, its even night and day difference betwen x-fi titanium and xonar essence stx II. the mmx 300 is also way over the senheiser pc360 i used befor ;). and even my new x570 mobo cant keep up to the "old" xonar essence stx II^^
Great video. Nicely presented without being too technical.
Need to start a trend of bringing back sound cards to PCs
I've thought about it, but I just don't know if I want to commit a slot to a sound card.
However, I do have 2 machines, so I still am thinking about putting 1 in the 2nd machine and tinkering with it some.
Part of the problem is that most people either aren't aware of sound cards or they are like James and think onboard is fantastic. If only they could hear audio from a sound card...
Also, there are still many new sound cards releasing every other year and they're fantastic.
I'd love to see a Focusrite Scarlett internal PCI sound card version with its accompanying 3.5" front I/O like those old Soundblaster X-FI Platinum.
Pros:
Cleaner look
Uncluttered Desktop
One less cable to worry about
No USB overhead/latency
Cons:
No longer portable
PC cases no longer host 3.5" front I/O
@@lawnfascist4890 For me, there was a free old-style PCI slot just sitting there on my motherboard that was perfect for an Asus Xonar DG (especially since my motherboard has no built-in audio), as few other cards of any kind seemed to support at all. It's too bad the card is no longer in stock, because I would definitely recommend it for budget builds using old Xeon processors on server motherboards.
nah, my wallet doesn't want to pay for more things
When you buy a $200+ soundcard and couple it with $15 speakers
LOL. Thank you ... "On board audio is just as good as sound cards. Trust me.".... Damn idiots.
Well, i use a SBZ with Z337 from logitech... it just sounds A LOT BETTER than the integrated from the Z390-A... so... maybe 15$ speakers will sound better too..
Yeah, comments here seem to be full of such people...
@Predator Ex get a cheap SBZ
@Predator Ex It surely is.. it definitely is ... my Z390-A have crystal sound 3 and my X299-E have supreme FX.. and in both i have a SBZ that i found cheap on second hand market... they improve A LOT the audio quality, even with cheap speakers or headphones... (i use logitech 337 speakers and Logitech g430 headphones...)
James is really good at this. We need more of him!
Still lacks the socks and sandals..
Except for the part here he didn't tell us the differences between quality modern DACs and sound cards like the EVGA Nu Audio.,
@@Dennzer1 why would he anyhow?
@@W0ND3RB0Y1 why make any youtube video?
@@Dennzer1 Out of pure interest or to make money, obviously... But why would he need to compare a DAC with that specific soundcard?
It's pretty much correct, but only the Realtek ALC 1050 chipsets and the latest 1220 are decent enough for 50$+ headphones and speakers, anything more ancient will noticeably degrade output and input audio quality.
The 1220 on my Carbon B450 AC is amazing.
NO interference whatsoever.
@@koenigsforst_ It is if you know what you are doing, I don't take porta pro types seriously.
That depends on load on your system. It was tested quite recently that relatively heavy loads still have big affect on onboard audio quality
I would LOVE to see more videos dedicated to Audio !
i.e. Home Studio AMD build 2020 ;)
There's millions of users waiting for proper videos like these :)
What? Can't hear you!
Atomic Skull Atomic Skull you sure? I believe he did *turrned* on captions
I get it. Because sound.
Captions... I see what you say, literally!
I use a sound card.....just sounds better.
Sounds like a sound solution.
This... My Xonar DX is still way better than the onboard chip of my Z390 board. Not to mention the skips/pops with the onboard....
Now with RGB :-))))))))))))
@@HPijl666 WAY better? I doubt that. I am not able to hear much difference at least.
Why not use an external dac/amp?
I have a soundblaster pci-e card, and I won't dare use my evga onboard audio ever again. phenomenal difference in quality.
Yes. This guy is smoking crack. A dedicated soundcard is better in more than 1 way almost always.
Not to mention the ASIO support.
I have the soundblaster Z, internal PCI-E one.
Dear lord, this guy sounds like he knows nothing.
I agree with you about the difference.
After getting the Sound Blaster AE-5Plus, I could never go back to motherboard audio. Even in idle, the Sound Blaster is better: no hissing or random electrical noise. Now that I have seen the light, I sometimes wish I splurged and got the AE-7. Oh well. the AE-5 is just fine and will last me till the PCIe bus is obsolete.
You have a sound card. Still using a 2.x speaker system? not many 5.x/7.x COMPUTER speakers available.
Audio is just as important as graphics imo, in a lot of games good sound gives you a serious edge! Also enjoying Freddie Mercury and Joplin as if in the room with you is an incredible experience.
Freddie. Much Queen fan.
I've ever played Mystic Square and it was better with FM than my homemade PCM
Ain't gone nowhere iv still got a sound blaster Z
A man of culture I see..
I got the Zxr model with the extra add in card. Then I parted out my computer and sold it a few years back. Nobody wanted the soundcards, so I threw them in my server, which has no speakers. Figured better in something than being tossed around in a box or drawer somewhere.
I can't stand this misinformation that onboards are just as good. They're simply not. Inferior sound quality, crap bass and Dolby/DTS decoding on movies and games is pathetic at best
Sound blaster z + logitech z5500 :)
ZxR gang 🙌
During mid 90's and even late 90's nearly all motherboards didn't integrate a sound card. Good sound cards like those from Creative Soundblaster were expensive And their cost was 1/3 or half of an affordable motherboard. With Windows 95 many things with hardware were simplified but before many games or multimedia programs demanded specific sound cards. After 2000 many really good motherboards had integrated sound card, graphic card, network card or even a wifi card.
During the era of windows 3.11 only the card for the floppy disk was intergraded. For using an IDE hard disk you needed an extra IDE card inside the computer.
In the case of Linux during late 90's only very specific sound cards, printers, modems, network cards were compatible.
With Windows XP everything was even more simple and with the advent of USB every internal card could be replace with an external USB device.
My sound blaster wasn't expensive.
I love my Sound Blaster. it's way better than my onboard audio and it came with a pod that can accept two mics and two headphones and sit anywhere on my desk. I would only build a computer without one if I was on a tight budget.
You had a decent graphics card and poor audio.
I did the same and bought a sound blaster and some creative speakers.
Motherboard get audio chips from these companies so you have the soundcards built in now.
On board audio sounds fine until you connect the Creative AE-9...OMG. 😊👍
True, upgraded to a Sound Blaster Z from the on-board on my Rampage IV Extreme and it's great.
@@arwlyx Noobs, the 90s want their sound card company back... Only the C-Media CMI878X rocks. Asus Xonar Essence STX/STX II for the win!
I didn't cry.
u better cry
U better cry
Fatty u better cry
They became "audio interfaces" and moved upmarket, because what ships with most hardware really is good enough for most people.
Man, Linus killin it with ALL his channels.
The Creative Audigy Platinum was such a coveted card a long time ago, when 4.1 and 5.1 speakers were gaining traction. And audiophile/gaming features such as ASIO and EAX were hot topics at the time. ^ ^
With the KX drivers it was very flexible (10k1, 10k2)
Still in love with my Xonar STX, no way in hell I'm ever going back to onboard
My STX is the only component to survive through 4 PC iterations. Everything eventually gets replaced, and I have found that on-board audio has gotten noticeably better, but you couldn't pay me to go back to using it.
I think Linus was mad that someone didn't mentally prepare him for that listening experience.
Well they did tell him people cried while listening to these monsters.
:)
Actually this was a script I sent in when I applied for a job
"Beep boop son, beeeep boop."
-TF2 Soldier
Rip Rick May
Sound card definitely improved the audio quality in my headphones! AE-5 here, though RGBs are not plugged in haha. Onboard is good enough or if you are using cheapo sound or budget building, but anything good benefits greatly from a superior DAC (be it internal or external).
MMX 300 and Edifier S550 here. My AE-5 is also waaaay better.
RGB such a top reason to buy a soundcard lol
Be honest. People would complain if that card did NOT have RGB. Either way, people will bitch and moan and crack stupid jokes.
@@Dennzer1 aah yes, better sound quality thanks to RGB. Now you can synchronize psychodelic music with epileptic RGB blinking!
It's part of the reason I bought a SoundblasterX Ae-5. The main reason was the sound, but I also needed an internal RGB controller to give the inside of my case some oomf, so the Ae-5 gives me both sound and RGB controller in one package
@@Dennzer1 i dont know if youre trolling or not
@@Ethefake Try to keep up. Nu Audio card has RGB lighting. Some people complain about this. If EVGA decided NOT to include RGB lighting on that product, then other people would complain about that.
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU 2 PEOPLE NOT GETTING?
Awesome video. My first sound card was the Gravis Ultrasound. It was the best sounding card for it's time although not very compatible. It could be a pain to setup if you didn't understand computers during that time period.
Don't even get me started with this. hehe. There were better sounding cards (See Multisound and Sound Canvas). What gave the GUS some elbow room was the onboard RAM and its cheap cost. That cheapness ultimately was its undoing -- that and a marketing arm that bent the truth so far that it alienated them from the very publishers they were courting.
@@RichHeimlich That's true. I almost forget about those. thx for the reminder.
@@sky173 No problem. Neither was exactly inexpensive which is why they often go unmentioned. I'd just hate to see them disappear into oblivion entirely.
Oh man, I am not sure what soundcard my PC had back in the day but by damn was it hard to get old DOS game's sound to work on the Windows 98 rig. Often times it would sound underwater or would crash and make an absolutely awful, distorted, chugging noise; But when I did get the audio to work it was absolutely fantastic, often times much better than a lot of other sound card demos I can find here on youtube.
I wish I knew what sound-card it was because I had never heard Doom music sound as good as it did.
EDIT: I went searching around and found the Roland Sound Canvas SC-155 ua-cam.com/video/0gEkNVq1ct0/v-deo.html
It sounds exactly like how DOOM's music would when I would play it back in the day and would also make a lot of DOS games sound amazing but it was definitely not what was playing my music.
GUS was popular with musicians for Midi and early digital multitrack recording. I used a Roland Sound Canvas Daughter board first on a SB 16+ card and then a Turtle Beach PCI card. The joystick ports connected to Midi boxes.
I'm still using a dedicated sound cards in my desktop
One new area I could see sound cards slip into in is offloading 3D positional audio calculations from the CPU for VR games. Sound cards already did this for a number of games in the past, but for VR games it’d be even more beneficial.
This would be good. A sound card using real time ray tracing to properly distort audio in 3d space. 3d audio has been around for ages but has basically be crap the entire time.
@@billybobjoe198 " A sound card using real time ray tracing to properly distort audio in 3d space. "
That's basically what Aureal did with A3d 2.0 and their Vortex 2 chip. Unfortunately, Creative labs killed them with lawsuits and buried the technology.
I remember getting a Yamaha sound card because it had the Yamaha synth sounds inside.
'Dont think progress got neglected!
After all you can get new sounds cards with..RGB.'
😂😂😂
I recently bought a Soundblaster AE-5 and it has definitely been worth it. The DAC in the card allows me to control the audio so that I can actually hear videos at a listenable volume. I wasn't getting that with integrated. Gaming is great with it too. On board is great for a really basic setup, but if you really want to be able to hear whats going on get either an external dac or a card.
"a Far Cry" (3:05) -- Yeah, I had to install a sound card to play Far Cry 3 when it came out because the sound would stutter and freeze my PC.
Where did sound cards go?
- To the computers of people who actually care about high quality audio.
Most people that want good audio use external DACs and amps not sound cards
Yep. I require a ASIO compatible card to use in Adobe Audition for live effects.
@@vlc-cosplayer I see that there is a smug person who thinks s/he knows how sampling frequency works.
Sampling frequency is NOT "hearing frequency". It is there to have a range within which we basically try to minimize errors and distortions. So, actually, yes, sampling frequency beyond 22 kHz DOES matter, in fact, do you think that the standard musical CDs would have sampling frequency of 44 kHz if it was as unnecessary as you suggest? If you can't hear a difference between 22 and 44 kHz sampling then I have bad news for you... (and yes, beyond 44 the difference is smaller but it's still there, if you actually bother to have good headphones).
@@vlc-cosplayer Mathematically impossible for there to be a difference. FLAC is basically a WAV with live ZIP/RAR/7Z type compression.
i use a soundcard for the RCA output (monitor speakers)
When you DO music/sound, you care about ASIO support, SNR, minimal stable latency and sometimes about quality of inputs. Something that onboard audio still struggles at.
If you want to use the audio input as a measurement tool, the onboard audio is even more useless.
Yes Realtek chips have horrific latency with Asio
I tried once producing audio without my sound card, it was a hot mess.
"Where Did SOUND CARDS Go?" no where, they've never went away, they're still here and still great.
I used to buy Creative Sound Blaster from the 16 or Pro version (can't remember exactly). It's nice to see somebody actually remembering when how and why things happened. After the Vista phase I though I would never need a new card, my last was SB Live!, but the motherboard slots were a hassle so I threw it away. After a long time I bought Fostex T50RP headphones and found out that I couldn't run them with onboard Realtek. I bought Asus STRIX SOAR PCI Express 7.1 which saved me hundreds of dollars for external amp and as a bonus I no longer heard the annoying ever present noise. It also helped - A LOT - with my Tiamat 7.1 sound quality. Conclusion: I think sound cards are not needed for people that are happy with what they have, however, once you have a pair of better headphones, especially with higher impendence, or you are annoyed by ever present the static noise, I suggest you buy a well-shielded sound card. It does make a difference and in the overall cost of the computer you are running, it's probably a negligible expense.
“Dont think their development is totally neglected, After all you can get them with RGB” HAHAHA
I run 2 sound cards in SLI.
System can play any game at max volume.
6 months later and I'm watching this in my kitchen at 11 pm eating bread with chocolate, almost spitting it all out on the last one in the end
4:05 - Enthusiasts... and broadcasters. I'm an online radio broadcaster, and I still need a separate sound card (Creative Audigy Rx) for my broadcast setup to work properly.
4:25 Linus looks like a cyberman... XD
When I first saw soundcard in my dad's old PC I was like "WTH is that?" And my dad explained that before integrated audio there was separate sound cards...
THANK YOU
that you summarized that.
I could have spent 3 hours just talking about the insane driver problems
I picked up a used business class HP 6305-- the only audio out is a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a similar output on the rear. Apparently so the speakers in your monitor have something to plug into; except of course, the monitor doesn't have speakers anymore. So I ordered a sound card just to be able to plug in surround sound without more clutter on the desk.
0:46 "this means that you would be limited to just beeps and boobs"
*I see this as an absolute win*
Beeps can go, but please don't make the boobs go!
Aw, they're still around for people who actually care about sound.
I had interference issues with my onboard audio I couldn't solve so I got an EVGA nu audio. It solved my problem and it sounds great! I have pretty good speakers on my desk along with a set of Shure SE846 IEMs, and they sound INCREDIBLE through my PC now. Absolutely silent sound floor, powerful bass, super clear highs, the works. External DAC/amps certainly can be good too, but I like EVGA's customer support and I'm trying to keep clutter down.
If you don't have nice speakers or good headphones, you probably won't notice an upgrade, but if you do, or if you experience interference, you owe it to yourself to get an upgrade.
That dead soundfloor is super nice. I've had a xonar dx for a few years and it still sounds better than the rampage vi extremes onboard audio.
Too bad the Nu Audio doesn't support 5.1 analog. I would have bought one if it did.
Back in the day Lexmark had a print driver that included a sound driver that let you use the on-board 'beep, boop' speaker as a regular sound speaker... It sounded terrible but it worked, was awesome on my 386 ;)
Well, it did happen like that. My old PC did have an soundcard Xonar Essence STX II but my new computer does not have any soundcard at all. I use external DAC/Headphone amp so I can have balanced xlr output for headphones.
Well, if I didn't have an external DAC, I would definitely turn to a sound card...
The EVGA Nu Audio is better than any DAC at the same price.
@@Dennzer1 Really? I always thought that the motherboard audio was fine, never noticed anything. But everyone in the comments is saying how sound cards or external dacs make the sound on the computer soooo much better.... now I'm starting to question if my motherboard sound is good enough or not
@@HearMeLearn lol. Comparison is the thief of joy. If your system is good enough that you never noticed it organically and only thought about it just now, then I'd recommend you stick with your current system..
That said, if you have money burning a hole in your pocket 1. Hey, I'm right here and 2. You'll probably still notice an improvement if you DO end up upgrading your sound system.
@@Dennzer1 Doubtful. Not to mention it's really weird in my opinion to get a sound card for a price of a decent DAC...
@@HearMeLearn It all depends on what you are listening to the sound on. You need at least some $100+ headphones to start picking up the difference (with the speakers it's usually more expensive).
As an audio engineer, I'd recommend just getting an audio interface if you need better audio than your motherboard can provide you, especially if you plan on doing any sort of recording, because sound cards are not designed with professional audio applications in mind.
It sucks that Firewire isn't really a thing anymore on computers... that was perfect for Audio interfaces. But then again since USB 3.0 connections now don't need to pass through the CPU anymore (unlike USB 1.1 and USB 2.0) and also allows higher transfer rates, it should be perfect for modern Audio interfaces. Especially since it can be powered through the same connection anyway.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 The crappiest part is that there are still a lot of very good firewire interfaces around that are being made obsolete because of the decision that "firewire isn't necessary".
@@H-77 You can still use firewire in modern computers. I myself still run a bunch of M-Audio gear through a pcie firewire card.
Edit: I paid £5 for a used M-Audio firewire solo, much cheaper than buying something like a scarlet 212, even if you factor in buying a firewire card.
@@H-77 true. That's why i make sure i still have firewire access on most of my computers. Especially my Thinkpads where a simple 6 pin firewire Cardbus addon helps, if there's only 4 pin firewire or no firewire at all.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I still use firewire with a PCIe Firewire card. Works great. good Latency, and no shared bus with dedicated PCIe lanes.
4:35 "After all, some have RGB." 😆
Sounds like some sound development.
I have sound cards (internal as well as external) but I use each card to drive a different sound. It's music producing spec PC but it's useful for far more especially with VoiceMeeter software or similar. You can use one card for communications and another for gaming for example.
Onboard audio is still, by enlarge, crap. The noise floor is unacceptably high, it doesn't support particularly high sample rates, connector reliability is average at best and they don't support balanced (differential) inputs and outputs. Additionally, the line output on many sound cards is not hot enough to drive some low-sensitivity power amplifiers to full power.
PCIe based sound cards can be excellent. The cards made by Lynx and RME are SOTA and will sound excellent with nearly invisible noise floors. The reason external DACs are recommended is that most companies making PCIe sound cards for under $500 have succumbed to consumer demands and are largely producing crap.
A lot of sound cards have royally botched the analog section, which is the section that actually makes an audible difference.
Exactly how do you need more then 196kHz sampling rate (especially for audio playback)? Beyond 44.1kHz lossless audio human ears can't distinguish a difference at all, heck any blind test shows 320kbps MP3 (an ancient format I might add) to lossless is an almost impossible process for the average person without a considerable amount of guessing.
For recording & processing audio an external solution is probably necessary yes, but audio playback. Nope, unless your motherboard equals about 1% of the total price on your whole build which in that case you bought garbage.
Mark Jacobs I can hear the difference in audio quality between my surface 4 pro and the ASU’s xonar u2 plugged into it which I use when docked. When I’m djing my denon mc7000 is like night and day in a track for track comparison at any bitrate. At the end of the day the dacs in both devices are far superior to the cheap and basic Realtek devices and are physically separate to the motherboard and not subjected to em interference which I saw when testing with a doctor of electronics on his scope.
@@MLWJ1993 Right, because RME makes such crap that the onboard is better. RME, for better mp3 production.
by enlarge lol
By *and* large
I use a soundcard, there’s so huge difference from onboard.
av always said people just flat out don't care or just to deaf to even notice the difference
same here, even budget 30usd one i had and gave to my friend was better at producing sound than my onboard one on mid/high end mobo from its time while both soundcard and mobo are from same company
I do not think so. That was then now I cant hear any difference. And I use to use MOTU 2408
AHS Society experiencies may vary, I use hi end creative sound cards for more than 2 decades, I can hear a difference. Even with they shit driver.
My xonar STX II with a 4 year old drive sounds better than my realtec x470 board
I used to have an old Sound Blaster CT4830, then switched to an Asus Xonar DX. I enjoyed both of them. Then, I switched to USB DAC+AMP combo. It is a better choice for me and provides decent sound quality. For PC, I cannot imagine that you use or you need more than stereo. Maybe a 2.1, but definitely not a 5.1 or 7.1.
i use one. they are great. I go optical out directly into an amp for my stereo. perfect
Onboard sound audio is at best a good enough solution for most users. For headphone users with decent cans, a sound card or USB DAC is still a must.
Your version of decent is probably very different of the average user's version of decent.
Elaborate
My 2002 Audigy 2 still sounds way better than any modern motherboard i tried.
That is what I have and it better than the on-board audio.
Exact same experience here, but I'm just using my monitor's DACs through DisplayPort for the PC at the moment. Sounds quite good (through external speakers connected to the monitor), and most importantly, video and audio get switched together, since I have multiple things hooked up to the monitor.
Imgema these days just run a dedicated amp with some studio monitors.
Just buy a cheap amp and that's it.
my auzentech prelude was phenomenal way back. too fuckin bad the company went sideways and i cant get it working properly on win10.
Ah, fond memories of my old Soundblaster 16 card. I was rocking a Cyrix 486 DLC-40, 4 megabytes of RAM, and a Diamond Stealth video card back then. Wolfenstein and Doom ran great lol. I had a 120 megabyte hard drive and that was considered high capacity haha.
I have a xonar DGX i picked up for 30 bucks, it's cheap but it does improve quality and mostly it gives you equaliser options not usually available to you and you can really fine tune how your headsets sounds.
Still on a Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty since 2006. Like the virtualized headphone surround sound.
I have that one, the Fatal1ty Champion. The only downside is the front panel module doesn't fit my case properly and the occasional static.
PS: X-Fi Titanium (PCIe) Fatal1ty Champion
Gwynbleidd If it aint broke dont fix it.
SAME!!! X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Edition since 2006. I bought a motherboard that still equips old PCI slots just to be able to keep using it. Still rocking hard since then. And that frontal I/O is still a blessing.
Yep the virtualized headphones and more importantly creative positioning sound control (elevation control) so it turns 5.1 audio into stereo pinpoint positioning audio so you can very accurately work out where noises come from from any direction as well as above and below ( if you think that Dead Silence Perk in Call of Duty works think again, well if your walking normally/running any way) I used to get banned quite often on call of duty 4 old modern Warfare (so I used to start recording /record my games when I seen someone going into spctacte so I can get unbanned from my own recording when I submit it)
Same card, ditched the Champion front panels for new case. I need it for ASIO and the lovely soundfonts for playing MIDI controllers. Don't think onboard can come close to that yet.
Still rocking a sound blaster titanium HD.
This thing sounds so much cleaner than my onboard Asus maximus sound.
I don't think i will let go of it until they keep supporting the software.
🤘🤘
Same here. Years old XFi Titanium HD still bringing it. I was looking for a replacement a few days ago, but now I am not so sure there IS one that'd justify a $150-200 USD investment. So, external? Well, I really wanted to like the SoundblasterX G6 over the AE-5, but I hate that it only has a single output (I need analog out for music and toslink for multichannel games/movies! bah). Schiit stuff looks amazing but I'd be losing the EAX/gaming positioning (is that still relevant?). I guess I'll just keep this one until it dies too.
@@efrainl I had Titanium HD as well, but Creative support really suck. Anyway I got AE5 for $50, so I'm rolling with that now. Drivers are still crappy, but at least they somewhat works.
@@theEskalaator i had no issues with my drivers. They updated them last year. I was shocked to find an update. So iam happy for now. I use it with hyperx alpha now.
I am also still rocking one, it's now in it's 3rd PC. It sounds fantastic and last year when windows broke the drivers I found out just how much of a step down my onboard audio really is. I'm glad Creative fixed them, even if it is EOL now and won't be getting any new drivers if windows breaks them again.
@@OmerTheGreatOne Sorry it was only "X-Fi Titanium", no HD. It kinda worked, but their software was acting up since it was made for W7
I have always used an PCI-e soundcard on all my builds since 2003 or so. I think that people who know better still buy them and enjoy the quality they produce.
I like having my external DAC. It's convenient too and drives my headphones quite well.