Greetings all. I’ve been building my own PCs for a while. I haven’t bothered to add separate sound cards to the machines since they upgraded the quality of the sound processors on the mother boards I’ve used. Other than specialized audio applications, is there any reason to get a separate sound card these days?
Unless you’re a gamer or do professional sound work, not really.
I have one because I use the integrated sound on my mobo for gaming and a separate one to drive my stereo for movies and music and such (so I don’t have to switch the connections back and forth manually)*.
For the rest of the population, no, not important at all.
- Yeah, I’m that lazy.
Another reason might be if the PC is to be used as a home media centre - I bet the off-the-shelf media centre PCs do use onboard sound though, but I’m not sure if it’s typically beefed up or additionally shielded in those cases.
The main reason to use a separate sound card is when you explicitly need connections of a type that aren’t offered on the onboard ones, such as 6 channel jacks, or digital in/out or some such.
Many thanks. I used separate cards in my early machines, but no longer do so. I just built a gaming machine for my son, and I was wondering if I should drop a separate sound card into it. I’ll save a few $$ and make do with the on-board sound.
You can always add one at a later date. I don’t think you’ll need to - the weakest point in most home PC sound setups is the speakers.
In the past, I’ve always used an audio card. When I built my current machine, I found a motherboard with onboard 5-1 sound and network connection and decided to give it a try. I really liked the idea of having just one card, the video, in the whole system. All that lovely open space for air flow. It’s a gaming machine and can put out a lot of heat.
It worked great for about 2 years, then then network connection failed, and I installed a network card. Last month, the left-front speaker connection failed, and I had to install an audio card. I’m not really out anything, but it’s slightly annoying that I ended up installing cards anyway.
My most recent motherboard has onboard sound. I tried it for a while but the quality really sucked. And it wanted to echo all the time. I upgraded to an Audigy and music sounds much better.