sound card vs realtek alc1150

[creator89]

I do care about the audio and im thinking about buying a sound card to improve my audio quality. My budget is around £50. Would that make a difference?. I use microlab solo7c for speakers.

 

[Vexillarius]

The ALC1150 will probably outperform any dedicated card you can buy for 50 pounds. Onboard audio is making leaps and bounds lately.

 

[creator89]

My speakers sound great, ive tried few cds and one bluray and im impressed but i was just wondering

 

[creator89]

Im just listening to "Judas priest - Nostradamus" album on my microlab 7c speakers and it does sound great. But is there any way i could squeeze more out of them? I mean by buying a sound card? Forget the budget, i could go all the way if card could offer much better performance than the realtek 1150.
Microlab 7c is 2.0 system.

 

[4Ryan6]

If you only have a 2.0 speaker system you do not need a discrete soundcard.

Discrete soundcards really shine when they're pumping sound to 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound speaker systems, and especially for environmental 3D positional gaming like EAX by Creative, but for a simple stereo output just increase your speaker volume if you need more sound.

However if you feel your onboard audio is letting you down for stereo music playback, there are professional grad stereo dedicated discrete soundcards and there are no better out there than M-Audio for that.

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php

I have 2 M-Audio cards each in a separate computer the main machine and a backup machine for my stereo DJ system.

I run a Creative Sound Blaster Z 5.1 gaming soundcard for my main gaming PC which supplies audio signal to a 500w 5.1 surround speaker system.

So the sound output needs to fit the speaker system it is intended to feed and discrete is only needed if your onboard sound is just flat out falling short.

 

[Vexillarius]

You'd probably need to shell out quite a bit of money for a new speaker set as well as a soundcard to hear any difference.
Just buying a good new speaker set will improve things on its own too.

 

[Rationale]

Tbh, I just switched from an Asus Xonar DG to the lower quality Realtek AlC 887, and I didn't hear a difference. I don't have bad speakers either; Creative T20.

 

[Vexillarius]

That's the thing, most somewhat recent onboard audio will do perfectly fine for almost everyone. It only starts to really matter if your an audiophile with a big expensive speaker set or if you're an audio producer or something.
When it comes to onboard audio ALC1150 is top of the line too.

 

[creator89]

Thanks guys. Im really happy with my speakers, new pc and the whole sound of my music. Im just trying to improve my new build in every possible way. Dont get me wrong, realtek1150 sounds great. Thanks for your replies and if you say o dont need anything then let it be. Thanks again!

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but if you've $50 - $100 you're willing to drop on a sound card, why not drop it on a digital receiver instead, and bypass the DAC inside the computer altogether. Once you go digital, whether you're using a high end sound card or on-board is irrelevant as the receiver does all the conversion to analog, and is likely to be leaps and bounds better than most sound cards for the money, plus has the added benefit of a decent amplifier to run multi-speaker setups.

 

[podonnell]

@bigpinkdragon

Funny I just stumbled on this thread from a google search soon after you revived it.

I have a question about your comment -- In my setup, I have a Yamaha Receiver that technically is getting fed by an HDMI cable and processes my audio there through 7.1 Polk speakers... from this, my soundcard really is never touched, right?

However, I have a set of headphones that are plugged in to where my sound card is and I assume that is where a soundcard choice would make a difference.

Does that all sound right?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

In the early days of HDMI implementation, a pass-through from the sound card to the video card was necessary if you wanted a PC to output it's audio over HDMI. However, having external devices source content for playback of protected content, such as Blu-ray movies is a no-no, so the hardware source for protected audio is now built into graphics devices, entirely bypassing any other sound equipment you may have in the computer. The sound card simply isn't used.

Since your computer has both a dedicated sound source for audio sent via HDMI to your receiver, and also a sound card, you actually have two separate sound devices that Windows has to choose from. Plugging headphones into your sound card is not going to duplicate the sound coming from your HDMI just as the HDMI will not be reproducing the sounds coming out of any headphone port you may be plugged into. If possible, I would recommend sourcing your headphone from your receiver.

Your soundcard is going to be performing the digital to analog conversion for any headphones plugged into an analog output, so yes, the quality of sound card will directly affect the final quality of your results. Whether people will hear the difference between expensive equipment and on-board is very subjective, and may rely as much on the cans being used as the sound card, and I suspect that even if on-board was capable of perfect audio reproduction, sound cards would be considered superior due to their coloring of sound and peoples' bias.