2 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Simple Questions - December 02, 2020
Weird question.....but whatever happened to discrete sound cards? I remember building PCs waaaaaaay back in the day and most of them 'featured' discrete sound cards (Creative Sound Blaster, etc). Now even the most top-of-the-line gaming PCs just use on board sound....what gives?
Comment by BrewingHeavyWeather at 02/12/2020 at 21:29 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Onboard sound got good enough for the masses. It still sucks, but it doesn't suck because the DACs are bad - dirt cheap DACs can be very good, on their own. It sucks because it's unbalanced, in a box with a lot of magnetic fields changing really fast, so it picks up activity from data buses, and CPU and/or GPU VRMs. Also, use of hardware DSP is dead - it's all done in the CPU, now, so the sound chip is just a transport, DAC, and line driver. If you want better sound, the first step is getting the analog section and power supply outside of the PC. If you look for USB DACs, USB soundcards, and USB interfaces, you'll find there are many choices. Many people also prefer to instead opt for digital, often wireless, headsets, these days, as well.
Comment by Nitronium777 at 02/12/2020 at 17:50 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Most people don't care as much about sound. The general idea is that it is "good enough". Most who are audio nerds go with an external dac, which are generally better sounding and more portable/practical than soundcards.