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Ask HN: Is onboard audio still good enough compared to dedicated Sound Cards?
66 points by monkburger 14 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 74 comments
Recently, I upgraded my outdated PC to a Z890 motherboard, primarily because it was significantly discounted compared to AMD alternatives. After the upgrade, I noticed that the Realtek onboard audio doesn't sound as good as my previous configuration, which used a Recon3D sound card. Although I haven't conducted any scientific tests, the difference in sound quality is quite apparent to me.

I'm reaching out to understand the technical reasons behind this perception. Do dedicated sound cards offer tangible audio quality improvements over modern onboard solutions like Realtek? Specifically, I'm interested in aspects such as DAC quality, component shielding, and feature sets that might contribute to a superior listening experience.

Additionally, how much of this difference is rooted in theoretical hardware advantages versus user experience factors? Any insights or experiences from device engineers and audio enthusiasts would be greatly appreciated!




Theoretically your onboard sound could be just as good as anything you get off a card. In practice, it comes down to the physical implementation on your motherboard, like are the amplifying components well specced for their use, are they well separated spatially/electromagnetically from other potential sources of electrical noise on your motherboard, what are the power traces potentially shared with or near, is your power supply giving it clean power.

Now those aren't things you can casually observe all that useful information from, so it doesn't really help that much other than to try and buy quality components and hope for the best, often if you want good onboard sound you can find it if you are spending a reasonable amount on the board to start with though and not using and underspecced or dirt cheap PSU. A sound card could alleviate some potential issues though either because you bought a cheap board or just from being lied to by marketing that you were getting better onboard sound than they actually built. But it is still located on your motherboard and near a bunch of other things running at their own frequencies which may or may not be a problem depending on location and shielding and components.

And for all those reasons, a lot of people have skipped the sound card route and got a USB DAC, which gives a lot of physical space between all those other components and eliminates some restrictions in form factor for being inside a computer.

One thing to look at before you do anything else, look at where your analog speaker line is running. Is it now crossing near your PSU or power cords? Is it a different cheaper cord? The lowest hanging fruit for sound quality is the longest and final analog run and it is always good to try moving it around if you suspect a problem.


> A sound card could alleviate some potential issues though either because you bought a cheap board or just from being lied to by marketing that you were getting better onboard sound than they actually built. But it is still located on your motherboard and near a bunch of other things running at their own frequencies which may or may not be a problem depending on location and shielding and components.

Most sound cards these days are USB

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> Most sound cards these days are USB

Surely they are not /cards/.

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Everyone calls them sound cards and they are marketed as sound cards therefore they are sound cards. An USB audio interface is literally just an external sound card.

Regardless, I did a quick google search to confirm that my usage of the term was correct and yep - "sound card" and "audio interface" are used interchangeably. So no one cares about your technicalities.

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This isn’t true in professional circles at all. Audio interfaces are external. There is no need to collapse the language it confers no benefit.

Audio interfaces are external because it makes it so much easier to shield them properly. Thus if someone wanted to sell a computer for professional audio work with a sound card there would be a problem.

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Surely we don't care.

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Balanced differential inputs and outputs reject common mode noise, which is why they are essential for long cable runs and microphone leads, among other things that benefit from such an interface.

The actual ADC and DAC chips, or codecs, are usually specced just fine in even consumer on-board audio devices.

Hifi audiophiles are notoriously superstitious, and as long as RCA coax is the connection standard, my eyes continue to roll about their DAC nonsense, but you should pay attention to professional audio as this is where you can hear audible differences. Preamplifier stages and voltage amplification in general have a lot of nuance and analog circuit know-how inside. Removing the codecs from the inside of an electrically noisy computer is the beginning of starting to care about audio signal quality. Power filtration is another major concern for noise. Latency is a factor of buffer size which is both necessarily low when overdubbing recording while monitoring, and yet paradoxically allows for smoother glitch free audio as the buffer size is increased, largely a function that is CPU bound. No one talks about DMA controllers or the data bus employed, often USB, another factor that can affect audio independent of which audio interface or soundcard is employed. Some play nicely, some don't.

My advice is to delve into the world of professional audio, as this is real. Hi-fi often entails gullibility and snake oil in the sales chain.


This!

Get rid of any unwanted noise caused by gear or environment. Add a basic EQ - I'm using a 15-band one just to compensate for the room, the speakers, hearing loss and anything else that would impact the sound.


"What do you mean gullible and snake oil, nonono, I can totally hear the difference since I spend 2k on this audiophile fuse and the 11k CAT 5 cable. It's made of Rhodium and insulated with Dodo-feathers."


I don't see why people are so harsh in mocking audiophiles. There is a continuum of hearing ability in the general population, and if those who fancy themselves at the top of it are willing to pay, what's the problem? Audiophiles are subsiding the development of technologies such as 32-bit recording, which have benefits in other contexts aside from home audio.

From what I've seen, very few of the devices marketed to audiophiles are actually fraudulent. It's like Apple computers: a massive profit margin doesn't make a MacBook a scam, just an expensive way to get features a few months ahead of everyone else.

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Audiophiles are a self selected group. Membership has nothing to do with hearing ability. Most are of an age where they have less than “normal” hearing for a healthy child.

Audiophiles classically deliberately confuse measurable differences with audible ones. This they chase meaningless goals and convince themselves that anything which affects signal affects sound.

None of it would stand up to properly double blind testing. When it’s done things like “the sound of cables” disappears entirely outside incompetent engineering.

Even worse audiophiles tend to prefer distortion which flatters. I.e. exaggerated bass and treble to compensate for components and old ears.

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The problem is that audiophiles routinely fail blind tests. There is a lot of delusion in that group.

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Good enough for what?

Mastering a recording for money?

Listening to MP3’s through headphones?

Or something in between?

Consumer audio devices do all kinds of psycho-acoustic adjustment based on the likely limitations of playback systems, likely music genres, and consumer expectations.

Headphones and small speakers are going to sound thin without them…i.e. a transparent system is going to try to reproduce sounds that most speakers can’t output.

None of which is to say your new system sounds good or bad. Just that what sounds good is subjective and context dependent.


Gaming, Movies (youtube). Speakers (5.1)


> Speakers (5.1)

that seems most likely to be the root cause of the change you're noticing.

if the source audio is 2-channel, do you have it only play on the L & R speakers, or is it getting output to all 6 speakers? that sort of upmixing needs careful tuning, if it's not done well it may sound "muddy" due to the slightly different delays in sound from each speaker reaching your ears.

if you want to isolate it as a controlled variable, hook up only your L & R speakers, play a test track, and see if the perceived quality degradation is still there.


This seems like a good candidate for an explanation. Stereo to 5.1 upmixing can be done on many different ways, and is likely to e different on different brands of sound cards. Both in levels of sophistication but also just different options/choices, and one might have a preference for on or the other.

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That smells more like a room problem. A slight change in frequency response will change the comb filtering and early reflections in the room and that will change what happens at any given listening position.

And all consumer facing audio messes around with frequency response.

To put it another way “sounding good” is a question on the audiophile spectrum where people demagnetize compact disks and can hear the difference of premium HDMI cables.


speakers 5.1 - what's in between the PC and the speakers? what amplifier? have you calibrated it (room size, speaker distances etc) ? where encoding/decoding happens? splitting sub to all-else? as sibling comment said, up-converting 2.0 to anything higher is not simple. Even to 2.1

youtube - the audio on youtube is.. not.. quality. i had a friend who used them as best-audio-compression-ever :) maybe, Opposite of all above, It is possible that now you are hearing their garbage that was unheardable before.

games - similar.. it's not an audiofile genre.

Get some proper sound out (e.g. flac or .ape or something) of something that you know how it sounds (piano? voice? some old electronic stuff?) hopeing it's not over-engineered at studio.. and check that. Better, multiple things ..

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The chips used themselves for sound are perfectly fine. It’s pretty much all Realtek codecs on any motherboard. And even on the sound blaster cards. The only difference between onboard and dedicated cards is a bit more thought and care is put into shielding and external component selection, which can have a pretty big effect on performance. That tends to be the big difference between onboard and dedicated cards. Nobody hears the difference between 16 bit 48khz and 24 bit 96/192khz anyways. But bad component placement or selection can add noise, THD+N, and other problems.


Mixed signal components are hard to do well and have significant impact on the quality of final analog audio I/O. So, it matters which components have been used regardless of whether it's on on-motherboard solution or an external add-on solution (whether internal over PCIe or external over another appropriate bus, such as USB); however, the economics of onboard solutions make it quite likely that this is where quality will be skimped since many consumers won't care much about quality differences in this area, whereas the focused external solution will live or die in part based upon the quality of such components.

Note, however, that this concern really only applies to whatever in your system is performing the final digital to analog or initial analog to digital conversions since that interface with the "real world" is where the quality matters. In a world with bluetooth speaker systems, where that mixed signal phase actually happens in the speaker hardware, it is relevant to consider where this kind of quality even matters in the full audio system you're deploying.


This is not simple to answer, because exist at least two grades of sound - for median people, and for professionals and sensitive people.

It's easy to see difference - median cards stopped at level of "SB Live!" (yes, exclamation sign is part of tm), which have ~90dB SNR; professional are at least 120dB (Audigy).

Unfortunately, if speak about internal cards (onboard or PCI/PCIe) they all depends on nuances of PC electrical design, which is still, after decades, just another basket for boards, without analog considerations. What I mean, for example, any sound engineer knows - you should not connect all ground wires in one point, as it becomes source of powerful noise from power converters of boards which are not sensitive to sensitive.

And sound chips are become so cheap now, that nearly all boards are now have onboard sound stub, but some companies are more serious on sound quality, and others are less serious. What was even more curious for me - when I seen audio driver for GPU (unfortunately I forgot on which exactly, probably 20s series from Nvidia).

Before, I have more then decade happily used SB Live!, but unfortunately it is PCI, but many new mbs don't have such interface. And audio quality not always measured on reviews, may be because considered, serious people will not depend on internal "stub" quality.

For example, at the moment I use Gigabyte B250-D3M, and it work perfect on internal audio, but I don't know if this is just because I use only network cards as external, or I will have issues when add some GPU or other card with high power consumption.

Any way, external cards, now mostly mean USB cards, have potential to be much better, because they have their own power supply and are far from noise sources. Unfortunately, external DACs are expensive.

So, unfortunately, it is now lottery, I cannot recommend any manufacturer of boards with internal sound, looks like some boards are good and other are not, even for median consumer. For professionals or sensitive, looks like no choice, only some professional grade card.

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GPUs need an audio driver to send digital audio over HDMI or DisplayPort, I haven’t seen GPUs with an analog audio out (no DAC).

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> Do dedicated sound cards offer tangible audio quality improvements over modern onboard solutions like Realtek?

Depends on motherboard, but: I had a top of the line, very well reviewed gaming mobo, and I’d hear a buzzing noise over the speakers depending on what the computer was doing. Moving the mouse? Distinct buzz as a function of speed. Compiling the Linux kernel? Distinct buzzing. Etc. this happened under both Windows and Linux, so I don’t think it was a software issue.

Having an external DAC allows you to keep the audio signal very, very far away from the rest of the electronics, which completely solved the problem for me. I went with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 for about $200, connected to my two JBL 305 speakers — it’s been great. It wasn’t in my initial plans, but I later took advantage of the XLR microphone input to set up a Shure SM7B microphone (wasn’t quite enough gain, so I added a TritonAudio FetHead preamplifier and a DBX 286s for de-essing/eq/etc — very happy with the setup now).

So, FWIW, I’m a big fan of external USB DACs.

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Onboard audio has definitely improved in recent decades (I've been using and playing around with sound cards since I was five), but it's still leaps behind what's available in the form of external DACs and audio interfaces. If you want to upgrade your listening setup, one option to consider is getting active (powered) speakers like the KEF LSX II or Airpulse A300 Pro (or something like the Edifier S1000W as a budget friendly option), which you can feed digital audio signal straight from your PC via USB, Optical/Coaxial, Bluetooth, or WiFi. These types of speakers have high quality DACs with matching amps built in, so you can create a minimalist setup outperforming many other configurations. If you need advanced features for recording and producing audio (e.g., midi, professional line/mic inputs, high-impedance headphone outputs, etc.) just throw in a dedicated audio interface (e.g., something made by Focusrite or MOTU) between your PC and active speakers, and you're set.


I thought it was all mostly similar with some difference between annoyingly unsatisfying and workable on one hand, and fine/good on the other hand. My upper-midrange Asus motherboard and Apple lightning-to-headphone-jack adapter being in the latter category; Fine! Good! Music is enjoyable!

Then I got a Fosi Audio DS2 out of curiosity after coming across some measurements and discussion over on audiosciencereview.com

and

it is MILES better than any audio device I’ve ever had

There is a difference. (Also when driving speakers.) The difference is very, very clear. This particular device isn’t the only one that makes this kind of difference. It was like $50.


> Apple lightning-to-headphone-jack adapter being in the latter category

Apple's adapter seems pretty good for $9:

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qu...

Also Macs since 2021 can drive high-impedance headphones from the built-in audio jack.

Interestingly enough old Macs (and Apple TV and AirPort devices) used to have mini-toslink output, but USB and HDMI are probably more useful in 2025.


It is good for $9! It would still be good if it cost more.

It surprised me that the jump to devices like the Fosi DS2 that have modern DAC and driver chips with higher design aims was big.

Specification-wise, I’d have expected that noise floors and distortion levels and, idk, the amount of current flowing were in both cases more than enough to sound practically the same, especially in the context of driving line-level devices rather than headphones.

Nnnnope!

I got the little Fosi device for two purposes: To better drive headphones I have – more volts, more current flow – and to kind of disprove to myself that there was a difference working with line-level signals.

Very surprised at the difference with the latter. Surprised that there was a difference. –And it’s not a loudness difference!, which can be deceiving.

It’s a bigger-than-$41 difference, I find.

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You didn't mention what you're plugging your computer audio into. For example if you're using headphones, then the headphone impedance and the card's ability to drive it are going to vary wildly depending on the specific amplifier circuitry involved. If you're connecting a line level signal to an external amplifier this is not so relevant, although there will be some line-drive circuitry on the board or in the chip, and this will vary, and can make a (marginal) difference if you have long cables.


Anything inside the case will have more noise from other components than something sitting outside the case. Instead of a sound "card", you're going to want a USB DAC. It doesn't even have to be that expensive - those $10 Apple USB-C dongles were highly rated.


It is mind-boggling how good the Apple dongle is, that something that tiny contains a good DAC and a headphones amplifier. I switch back and forth multiple times a day between the Apple dongle and a Universal Audio interface that cost many times more and I have never heard a difference.

However I hear a big difference with my laptop onboard audio and off brand dongles, they have an audible noise floor.

To the OP I would recommend getting the Apple USB-C dongle before spending big bucks on something else because for listening it's likely to be good enough.


Somewhere here on HN a few years back there was a submission regarding a tear-down of the Apple Lightning to 3.5mm headphones adapter.

The findings concluded the product was insanely good value for money and was on par with mid/high end DAC.


Not if the audio circuitry has been properly canned (i.e. Faraday-caged) and if the power supply produces clean input power; however, one or both and especially the latter often do get compromised in poorly integrated Wintel PC systems.


Onboard audio frustrates me greatly. For a long time, I always used my onboard audio to an external DAC + amp. With my most recently build (circa 2020) there is something wrong with the USB bus that it's on (gone are the days of PCI audio interfaces, I guess) and it just randomly skips and cuts out. The rest of the USB ports on the motherboard work fine, it's just this internal one that's unreliable. (Though sometimes if I have a bunch of cables connected to ports but not devices, USB becomes flaky. This happens if you're developing hardware and you have a couple J-Links and random microcontrollers on breadboards hanging off your USB bus, but sometimes you disconnect them all to take them back to your lab bench. Then your mouse randomly stops working...)

Anyway, external DACs are the way to go. My external DAC supports USB in addition to optical, so I just use that, and everything is wonderful. I have a cheap USB <-> XLR device for audio input. Again, no problems.

All in all, I've never had great luck with onboard sound. I am not sure why it's hard to get right. Maybe it's an Asus thing. For some reason I always end up with Asus motherboards.


What headphones are you using? If they’re fancy enough then your motherboard sound card may or may not be powerful enough / low noise enough / there’s a variety of other things enough / to flap the drivers as precisely as the old board. If they aren’t hella fancy or hella high ohms then this isn’t usually it.

Beyond that. Recon3d is Soundblaster? So they were probably doing a quality level one full step up from what you’d get with a typical motherboard. Something like an Asrock Taichi would typically max out the motherboard tier. Beyond that, you’re into PCIe cards or USB things or HDMI cards that expose a digital device to your PC and do the analog conversion somewhere other than the motherboard.

The conversion from beep-boop binary to analog electrical impulses for your headphone drivers, and the ability to add and remove power to the drivers through your headphone cables, are the two components of quality that you have control over. They’re typically called DAC and amp, and the options in hardware reflect that.

The fastest way to find out whether you’ll be happier with a better sound card is to buy one that has a 15-day return policy; either any modern USB Soundblaster, or a combo dac/amp for headphones like the Schiit Fulla E at ~$100. If that makes it all better and you’re happy, solved!

If it sounds perfectly fine in quality (no hiss, clearly audible music like you prefer) but is ineffably flat or lifeless, you may have had some sort of enhancement processing going on in the old motherboard’s driver that was adding head effects. For that path, make sure you’ve tried out Windows spatial sound > Dolby Atmos for Headphones; it’ll cost a few bucks one-time to activate but it’ll let you test if you were getting virtual surround boosting (or the modern Soundblaster USB devices may have this built in to test with too).


Not OP, but here's my audio stuff in case anyone wanted product recommendations:

  (Connected to PC via USB)
  Schiit Modi DAC
  Schiit Vali 2 Headphone Amp (with a tube!)
  PreSonus E4.5 Powered Studio Monitors

  (Connected to phone via USB)
  Aune Yuki DAC
  Meze 99 Classics headphones.
To my ears, both sound pretty good. Especially on the phone, Tidal hires audio seems to sound better. Although I have not performed any double-blind tests or anything!!

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(Mjol / Ygg here, but this is quite far out of scope for OP’s question, which is trying to diagnose a change in audio between two motherboards, and I wouldn’t recommend a heavy stack of gear this early on.)

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Depends. Do you care about FLAC vs MP3 quality? Then onboard will likely never be enough despite it being highly unlikely you can tell the difference when the song is ripped from the same audio source. (I can sometimes on my setups at home, but never could in the car)

If you have a decent set of headphones or speakers, grab a soundcard from the jungle site and find out. If you can't tell a difference, return it and keep your money.

It is subjective. Just depends on what is important to you. Pretty much everything has 24bit/96khz capabilities if not 32bit/192khz capabilities these days. IMHO, it comes down to if the opamp on the device is of good enough quality for the device you're driving. You don't want to plug a set of 600ohm headphones into a generic onboard sound device and expect it to sound like it would if you bought a proper DAC+amp setup. It simply doesn't have the power. If the sound device has a line-out, then you only need an amp.


No. Definitely not.

I was very surprised after doing some mixdowns on the onboard laptop soundcard on my Macbook pro that it sounded AWFUL when pushed to real speakers. Tried it on two other laptops.

Will never use a laptop sound card for real audio work or even listening again

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Macbooks have surprisingly bad interactions with external audio devices these days. I've had all sorts of digital artifacts in the audio, and the only actual crash that I've had occurred when replugging in an audio device.

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If you are experiencing digital noise in the output, like buzzing or clicking that correlates either activity on your computer, try installing a ground loop isolator in between your computer and speakers.

This is essentially a mini transformer that physically isolates speaker/amp from the computer to isolate any power related noise.

They are dead cheap on Amazon these days.

Other than that, a USB DAC might help. You don't need an expensive one, which are mainly expensive due to inputs & microphone preamps. The main benefit will be a reduced noise floor/less background hiss, although that can also come from the amp driving your speakers.


The interesting thing about audio chains is that they do NOT follow the "as bad as the weakest link" principle. A poor quality MP3 will be much more listenable on an overall crappy setup than on a high-end setup, mostly because the crappy setup will cut out both the lows and highs and leave you with an OK "background music, more or less".

If you're not about playing your FLAC collection via either decent headphones and/or decent HiFi setup then pretty much the only thing you should care about is "is there noise?". Which probably isn't there. And if it is - start with your cables, then your PSU.

Also, check software. Maybe your old setup had some software shenanigans (or your new one has - like a "headphone" profile selected) and that's the difference you are perceiving.

In terms of caring about "quality" you do need to start with CD-level material, and then the rest of the chain should follow according to your needs and preferences; there is no point buying a $400 USB DAC and hooking it to a $15 headphones; and if 128kbps MP3s sound OK to you then congrats your audio needs are effectively non-existent, anything will do (and I do not say that disparagingly; it's _fine_).


>The interesting thing about audio chains is that they do NOT follow the "as bad as the weakest link" principle. A poor quality MP3 will be much more listenable on an overall crappy setup than on a high-end setup, mostly because the crappy setup will cut out both the lows and highs and leave you with an OK "background music, more or less".

As someone who sometimes listens to music digitized from analog sources, this has been my experience, too. Tape hiss, cracking/pops and distortion are easier to notice on my headphones+DAC than on my (somewhat cheaper) IEMs.

At that point, it doesn't matter whether you have FLAC or MP3.

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> if 128kbps MP3s sound OK to you then congrats your audio needs are effectively non-existent, anything will do (and I do not say that disparagingly; it's _fine_).

Ignorance is bliss. I'm extremely happy I've never learned to notice higher or lower quality audio. The last time I've had to research at all about audio hardware was when I was trying to find a card which supported EAX for games back in the early 2000s. Since then it's been all onboard audio all the time, with the only exception being my wireless headset's USB dongle. It's great!

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I'd recommend any good sound device that connects digitally, like USB or HDMI/Displayport.

So the answer is that you should get a dedicated sound device, but don't bother looking for an internal card. External devices are easier to connect, won't complicate upgrades, and can be attached to a different machine with less work.

Onboard has always been good enough, it's just that people are usually willing to accept trash.


I'd agree with your recommendation while pointing out that a big part of the benefit from doing this is getting high-quality audio ADC/DAC hardware in the final mixed-signal interface. This can be achieved well with either kind of device, but the external device will be usable longer.

That said, my biggest gripe about external sound cards is introduction of drivers rather than usage of standard bus class protocols, which has a tendency to create "complicated upgrades" problems due to the manufacturer dropping support for the driver over time, causing an unnecessary forced obsolescence for otherwise good external hardware.


The vast majority of audio interfaces on the market today are class compliant. They will work out of the box with any OS and even phones.


But, your onboard Realtek does have an S/PDIF output, right? If not directly as a TOSlink on the back panel, then surely as a motherboard header. From there, you can add/try/test hundreds of DACs, from el-cheap-o Amazon stuff to top-notch RME devices and such. As for analog audio out of any motherboard built-in audio card: that's crap, was always crap, will always remain crap.


Often times the biggest issue you'd get with onboard chip is extra noise that could be hard to track(pun intended) if you're recording music.

As far as general audio quality for non-recording scenarios (listening to music, watching movies etc) does not differ too much in my experience. You could be experiencing external issues like speaker placement, room issues, bad cable somewhere


Soundblasters and other discrete audio cards sometimes have specialized high quality components like amps and DACs/ADCs in them. I can drive my Beyerdynamics DT1990 Pros through the headphone high impedance port of my Soundblaster Z from almost 10 years ago while my mobo can't do so as well. I've upgraded almost 4 times already, but the SB always stays.

Supposedly there are some mobos with almost as good if not better audio than discrete cards, but that only happens in high end mobos.

Noise isolation is a thing though, consider a lot of stuff is happening in your mobo all the time. A discrete card should have a lower noise level than an onboard one, while an external through hdmi/toslink/spdif should offer the best noise isolation.

Most of that info is widely available online though, you can check if your old Recon3D is better than your mobos onboard one.

Finally, remember that audio is a highly subjective experience, even with newer and better specs you may find you like the Recon3D sound signature more.


From reading the comments and my own experience, this could caused be any of the problems found in any stereo since they were first built, room , grounding, impedence matching, shielding,etc. Its possible to get great sound from missmatched junk, and have mega expensive gear suffer from an out of phase conection, and be unlistenable. In another life, I was a sound engineer, and the place to start is with a known reference, ie :headphones ? do they still sound good on something else? Intermitent conditions can result in madness, but you got to have your tunes!


Some soundcard drivers apply equalization by default or strongly suggest it via features like "gaming" or "cinema" modes. If your setup previously had anything like that, then changing can be quite noticable. One tends to develop a preference for what one is used to listening to. EQing according to ones own preference can be very beneficial in audio experience. Most OSed have ways of doing it globally, potentially with this party software.

PS: see also the comment from Ross about the drive ability of your card

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I always got not-so-great sound from onboard audio, probably from being so close to fans/graphics card/power supply.

Also I couldn't control volume directly.

What I have found works great is an offboard dac:

    https://www.schiit.com
Just wire it up using usb or toslink/spdif to get digital sound to the dac cleanly, then the dac is isolated from everything and you get a volume control.

I use headphones + mic + fulla (soon gunnr) but this also works for straight headphones or speakers with other models of dac.

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Anecdotal, but when building my previous (sorta, some components are still there today) PC in 2018 I had actually bought a dedicated sound card for it, a Sound Blaster Audigy FX, it was appallingly bad. Awful drivers, limited capability (for instance, no ability to filter out speakers when recording). I ended up pulling it out after few months and defaulting to the motherboard's realtek chip (aorus mobo), which is more than enough. So no, I don't think it's worth the cost.


Using headphones, I can tell the difference between Realtek MB audio, HDMI digital audio via TV's DAC (worse background noise, less bass) and a chinese USB DAC and preamp (less background noise, more bass). I hate the extra cables the USB DAC requires.

On my previous PC I used a Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 with it's own heaphone preamp. It was better than onboard, but worse than USB DAC/preamp (more noise).

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The Apple USB c dac is fantastic and it’s like 10$ if you want something better you need to go to the 100$+ range

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I've noticed a sound card sounding better for higher impedance headphones and also having reduced interference from the onboard circuitry (from being further away?). That being said, I also had to calibrate my setting a whole lot more to get better audio which seems to be how it goes for hifi audio equipment. I've just stuck to onboard for a long time and it's usually pretty darn good sounding with my sennheisers.


Subjectively it seems like headphone jacks on laptops have gotten significantly better in the last 20 years. I don't have any qualms about listening to music on my macbook. Even budget audio interfaces like Focusrite are certainly going to have stronger headphone amplifiers and probably better frequency response and work well with higher impedance headphones though. Brands like MOTU and Audient are even better.


They have, especially if your standard is Apple devices. Pretty much all Apple devices that still have a headphone jack have extremely competent audio paths, capable of driving the most fiddley headphones. Much better than mediocre audio interfaces.


I have an Asus Essence STX II sound card. Paired with decent enough headphones, it is night and day, compared to built in realteks or whatever. It is around 300eur, but this card won't become obsolete (unless it becomes incompatible with some other hw). A very worthwhile investment, if you value music, or even sound in games.


I have also tried cheaper dedicated sound cards, such as soundblaster z - these don't really differ much from onboard ones and are not worth it.


If you can't hear digital switching noises off a standard headphone jack when using good quality headphones plugged in directly, I'm honestly not sure your hearing is up to par.


My rather simple minded approach is unless it buzzes or clips the major difference you hear in audio output is the volume.

An external DAC should be better in theory, but if you match the volume and haven’t got any interference you’ll struggle to tell the difference.

I may of course have damaged hearing so YMMV


>I noticed that the Realtek onboard audio doesn't sound as good as my previous configuration, which used a Recon3D sound card.

I was thinking who is still making consumer dedicated sound card? Never heard of the name Recon3D. Turns out it is Creative Sound Blaster.

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Yeah, new consumer-grade PCI soundcards are not easy to find these days. The Recon3D is very old and very unsupported. But if you need a soundcard for whatever reason, Recon3Ds are plentiful and cheap on ebay, and there are drivers out there that still work in Windows 11 ...

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Should this not be:

Ask HN: is on-board audio good enough yet to obviate dedicated add-on hardware?

When did on-board audio surpass custom hardware, so that we are on a reverse trend? I didn't get the memo. (Not that I'm subscribed to this issue in any way, mind you).


If the prior machine still works, you might open up the settings software that came with the sound card. It's always possible you fiddled with things early on, forgot about it, and now new machine lacks that customization.


Good idea. I checked it out and nothing stands out.


Just an update:

I switched out the 'TOSLINK' over to a standard coax and the sound is much better - not on par with the Recon 3D card, but it's an improvement. I am using some Logitech speakers and not headphones.


That is surprising. If anything, I would expect the toslink signal to be superior as it is completely galvanically isolated. Is it possible that there is dirt affecting the signal, either in the sockets or on the plugs?

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Possibly. Another thing that could be is that I damaged the cable (somehow) when disconnecting it. Or, the Realtek TOSLINK has some design/implementation flaws.

Another possibility? could be placebo

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i too have noticed this and as such, have switched to USB out to async USB input DAC that supports that. there are plenty of good quality, low cost DACs available from folks like schiit, smsl, topping, etc. (cheap enough that as someone that used to 'roll tubes' in my audio systems, i can now 'roll DACs' instead lolol).

i'm quite partial to the ESS sabre series of DACs at this point personally.

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Not one mention of resistance yet. If you have a high ohm set of headphones you'll certainly hear a difference with a good audio interface.


I found that onboard is more susceptible to picking up a ground loop, therefore I use external USB cards.


Just buy SoundBlaster. (just kidding)

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