My motherboard recently died, and I had to buy a replacement. It’s hard to find a new motherboard for a six-year-old CPU, but I found one that had been in storage. Unfortunately, its sound drivers do not play well with WIN10. I tried the Win10 drivers from the motherboard’s site and they failed. I even tried the drivers from the RealTek site, but they’re not stable.
Win10 installed drivers on it’s own, but it doesn’t sound great. Some distortion in games, etc. Now I’m thinking of a separate sound solution. Doesn’t have to be THAT good, and after having to replace my power supply and motherboard, it needs to be on the inexpensive side. Cheap, to be blunt. If it at least matches most motherboard sound output, I’m happy.
I’ve never used a USB sound dongle. The idea’s kind of weird to me. Anyone have any thoughts on the relative merits of USB vs PCI-E? Any suggestions for a particular sound device of either type?
I have no experience with USB audio adapters in particular but I do have experience with USB for many other types of adapter.
I say go with USB adapters. Plug and play. No need to open up your case, mess with brackets and connectors, risk breaking something etc. USB adapters are incredibly easy to use and they normally work perfectly. Plug into an USB port on the back of the motherboard and use like a native audio connection. Windows nowadays usually has the drivers for these kinds of gadgets built in, basic but also very stable (I expect).
With quick googling I found found e.g. this or this on Amazon, is that what you’re looking for? Like I said I have no experience with these particular gadgets but I would expect these to work perfectly and for that price you can hardly go wrong. (Look at the Amazon reviews, that cheaper one has some bad ones.)
It doesn’t really matter how it connects; with a cheap sound card the CPU is doing all of the work anyway. The sound card is little more than a D/A converter. USB 2.0 is more than fast enough to transport audio.
USB audio is a pretty ubiquitous beast. There are a host of issues if you get into the minutiae, and worry about the best possible sound. But for the most part you can get very acceptable sound with even very cheap devices. You should never get discernible distortion with even the cheapest. That suggests a fundamental problem.
You can pay any amount of money. You don’t always get the value you pay for.
For music listening with headphones there is a massive market for external USB DAC/amps. Even the relatively cheap ones are a revelation versus off the motherboard sound.
I hadn’t thought about it for several years but several years ago my sound card went kerflooey and I made a late night run to Walmart since it was the only place open and I wanted to keep playing a game … bought a cheap (maybe 10 bucks or so) USB sound adapter and plugged it in … haven’t thought about it for years.
What’s the intended purpose and how finicky are you about the S/N levels, do you want digital or optical out, EQ? So many options which results in a lot of choices.
Looking around, avoid the cheap sub $10 ones as they are built poorly and some even seem to be missing components like coupling capacitors, etc. Seems the safe threshold is $20 or greater for USB devices getting decent, and you can go into the several hundreds.
One advantage of a USB device is that if you replace the computer at some point, you can reuse the USB device and how it’s setup. Most are also supported by both OSX and Win10 which is another bonus.
Does your mobo have a digital out, COAX or TOSLINK?
Thanks everyone. Sorry for the lack of info - I only use a $50 set of headphones for music, and a 2.1 set of speakers that cost about $150 12 years ago. I have no digital equipment, just analog.
B is like 6 years older than A, but my friend claim B is better with positional audio. I generally trust his opinion on computers(with good reason), but I wonder about buying 2006 technology vs 2013 tech.
I can get both for about the same price (~$20). Also, B is used, A is new, but not in retail packaging.
He’s right about positional audio. I’ve yet to find a better HRTF tech that is as good as CMSS-3D, though the newer SBX Pro isn’t too bad either. Especially when simulating 7.1 channels (though the card you are linking to only supports 5.1). My only concern is the quality of the DAC and amp on the small usb one vs the card. I’m not familiar with the X-Mod.
If you can track down some reviews on it and see what they say about the amp you might be ok going that way.
I recently had to remove my Soundblaster Z - which I loved, since I switched to a mini-ITX mobo. Went with the SoundblasterX G5 external DAC/AMP/DSP which is SBX Pro 7.1 virtual surround and otherwise excellent sound quality, but it was my birthday so I had extra money to burn, and I’m a big audiophile when it comes to gaming, so I needed something good to drive my Sennheiser headset. I’m guessing it’s probably more than you would want to spend.
Alternatively I can give you a good deal on my old Z!
Thanks for the help. My friend usually knows what he’s talking about, but he didn’t quite explain that the CMSS-3D was the difference-maker. Guess I’ll go with his suggestion. I appreciate the info.
If your system has PCI-e slots, presumably you have a PCI-e video card.
Does the video card itself have a sound card built in? Almost all AMD and nVidia cards do. If the video card has an HDMI out, it certainly does.
Of course, you’d have to have a monitor with speakers, or with an audio out jack, to hear the sound.
I use the stereo out jack on my Dell monitor to plug in my speakers, and just use my graphics card’s sound function. Works fine with my current nVidia and my old AMD.
Thanks everyone. I went ahead and picked up the USB sound ‘card’ that my friend recommended. Never used a USB sound device, but if I’m making a mistake, at least it will be a new one. It’s weird to be buying 2006-era sound tech when I could pick up something six or more years newer for about the same price, but I read up on it. Folks in hi-fi forums didn’t like it, but they pick apart even high-end equipment, so I doubt what they DO like would have been realistic for me. I read a couple of places that this had some very good positional audio, in addition to Kinthalis’ recommendation above, so I went with it.
Oh well. Money’s tight, but for $20, if it works at all, I’m sure it’ll get me by until I can get something different.
It’s weird to be buying 2006-era sound tech when I could pick up something six or more years newer for about the same price, but I read up on it. Folks in hi-fi forums didn’t like it, but they pick apart even high-end equipment, so I doubt what they DO like would have been realistic for me. I read a couple of places that this had some very good positional audio, in addition to Kinthalis’ recommendation above, so I went with it.