Sound--What you hear can be better.

**Kar** Tue Jul 14, 2009 8:21 am

"I have sound on my motherboard why does it matter?" To answer your question I will refer you to the following....... SOURCE

Onboard Sound Vs. Add in Sound Card

By ROBSCIX

This is one of the most prevalent questions asked in this forum. I figured I would put all the info in this thread so members can find it quickly and easily. Everytime the questions is asked it will fuel a debate always ending with the same conclusion.

Why should I get a soundcard when my Motherboard has onboard sound?

I would say onboard sound is basically a marketing tactic used by motherboard manufacturers to sell an all-in-one solution. These soundchips undoubtedly have come along way since the first onboards, and would be fine for a basic office or home PC, but they still do not stand up to a quality add-in PCI card for many reasons.

Onboard sound chips need to use CPU cycles to process sound. This robs your sytem of performance. If your sound chip has EAX which alot of them do these days the issue is compounded usually degrading your performance somewhere in the area of 5-15 FPS in games. This is usually the reported number of FPS that users report getting when then install a PCI sound solution. This is not the worst issue though.

But ROBSCIX my onboard sounds fine to me?

Of course if a user has been using their soundchips for quite a while, the ear gets used to the less than stellar sound quality boasted by onboard sound chips. When a user installs a PCI solution they are literally blown away by the sound quality. They report hearing things in games and music that previously was not noticable. Once a user is used to a PCI sound card they can hear the deficiencies inherent to onboard sound chips and will never use one again. They sound very cold and sterile. DSP effects are usually overwhelming and washed out. These chips have no qualities usually associated with good sound, so alot of times the user will not know what they are missing until they hear it. You will need a set of decent speakers to be able to hear the difference however. $10 speakers won't cut it.

Now over the years various companies have released onboard sound chips that have tried to get over these issues. Connecting to the bus in different ways so they don't use CPU cycles etc. In terms of sound quality they are still lacking. All in all that's what we all want, I could care less about other things as long as I have great sound quality. People spend so much time building up there video subsystems, studying and reading about the best video components, but then they have an older onboard sound card connected to small multimedia speakers. Very sad indeed. If they invested half the time researching audio as they spent on video they wouldn't be using onboard sound. They would be using at least an entry level soundcard with surround sound speakers. Modern games are productional masterpieces with equal attention paid to audio as well as video. Without this hardware you're only getting half of what the game developers wanted you to experience. Sound is definitely an important part of all modern games. Indeed most new games contain EAX, surround sound support and directional audio, all used to make your game more enjoyable. Unfortunately all are limited by the sound hardware you have.

So the choice is up to you, and the question becomes:

Why wouldn't you replace your onboard with a quality PCI sound card?

So if you have decided that a PCI sound card is the path you wish to follow, the next question is what kind and what type of PCI slot should you consider.

First of all this question requires special attention to your specific hardware and system specifications that can't be totally answered in a simple yes or no fashion. Basically, a old type PCI will do fine. There are PCI x1 which can be utilized permitting your chip set heatsink isn't in the way, or your slot isn't being covered by some other device. But a basic PCI usually is available and clear of other devices. Not to mention a standard PCI sound card is going to be less expensive than a PCI express sound card.

Next you have to consider what brand name you what to use. I believe it is widely accepted that Asus, AuzenTech, and Creative have some of the best cards available that are with 24bit, X-Fi, and EAX. Creative isn't the best, but it does make decent sound cards.

Finally the question of drivers to use can present a problem.

Creative is well known for releasing poor drivers and having abysmal customer support. This is particularly true with X-Fi cards who's drivers really ONLY work in windows XP and even then are inefficient bloated resource hogs which can slow your system in the best case and cause system instability, BSODs, registry errors, drive corruption, and overall hell for your computer in the worst case. In anything other than XP (2000, vista, 7beta...) all the previous problems exist plus creative deliberately disabled most of the X-Fi's features reducing it to little more than a Creative Live! 24bit with crystalizer (a feature which is purely software and could in theory be enabled on ANY card, even a realtek.

The ASUS cards are of good quality but are optimized specifically for headphones. Furthermore they lack EAX which is the reason for their poor gaming reviews.

The Auzen Prelude and Forte are both built around X-Fi audio processors and therefore include all the X-Fi abilities (including EAX). The Prelude is essentially a higher quality version of the original X-Fi Platinum with custom drivers which are NOT bloated, will NOT slow your system or cause instability, and DO work on Vista. The Forte is an upgrade from the Prelude, offering an even higher grade build pci-e bus type, and some new features borrowed from other high end cards which cant be found on ANY creative products. I highly recommend the Forte if you have an extra pci-e slot available as it offers audio quality and frequency isolation similar to other high end audio cards while retaining the gaming-centric features exclusive to creative cards, with a few extra bells and whistles and with better drivers. Additionally, the Forte has been shown to greatly offload processors during gaming, giving a noticeable FPS increase over ANY other card. Over all this is the best card you can get for both gaming and movies/music. If pci-e is not an option, consider the prelude.

Forte
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156010
Sound--What you hear can be better. 29-156-010-03

Sound--What you hear can be better. 29-156-010-03

Prelude
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156005
Sound--What you hear can be better. 29-156-005-03

Just in case you don't know what EAX is ..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_audio_extensions

So what if you don't have a lot of money or you have already bought a Creative sound card? There is a fix.

youp-PAX modded X-FI drivers

PAX X-FI OS Driver V6.20 codename “Wing Foot”
Special Bass + Treble Edition

Crystal clear true 24bit sound
Supported cards:
PCI XFI
Supported OS:
XP
X32
X64
Vista
X32
X64

Changes:
+ World first Creative Console Launcher
+ Fix all sound to 24bit level
+ Fix all sound cards to make mic work
+ Fix stuff in infs
+ Perfect Bass sound
+ Added nice crisp bass to it.
+ Super Bass in Games Boost bass level fight off weak bass in games.
+ Added Bass in ENT mode for movies and music
+ Added Bass in Audio creation mode
+ Added support in infs
+ Added support in XP x64
+ Added support in Vista x64
+ 100% working Dolby in Vista and XP
+ Dell support should work now!
* Fix EAX and EQ Presets they all work now!
* Added more Treble please let me know how it goes.
Know issue No DTS and DD for Dell OEM Cards yet.
Platforms tested:
XP and Vista

v6.20
http://files.filefront.com/PAX+X+Fi+.../fileinfo.html

**Kar** Tue Jul 14, 2009 8:22 am

One other note. Here is my sound set up hardware running on youp-PAX driver mod.....

Headset....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826158051
Sound--What you hear can be better. 26-158-051-01

Sound--What you hear can be better. 26-158-051-01

Sound Card.....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102006
Sound--What you hear can be better. 29-102-006-01

**Shrap** Tue Jul 14, 2009 1:37 pm

i appreciate the input. i have never used a sound card, always been on-board.

**Kar** Tue Jul 14, 2009 3:48 pm

No problem. Just ask David about what difference he found with his transition.

**Kar** Thu Oct 08, 2009 9:14 pm

**Chrisp** Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:48 am

I will personal vouch its worth the money. Used usb logitech headset that was 60 bucks, and I thought it was good enough and it was till now.

Got a x-fi extreme gammer card and installed factory drivers and a older logitech headset and could tell a difference .

Used old headset for maybe 2 weeks and decided to purchase new headset and new egg has creative fatality headset 30bucks shipped and got yesterday and wow! A good sound card and headset makes a huge diffrerence . Basically hear a mouse move now.

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