why get a soundcard?

[EricB]

The only people defending sound cards vs integrated sound are people that work in the sound business and pay over a grand for their computer speakers. My onboard sound is perfectly fine for gaming on my 5.1 sound system.

I'm neither.

now watch this. my statement is truer than yours

the people defending the onboard sound are young (they listen to post 2000 music which ain't nothing but a bunch screaming bs. that's talking about rap and rock. they really don't have an ear for music) and or they never had an outboard sound card

I dare somebody to play the 1812 overture spectacular dts dvd (or even the regular song) through both cards and then say the sound alike.

you will hear a shipload (and I don't mean ship) of noise through the onboard card during the quiet scenes

 

[veedubfreak]

I'm neither.

now watch this. my state is truer than yours

the people defending the onboard sound are young (they listen to post 2000 music which ain't nothing but a bunch screaming bs. that's talking about rap and rock. they really don't have an ear for music) and or they never had an outboard sound card

I dare somebody to play the 1812 overture spectacular dts dvd (or even the regular song) through both card and then say the sound alike.

you will hear a shipload (and I don't mean ship) of noise through the onboard card

I'm probably older than you and have had both onboard and sound cards. I use my computer for nothing but games, so the difference between current onboard 8 channel sound and a sound card dont make any difference to me. Currently i have my media pc hooked up to the onboard sound and it is clearear than my old dvd player. so take that for what it is.

 

[EricB]

I'm probably older than you and have had both onboard and sound cards. I use my computer for nothing but games, so the difference between current onboard 8 channel sound and a sound card dont make any difference to me. Currently i have my media pc hooked up to the onboard sound and it is clearear than my old dvd player. so take that for what it is.

yeah. you are either

1.lying
2.clueless

I'm not stating this to start a flame. I'm just stating the truth

I'm 37. I've been into audio since I was 7. I was designing enclosures at 14.

I've got an rta oscilloscope and a flat mike that I can prove you wrong with. I got a golden ear to do the same with. but I don't really need that. I can pm you the 1812 overture song and let you decide for yourself. this is the perfect song to prove bad listeners wrong with, as it has highly dynamic material in it and noise will show up everywhere in an inferior system

let me tell you something. bad listeners to music, they really don't realize that they at bad listeners. but bad listener are easy to spot. they set an eq with a smile. they turn the bass and treble knobs all the way up. they will kick in the 12 db of bass boost at 45 hertz if they got it. they think that 12 db boost is 20 hz. the list goes on and on.

you really don't know that the more you post to this, the more you embarrass yourself about your knowledge of audio.

show me one 24 bit onboard sound card. better yet, show me a true 16 bit one. you will never find an onboard card with true 16 bit specification, yet you claim that they sound the same as a 24 bit card.

now that's funny

 

[NosBoost300]

man, i wanna hear what you're listening to!

 

[Apokalipse]

Both of my motherboards have 7.1 sound built in, and sound perfectly fine. Anyone who claims they can hear a difference is still holding on to the days of motherboards having absolutly horrible built in sound.

my K9A2 platinum has, as far as onboard sound cards go, a pretty descent one. It's a Realtek HD audio chip.
The sound from it is not bad, but it could be a lot better.

There is a big difference between it, and my modified X-Fi (added LME49720 and LM4562 OpAmps, and a better power capacitor)

Comparatively, the onboard sound is muddy, and lacks finer detail. Noise and distortion is much, much lower on my X-Fi.
That, and the X-Fi is much better at positioning sounds in surround sound

 

[atomic tofu]

I'm sure some of you have a gigabyte...before or after I bought my intel975xbx I read this:
Six 975X Enthusiast Motherboards for Today and Tomorrow | Tom's Hardware

The intel performed very well. Notice the Gigabyte board. It has a built in Audigy 2 SE. I still am very curious if all the claims they can tell a difference holds true if we hold a listening party between that and:
Audigy SE - Upgrade from Basic Motherboard Audio to Outstanding Music, Movie and Game Sound

Yesterday after making my post I was listening to:
Alone Again - Gilbert Osullivan
Just like a Pill - Pink
Glycerine - Bush
Don't Go Away - Oasis
Special - Garbage
Look What You've Done - Jet
Kiss Me - Sixpence None the Richer
Under the Iron Sea - Keane (whole album)

My onboard audio rocks. It would make all the claimants to superhuman hearing abilities fail at the discerning test.

We could use my system, maybe another system using the intel975xbx and an add on, and also use my Cambridge Soundworks 88cd (a creative company now)...I don't use Logitech speakers. I just use 2 little speakers, they aren't well known, but they have wood enclosures. I'd imagine my audio would sound that much better if I used more expensive and modern speakers, with a subwoofer.

Cambridge SoundWorks Model 88 CD Radio reviews - CNET Reviews

This is the only stuff that will actually make a difference:
vacuum tube computer audio cards
Warming PC sound with vacuum tubes | CNET News.com

Go have some fun listening to these:
Vacuum Tube Sound Samples

I use a Friends episode and real life as reference. Friends: Friends Episode Guide -- All Plot Summaries on One Page - where Ross makes mention of his "music" and he has various sound effects rigged on his keyboard. He believes it is music he is playing, but is doing nothing more than hitting keys. Real life - I have a brother in law who believes the same thing. He buys a giant 8 foot tall speaker, buys Macs because he thinks he should, and thinks he's a musician. But he can't actually play the keyboard, and thinks stringing together premade tracks from some software app makes him an artist/musician.

I am one to assume there are many people like the above out there like Ross, Phoebe and my bro in law. Totally clueless, but firmly believe such things. lol

 

[EricB]

I am one to assume there are many people like the above out there like Ross, Phoebe and my bro in law. Totally clueless, but firmly believe such things. lol

you really don't know how right you are.

you just don't realize that a person with bad listening habits, he will always have bad listening habits unless he has a professional audio person show him how bad his listening is and then he accept that and then he has to try to learn what good hearing is. he doesn't just wake up with good listening habits

you don't just wake up with a golden ear. it takes years of listening for the right stuff. like me, crysalis, 003, molsen and maybe ricanflow have.

I've gotten into an argument with some rappers once. bigg jigg the guy from philly who had won all of those 106 and park rap contests on BET. he produce a cd with my homie dj wise. he had the eq on with all the bands boost in the songs. they got mad at me. they wouldn't speak to me for a week or so. once they calmed down, I went to their studio and set everything right for them. now when they put the 2nd version of the cd out, everybody told them that the 2nd cd sounded way better than the first

I once told another rapper (not a famous one, just a local guy), that he had too much bass boost at 60hz. they were mad at me at first. I show him how to make the same note extend down flatly down to 20hz without that boost. it gave them same hard hitting sound without the buzzing nerve racking distortion of the former songs.

now peep this. I don't care how good you think your hearing is, you would never pick up on anything like these incidents

before you claim to have golden ears, go somewhere and do a double blind ABX test so you can stop disillusioning yourself while you are thinking that your ears are going as ours. our ear got years of training behind them.

you are acting like the guy that had the helicopter drop him off at the top of the mountain whose mad because he didn't get the trophy that the other guys who actually climbed the mountain got

 

[NosBoost300]

hrmm, very interesting, i hope one day i get me some golden ears, i definitely can tell huge difference between many forms of audio.. i attend plenty of parties and always talk about how good/bad the audio is there, but no one else really seems to hear it...

i wanna hear these tests you speak of ericb, i tihnk i'll look em up when i get home

 

[EricB]

hrmm, very interesting, i hope one day i get me some golden ears, i definitely can tell huge difference between many forms of audio.. i attend plenty of parties and always talk about how good/bad the audio is there, but no one else really seems to hear it...

i wanna hear these tests you speak of ericb, i tihnk i'll look em up when i get home

here is a good song to start with

1812 Overture

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Do you experience this incredible difference listening to your average 128 to 256 kbps MP3 file? Because that is what most people listen to, usually on iPods, which probably don't have X-Fi's in them. If that's good enough for most people, then only people like you, who have a strong ear for quality, need better than integrated sound.

I think that playing lossless audio over the two types may make a more noticeable difference, but what about average audio files?