Where Did SOUND CARDS Go?

[@Shadow-ig3hf]

Don't need a sound card..can't hear above 60fps.

[@2Scribble]

Batman hears what you did there...

[@scivirus3563]

Technically 60 frame per sec is 60 hertz well in human hearing spectrum so you sir are incorrect

[@Un1234l]

Um stop spreading mininformation. Human ears can hear above 144 FPS but after that is diminishing returns.

[@jonasls]

@@scivirus3563 not really how digital sound works but ok

[@scivirus3563]

@@jonasls the how does it work my friend like to hear this

[@ridingnerdy6406]

My favorite is people who spend $200-$300 on a sound card...then use USB headphones.

[@5H1N081]

Or use their monitor's speakers with it.

[@trixstermillion2190]

My favorite is teenage lesbitwin gymnasts.

[@itsprod.472]

Lmfaoo

[@Amphibiot]

Uhm. I do that. And there's a reason. I occationally write and play music live. You want a dedicated sound card for that, to get as low latency as possible, lower than what onboard sound can do, often by hundreds of milliseconds. That matters when you want immidiate response from your instrument. But i also use the same computer for gaming and KZbin, and if you are awake late at night when other people are sleeping, you don't want to wake them up. Besides, mixing and mastering music should ideally be done on a multitude of sound sources, like studio monitors and a headset.

[@FancyGeeks]

@spartanscheats But he's telling you that he does use it. First two sentences... he says he wants a dedicated sound card to reduce latency when playing live music. Then he goes on to say that he uses USB headphones for gaming and using the computer late at night.

[@AdamGarrett72]

A portion of history that seems to be overlooked here, is when the soundblaster cards integrated MIDI and the game port onto the cards as well. I first got a sound card in the early 90's, and the same device that was allowing me to control Lara Croft's movement was also allowing me to hear her lovely voice.

[@SPLIFiTeD]

Game changer

[@David_Crayford]

1996 for the first Tomb Raider and the voice is the lovely Shelley Blond. 🙂

[@HMAcademia]

I remember when "multimedia" became the new thing. I immediately bought a controller for that port. It was just a new world.

[@kwest9747]

How come sound card manufacturers started putting joystick ports onto their cards anyway?

[@AdamGarrett72]

@@kwest9747 the game port was previously available as its own expansion card. The primary users of soundcards were gamers. Creative added the game port for value

[@123batina]

Kids will never know the pain of mid 90s to early 00s - freshly installed Windows booting and sound not working for some unknown reason. And the pure joy when you finally installed proper driver version that actually works, rebooted and you heard windows go taadaaa... I felt goosebumps as I wrote this.

[@armelind]

And volume was at 100% every time...usually around 2am when you finally got it working.

[@kyrresjbk7876]

Ding... Dingediring... Bong, bong, bong, bong......

[@WarttHog]

I have a vivid memory of the first Tadaaa! I ever heard. Blew me away!

[@pfdtx4633]

Really early (Windows 3.1) you had to go through IRQ and DMA settings until you found one that worked.

[@WarttHog]

@@pfdtx4633 Yeah. Plug 'n Play made everything sooooo much easier!!

[@lohar5055]

In 2030: "where did GRAPHICS CARDS go?"

[@lynnmckenney1987]

Man, I already feel old talking about sound cards, don't do me like that, lol

[@eirikheggelund]

@@lynnmckenney1987 Sound cards are still somewhat relevant, so I would not say that talking about sound cards should make you feel old.

[@Suge212]

You can already play high end games without a GPU. There are monthly gaming services that stream games to your PC. Their GPU's do all the work. Apparently it works great if you have a good internet connection.

[@mmehdi3437]

wow, i bet it will happen, or mabey streaming will be the thing

[@yumri4]

I do not think Intel and AMD will though Zhaoxin might put a good enough GPU into their chips to replace the graphics card and/or China might mandate that graphics cards are illegal and require their population to move over to whatever Zhaoxin has for integrated graphics.

[@CMDR-Kat]

“Early integrated speaker didn’t sound great as you can hear” *can’t hear because LTT won’t shutup long enough to let me listen*

[@benjaminadupuis]

Andrew Capps This happens in so many of their videos. They don’t bring the music level up high enough . Though, I guess they’re not really trying to appeal to music enthusiasts or musicians.

[@therealyoungdrako227]

probably kept talking to avoid a copyright strike from UMG

[@MrHajimeHitoshi]

Seriously

[@loib]

did you just call james an entire channel

[@flyingfireballmaster1816]

I legit didn’t even realize he was actually playing it until reading this

[@DaSharkCraftMC]

"They even come with RGB" *I'LL TAKE YOUR ENTIRE STOCK!*

[@kappasike]

Bet

[@kirin1864]

The more RGB the more fps :D

[@GalironRunner]

Seriously am i the only one that hates rgb? im happy with my base being black and not putting our a bunch of blinding lights.

[@zager6663]

@@GalironRunner were making fun of people that use too much rgb we arent serious.

[@SantYeahGO]

@@GalironRunner Ye I too honestly dislike RGB. I prefer a nice clean looking workstation computer, black or white. But I woulden't mind having a little RGB on my computer, but I would keep it at a solid color like blue or whatever fits, just so you can see inside.

[@KuraIthys]

Yeah, I remember when a bunch of advanced audio features basically vanished overnight. Like hardware accelerated 3d positional audio. AFAIK the death knell of standalone sound cards appears to have been HDMI encryption standards. Encrypted HDMI was a demand made by film studios to make bluray harder to pirate. That's all well and good but that means suddenly a whole heap of PC components have to support encryption/decryption. That alone rendered a ton of hardware partially obsolete overnight. Suddenly motherboards (in theory) had to encrypt PCI bus traffic. Monitors had to support HDCP decryption. Operating systems had to support HDCP. Obviously graphics cards now needed to be able to do HDCP encryption... Oh, and graphics cards needed audio processing hardware. - hardware that's only in use when you have HDMI audio in play. Upside is this is digital processing only. Downside is graphics card companies didn't care about sound (at least compared to sound card manufacturers) Plus all tgat encryption means the sound card is completely out of the loop now... Rendering it 100% redundant except where the user has an analogue audio path enabled. There are likely other factors... But forcing HDCP to be implemented on the PC was a big one with many other negatives as well. And all to appease film studio paranoia. Joy.

[@Luckma1]

cant be that hard to put an extra connection onto the graphic card where you could connect to your soundcard. ....

[@andrasbonitz3491]

It's like DRM and all copyright protection features ruin computing and the people that have them implemented just don't care.

[@KuraIthys]

@@Luckma1 You wouldn't think so. But that's not what happened. Don't ask me why not, but it just isn't.

[@happysmash27]

I refuse to buy components with HDCP, except where it is absolutely unavoidable, like with graphics cards, because I oppose all forms of DRM. I don't think anyone forces audio to be HDCP though. Too many people use headphones which do not go over HDMI, or speakers which don't go over it, and it's a bit easier to take advantage of the analogue hole with audio anyway, since at the end of the chain, there is only one electrical signal to deal with. I've never heard of audio which requires HDCP, but if anyone has any examples of any, please tell me.

[@deirdremahon3931]

@@KuraIthys gffffujh

[@SingularityMedia]

Q: Where did sound cards go? Music Production community: Wut?

[@slapmyfunkybass]

SingularityMedia Not really, the guy picked up on it and is right, studios will have external sound cards.

[@SingularityMedia]

@@slapmyfunkybass key word being sound cards

[@slapmyfunkybass]

SingularityMedia But external sound cards are mostly called audio interfaces.

[@SingularityMedia]

@@slapmyfunkybass yes they are, but they still retain the same purpose. Some of us still call them soundcards

[@andrewthorpe3219]

People got sick of one particular well known audio card maker who did not support their products properly, never updated drivers, and didn't bother to support the current version of Windows at one particular point. With the latter Microsoft actually wrote a driver for the users of those sound cards. My experience is similar. I built two PCs using mostly the same parts. One has a sound card from the "well known audio card maker" (main PC) and other just uses the AC97 onboard audio (LAN gaming PC). Playing downloaded video files on the main PC would result in random BSODs and the same files on the LAN PC would play perfectly. Tracing the BSOD info revealed is was an issue with the sound card driver. Checking the maker's web site only had the same driver I had on the CD when I bought the card. There were no updates to the driver in many years. Onboard audio drivers are updated by the mainboard makers when problems are encountered. I changed the audio output on the main PC to the AC97 and never had issues since. Both PCs are still on offline use and LAN gaming PCs for myself and my son. My ears cannot pick the difference between the onboard audio and the dedicated sound card. Onboard audio chipsets are more than good enough for most people and are more reliable as they are better supported than dedicated sound cards.

[@yornav]

Don’t forget that the first generation audio cards also hosted fm soundchips and were able to host soundfont files. Music in games of the early days was not integrated as audio data, but more like MIDI data. For that you needed a card that could translate that data to instrument like sounds instead of the beeps and bleeps of a pc speaker. Like the Soundblaster AWE32 I had back then. It was an AWEsome card for that time.

[@SomeAngryGuy1997]

Late 90's to mid 00's they also had hardware acceleration for sound (EAX), until MS killed it on Vista.

[@onthewall425]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing

[@Zack_Wester]

@@SomeAngryGuy1997 there was other feture as well. I remember some game that used to sound card to handle mic effects. Like in a Milsim game if you was standing next to someone and spoke it would sound like you was next to them speaking. if you was like 600 meters away (you had to use the radio) and at 600 meter sounded fine just a bleep at the start and end. now move into the basement at the other end of the map and it was now more static then voice. I hope you printed out the NATO phonetic alphabet because that was the only way to communicate at this point. and all that was handled by the soundcard had it been done on the main CPU it would had killed the performance. I also remmber my DnD group using the sound card and its effect for stuff like changing our voices (old man, elf, dwarf, scout, drunk and so on).

[@peverst]

Yeah, that good old AWE32, had a lot of fun with that card. Still using a soundcard, nowadays it's the Maya44 eX.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

​@@SomeAngryGuy1997 Yes, although about that time you started to see innovations like MMX start to take off with more and more sophisticated instruction sets for accelerating that sort of work built into the processor itself. That and processors just got to the point where most people weren't hitting the processor so hard that it couldn't also handle some of that other stuff.

[@piip4]

I bought a sound card as I work with music composing, but I noticed that I would never again play games without it. Damn, the experience improved a lot.

[@enquiem3051]

Which one did you bought ?

[@botfantasies6229]

100% this.

[@combatwighty]

Which one did you get?

[@baddog6003]

Even supposed high-end motherboard audio is honestly trash compared to a halfway decent pci-e soundcard or external dac.

[@chrishaskins3505]

I had a sound blaster sound card (some gamer edition that i dont remember) pair that with creative labs 5.1 surround speakers, and i could hear things like my chainmail rattling as i ran in world of warcraft... im pretty sure my onboard sound on my current pc doesn't have that...

[@trje246]

"Way back in the '80's" ...well, it's official now ...i'm old.

[@TheAngryIntellect-]

So like me, you were around before the invention of mobile phones, fax machines, internet, computers still had massive floppy Disc drives and green only coloured screens? Yeah I'm feeling old now

[@rick_.]

1990 was 30 years ago. 😕

[@svda814]

Rick _ r/hedidthemonstermath

[@Kevin-mx1vi]

I got my first computer back in the 80's and I was over 30. I'm not old, I'm positively archaic ! First went online via an acoustic coupler (Google it) at 200 Baud (bytes per second) and thought it was really cool just to get one computer to speak to another even though it took five seconds to send a 1k file, and that's if you had a good connection.

[@kumbah2006]

@@Kevin-mx1vi - I think you meant 300 baud ... :) I was there too - on my Coco2 !!

[@ezcosmo4508]

"LIMITED TO JUST BEEPS AND BOOBS" Not a bad deal in my opinion.

[@WarHawk-]

@laser325 - "LIMITED TO JUST BEEPS AND BOOBS". sounds like most girl friends.

[@InsaneLool]

lmfao

[@ImNotADeeJay]

My modern computer still has plenty of boobs, not many beeps though

[@NightmareRex6]

i never remember getting milk from a computer speaker tho.

[@ErraticPT]

While sound cards are always better than on-board audio, you have to praise the makers on-board for the huge increase in quality in the last few years. Problem is finding a midpriced soundcard is almost impossible these days. The only cards sold are either dirt cheap garbage or expensive audiophile cards with features hardly anyone outside a studio would use.

[@hughdahand5711]

the thing is the onboard sound of most motherboard fall right in that mid tier range.. making them kind of redundant -

[@questionmark5463]

Actually entry level external home studio audio interfaces are sub 100 USD now. They do sound way better than integrated ones. I suppose if you can't tell the difference, or don't need to record or play through good monitors or phones.. Integrated sound these days is adequate for most people.

[@ThunderbolttheFox]

The soundblaster AE-5 is only $120 on amazon. If you're doing a decent mid-high range PC, it's comparatively cheap to all the other hardware you'll be buying

[@JUSTDREAMFREE]

Soundcard: EVGA NU AUDIO Pro 7.1. (just released and shipping) Incredible quality and sound for gaming!

[@Will_Wel]

@@JUSTDREAMFREE would that allow you to mix the 7 or 8 discrete channels in a DAW?

[@jorinator123]

0:59 "as you can tell", no we can't tell because you were talking over it

[@fernandomartins6664]

And it actually sounded pretty good at the time, very different from the usual beeps and not "didn't exactly sound all that great".

[@roughwaves]

Still sounds fine to me.

[@TheEviltaco666]

I imagine it was so they don’t get copyrighted lmao

[@Ighnot]

Yep.

[@mrtwinky2007]

"Where Did SOUND CARDS Go?" no where, they've never went away, they're still here and still great.

[@devilsoffspring5519]

Yes they are, but they aren't needed for gaming, general stuff, and even playing music. I built an AM4 system a while ago with cheap Realtek audio right on the motherboard (Gigabyte Aorus Elite B550 AX V2) and am very impressed with how good the cheap sound chip is. It's very, VERY good. And cheap! It's already there and works great. If adding a sound card improved my computer's performance then I'd consider it, but why buy a sound card when you can put the same money into a better CPU?

[@mrtwinky2007]

@@devilsoffspring5519 I had the asus b350 prime plus and the msi b550-a mother boards and tried their onboard audio compared to the creative sound blaster zxr i had i also previously owned the z and zx before getting the zxr and compared the onboard audio on the am3+ board i had at the time, I now have the asrock x670e pg lightning and the creative sound blaster ae9 and the sound cards have always beat the onboard audio I also have logitech z906 5.1 speakers If you don't have good speakers or headphones the improvement to audio is less noticeable but if you pair high end audio equipment (speakers or headphones) with a cheap onboard audio or and a high end sound card the improvement is instantly extremely noticeable. sounds cards i've owned over the years personally creative audigy2 zs creative xfi xtreme gamer creative z zx zxr creative ae9

[@sayingnigromakesyoutubecry2647]

​@@devilsoffspring5519so, why would op need a sound card?

[@devilsoffspring5519]

@@sayingnigromakesyoutubecry2647 Possibly to have a wider range of inputs available? If he records music for example then he'd have a sound card or possibly an audio interface.

[@vermilion7777]

@@sayingnigromakesyoutubecry2647 Are you kidding? After my Xonar Exxence didn't wasn't supported anymore, I tried onboard sound for a week, till I bought a AE-9 with 4 Bursons. The ESS Saber 9038 makes music so much more rich, it's absolutely amazing. Nothing compared to this cheap Realtek junk.

[@snakeface5652]

External sound cards aren't needed at all, but I actually recommend having one... I was surprised at the difference between my PCs built in sound card and a cheap Focusrite interface.

[@corvisanatares408]

Having a cheaper external processor is great. Isolates a lot of noise from the overall system, adds a lot of features, and allows you to control audio quality a lot more.

[@stevehewitt8791]

My external let's me plug in all sorts of synths and samplers without having to bend down to the pc (nightmare lol). Yeah the sound difference & latency is good :)

[@corvisanatares408]

@@stevehewitt8791 I have my system set up more as a broadcast station, allowing many analog and digital audio connections for different hardware and software. I have about 70 channels of I/O currently. A very nice thing with external interfaces is that they are pretty easy to scale up if you need more.

[@stevehewitt8791]

@@corvisanatares408 Absolutely. 70 channels - nice! That sounds a headache to manage, I've got llike 10 lol. Now I want an upgrade haha

[@NowakP]

"Aren't needed" is relative. You don't really need them for listening to music, I couldn't work without one for low-latency recording and mixing music ;)

[@pgplaysvidya]

any of you around way back when you played Doom shareware version with integrated PC speakers? when my parents bought our first computer it didn't come with a sound card, so it was a BIG DEAL when we eventually upgraded to one. I could finally listen to E1M1 in glorious 16 bit audio

[@TheXev]

I remember playing around with the PC speaker audio. I can't imagine having to use that as my old audio source. I was lucky in that my 486 came with an SB16.

[@Fifury161]

Yep - still recall how I spent £119 on a SB16!

[@HauntedCorpseGaming]

@@Fifury161 I recall being in awe when I played Wolfenstein 3D on a PC and the enemies actually SAID WORDS... Mind blowing.

[@chaos.corner]

I had the Gravis Ultrasound. It was pretty sweet for Doom. Much better than the SB16.

[@seanc.5310]

Used to rock out to doom through a Roland MT-32 Synth and nothing sounded better!

[@Taorakis]

There is not a single sound sample in the whole video. Not even a "what did the PC Speaker actually sound like" for the younger audience.

[@BugLocc]

@@pygmalion0451 what? Can't hear it over this guy talking

[@esecallum]

Copyright

[@billybobjoe198]

@@esecallum Ahh yeah, classical music and its damn copyright.

[@davidskidmore3442]

@@billybobjoe198 In this case, the author of the 'arrangement' of that piece, 'for IBM PC Speaker', could indeed make a copyright claim.

[@glossymouse7712]

​​@@davidskidmore3442who the fuck would care enough to enforce copyright for 1982 PC speaker sound demos in 2020?

[@icanhaskpop1239]

I've been building gaming machines for over 20 years, and I currently have a SoundBlaster SBX Pro sound card in my gaming rig because it sounds FAR better than ANY on-board audio solution, hands down.

[@pensivepenguin3000]

No it doesn’t. Placebo effect. Even on board audio these days as capable of high sampling rates

[@MrMoo272]

@@pensivepenguin3000 Just because you have 192khz/32bit file and an onboard processor that can handle it, doesn't mean it will sound as good as a dedicated card that is full of filter caps and higher quality DAC's for each channel. Also, just because you can't hear the difference between a 320MP3 and a 96/24 FLAC file doesn't mean everyone else is experiencing a placebo. It's not just about the soundcard, processor or speakers. Its about the whole package. £20 speakers will sound the same whether you're playing a 320mp3 or a hi-res flac file but play a 320mp3 on a set of decent speakers and it will sound better than the hi-res on the crap speakers. Play a hi-res file on those good speakers and you'll notice the difference between 320mp3 and 96/24 FLAC. The returns in sound quality diminish beyond 96/24, you may hear a slight increase in quality if you're using high quality speakers but its minimal enough for it to not be worth the extra file size.

[@pensivepenguin3000]

@@MrMoo272 🥱

[@gadz00ks]

I use a SoundBlaster too. Onboard sound is always low on mid-range and bass to me. Also, onboard sound it always going to be the cheapest thing they could get. You're not buying a mobo for it's sound.

[@lukehinkle9614]

I remember playing Alone in the Dark on a computer with no sound card. Sounded like an Atari game but with at the time cutting edge graphics.

[@explorer9049]

lol, good times with pc speaker beeps playing epic pinball but pinball fantasies actually made full use of that thing somehow.

[@pw6002]

« Alone in the Dark », wonderful game that inspired « Resident Evil » amongst others...

[@iamnobody8]

People basically are playing like this nowadays

[@Th1nk1n6]

Best 90's game.

[@archxcr1tical847]

I just download some extra sound when I need

[@pugo7925]

is that from the same place you get your RAM? did it come with RGB?

[@flameshana9]

@@pugo7925 The 2GB of sound I downloaded did not come with rgb. Won't be shopping there again.

[@pugo7925]

@@flameshana9 what a scam!

[@android-user]

@@pugo7925 Just download more CPU fool

[@dekeonus]

I know you jest, but the last soundcard I bought needed a separate download (with proof of purchase) for the dolby digital live / dts connect addin. Until I had the addin installed my DD amp and speakers were stereo only. I literally downloaded extra sound

[@kenomedenbach5118]

I picked up a EVGA Nu Audio card recently and it absolutely blows away the Crosshair VI Hero's integrated SupremeFX audio (which is considered pretty good for on-board audio). It doesn't have to hide from external DACs either (in the same price range). And I personally don't like having another wall-powered box (bus-powered isn't gonna cut it for high-impedance headphones) sitting on my desk, so I love this card.

[@VPXM2012]

Got one myself for audio work. I agree, blows any "realtek" to dust.

[@michaelgeyer7736]

Bought one on sale from EVGA. My motherboards SPDIF wasn't processing surround and the Sounblaster software was shite! I was floored by the massive improvement in sound quality and now I finally have actual 5.1!

[@deathbornium]

Wait there is actual difference? I mean I am using a sound card more for a joke since I found a Soundblaster Live (like on the thumbnail) and yeah might as well utilise these pci ports on my MB. But I didn't think that modern sound cards are that much better. Most people just recommended me USB DACs.

[@photonboy999]

@@deathbornium , EVERYTHING in the loop must be great to have great audio. The audio music or video source. The hardware processing the audio. Then the speakers driving the audio. You also need time to adjust since we are prone to dislike changes so better audio might not be obvious until you listen for a while then switch back... but assuming you have a great FLAC audio file then what you can expect from a superior sound card is better sound separation making you hear things you didn't hear before, less muffling possibly, superior bass (low frequency) if your subwoofer can show it off etc... plenty of my music sounds the same to me comparing an inferior to superior sound solution but some of my music sounds way better simply because it's capable of sounding better... also, most music is created intentionally for the limits of EAR BUDS so isn't ideal to show off a good range

[@VPXM2012]

@@photonboy999 well put 👍

[@jima1135]

"a Far Cry" (3:05) -- Yeah, I had to install a sound card to play Far Cry 3 when it came out because the sound would stutter and freeze my PC.

[@Aluze]

"as you can tell, the speaker didn't sound that great" I can;t hear it cause you don't shut up for a second. BREATHE, man

[@guywithaname5408]

I didn't even realise it was playing in the background...

[@asou679]

I feel like the volume level on the Bach sound is set too low making it hard to hear above his voice.

[@DrHiplop1]

This is an editing problem not him lol

[@dekadens]

Damn wtf is this? Can yOu English?

[@jaronmarles941]

@@DrHiplop1 It is if he didn't shut up during a demonstration. That was the case

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Commodore 64 had a built-in sound chip, the SID, since 1982.

[@buddyclem7328]

Hi. My name is _Sam,_ the Software Automatic Mouth, for your _Commodore 64_ computer! I could _always_ do *lots* of _amazing things!_

[@TheUtuber999]

To be fair, the SID was a synthesizer, whereas the Sound Blaster could also process sampled audio... like the Paula chip on the Commodore Amiga.

[@lurkerrekrul]

@TheUtuber999 - Actually, the SID chip could do a decent job of playing back samples in the right hands. I once had a program that played a few seconds of "Slow Ride" which was crystal clear. Unfortunately, that's all there was room enough in memory for, which was the main stumbling block to using samples on the C64. Check out the game Slimey's Mine, which uses sampled speech during the game. :)

[@TheUtuber999]

@@lurkerrekrul I've played Kennedy Approach, so I know what you're referring to.

[@fourdee4d]

Confirmed by Jesus (us -a) at year 0. Nigel knew his corners. If only a Gremlin could assist us today. Merry xmas? I love you.

[@veeraldogra5684]

I always assumed that people who even cared about internal sound cards back in the day, just moved to external DAC/AMP setups.

[@c0llym0re]

99.9% did.i think this video goes to younger people to know about the bits and bytes around sound on a Pc.

[@ShortHandedNow]

Cost still favors internal cards in the sub $200 dollar range. An AE-5 will compete with a Schitt stack (IMHO sounds better) and cost quite a bit less.

[@TheXlen]

DAC+AMP is not a solution, it is only better than the alternative, we need companies to bring back Hardware Accelerated Audio, I have enough of this shit with digital audio

[@Patrick73787]

My Sound Blaster ZxR has seen 4 generations of GPUs so far. It is currently plugged next to my 2 RTX 2080s SUPER NVLinked.

[@Patrick73787]

Most DACs can't do true 5.1/7.1 surround and the ones that do cost an arm and leg.

[@petercofrancesco9812]

It's amazing how long it took to get sound right and even now I'm dealing with a sound issue with recording Zoom through OBS. The drivers and the way they interact with the microphone and sound for virtual applications such as Zoom can often be a problem.

[@Yggdrasil42]

I still think back fondly to my Gravis Ultrasound.

[@jackburton6330]

and the gamepads you could get with it

[@PiesliceProductions]

Gus MAX had totally noiseless mic input. I had SB Live afterwards and it was unusable to record anything because of excessive ground noise it added to everything.

[@MySparkle888]

I'm still rocking a Sound Blaster!

[@aretard7995]

same (SB Live!, non-5.1, X-Gamer or Platinum)

[@ZILtoid1991]

The original 8 bit one?

[@javierortiz82]

I still have a Live 5.1 from 2002, all hail the gameport.

[@mjo0odii]

Me too It sound better

[@random_n]

I'd probably still have an SB Live if it weren't for PCIe and the absence of 64-bit kX drivers. The flexibility that the DSP manager allowed in kX was unbelievable.

[@purpulse]

James is really good at this. We need more of him!

[@W0ND3RB0Y1]

Still lacks the socks and sandals..

[@Dennzer1]

Except for the part here he didn't tell us the differences between quality modern DACs and sound cards like the EVGA Nu Audio.,

[@W0ND3RB0Y1]

@@Dennzer1 why would he anyhow?

[@Dennzer1]

@@W0ND3RB0Y1 why make any youtube video?

[@W0ND3RB0Y1]

@@Dennzer1 Out of pure interest or to make money, obviously... But why would he need to compare a DAC with that specific soundcard?

[@willbodine9544]

1:45 Homeboy sounds like a "groan tube" from the 90's. Real throwback. Excellent video.

[@kenneththrash4002]

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

[@balqisizham9601]

IRQ 5, DMA 1. Ms Dos

[@tankermottind]

IRQ 7 is a better choice for a Sound Blaster under DOS as some games are hard-coded to expect it.

[@jeremylindemann5117]

aaaand silence

[@madjackgamingandfitness498]

I remember hearing that new myth. That onboard audio had become good enough that you don't need one. Dead wrong. The aorus 7 x470 mb was said to have the best onboard audio. A cheap sound card 34$ I ordered 2 months later reminded me what I had been missing.

[@ItsFrostyRages]

How hard is it to install a sound card??

[@madjackgamingandfitness498]

@@ItsFrostyRages not hard. Just match the pci port and install the software.

[@ItsFrostyRages]

. i kinda have a old motherboard so idk

[@0wner03]

what sound card did u buy

[@madjackgamingandfitness498]

@@0wner03 creative sound blaster audigy. It takes a bit of tweaking to get your sound preference I should add but it feels so much better.

[@Elkdog]

I was using the onboard audio in my new pc for a while and turned on my old pc that had a sound blaster x-fi and it was noticeably wayyy better sounding than the realtek. I don't have a slot for it on my new pc so I got an external usb Sound Blaster X-Fi HD. Very happy with it.

[@Tony-cf7cp]

I'm curious of what motherboard you have ?

[@leexgx]

Not just the clear audio, x-fi ae5 here for sound enhancements and get banned off more servers ,, as the old pci-e x-fi fatality was effectively broken due to vista new driver model drivers worked ish but buggy (bsod crashes) and sound enhancements didn't really work any more witch creative didn't want to fix or couldn't without a new sound card hardware (witch was the ae5 and other USB sound cards they sold)

[@Elkdog]

@@Tony-cf7cp I have an HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop 690-0040. Their website calls it the "Sunflower" motherboard.

[@mesmacat]

I starting using an external DAC (Audioengine D1) on my gaming rig a couple of years ago. It's one of those things that definitely makes the gaming experience richer, especially in games with more subtle sound design, though decent speakers are needed to take advantage of this. It is is of course also great for music and movies but - like trying to go back to 1080p after gaming in 1440p - I really noticed the difference when returning to using the on board sound on the motherboard ... as I did when I was away from home for a while and using someone else's computer. Sound just seemed flat and thin compared to what I was used to and I kept turned up the volume looking for more (which didn't help in the least :) ).

[@leonardobarrera3622]

When you buy a $200+ soundcard and couple it with $15 speakers

[@Dennzer1]

LOL. Thank you ... "On board audio is just as good as sound cards. Trust me.".... Damn idiots.

[@MotorDanko]

Well, i use a SBZ with Z337 from logitech... it just sounds A LOT BETTER than the integrated from the Z390-A... so... maybe 15$ speakers will sound better too..

[@movement2contact]

Yeah, comments here seem to be full of such people...

[@MotorDanko]

@Predator Ex get a cheap SBZ

[@MotorDanko]

@Predator Ex It surely is.. it definitely is ... my Z390-A have crystal sound 3 and my X299-E have supreme FX.. and in both i have a SBZ that i found cheap on second hand market... they improve A LOT the audio quality, even with cheap speakers or headphones... (i use logitech 337 speakers and Logitech g430 headphones...)

[@mathieupaquette2259]

I made the test between my motherboard (asus rampage) and my xonar essence STX audio. Saying the STX's audio is better is a major understatement... It's literally night and day! People just accepted bad audio over the years I guess.

[@Dennzer1]

You are of course, right. People in the PC world mostly pretend that there is no difference, while never dreaming of saying that about on board video vs dedicated graphics cards. then they all pat each other on the back like peacocking fools.

[@vnyggi621]

@@Dennzer1 nah they plug their gaming headset into both and hear no difference, gueas why

[@Dennzer1]

@@vnyggi621 Literally no one does that and hears that, unless the "gaming" headset is a piece of trash. Which is the case if they are claiming "no difference". Lol

[@NullifidianYT]

Enjoy their useless half shield that made for marketing and doesn't block shit!

[@thescandalchannel]

@@Dennzer1 or you take the "gaming" headset from beyerdynamic^^ (or dt 700) i have mine since around 4 years or so. the first mmx 300 and yes, its even night and day difference betwen x-fi titanium and xonar essence stx II. the mmx 300 is also way over the senheiser pc360 i used befor ;). and even my new x570 mobo cant keep up to the "old" xonar essence stx II^^

[@Iriseon]

Here’s a topic for the future: redo this video and actually talk about modern sound cards and DACs

[@Dennzer1]

Wait. That would be dangerously close to being informative and entertaining. Can't have that.

[@MjkL1337]

honestly i just want a cheap replacement sound card for my mother board (got fried up) that is compatible with windows 10... every thing is so damn expensive if you're not using vista or windows xp

[@Dennzer1]

@@MjkL1337 Get a Creative PCIe sound card.

[@H-77]

I would be surprised if anyone at LTT is qualified to talk about DACs/ADCs or (especially) the entire sound card. I'd hazard a guess that maybe 1% of the people watching this video understand what harmonic distortion actually is.

[@Dennzer1]

@@H-77 Then they should not even make this video, much less the one I talked about them making.

[@bastiaan0741]

I still own one of my first ISA sound cards, collecting dust in the attic. Ah, the days of configuring interrupts...

[@sky173]

Awesome video. My first sound card was the Gravis Ultrasound. It was the best sounding card for it's time although not very compatible. It could be a pain to setup if you didn't understand computers during that time period.

[@RichHeimlich]

Don't even get me started with this. hehe. There were better sounding cards (See Multisound and Sound Canvas). What gave the GUS some elbow room was the onboard RAM and its cheap cost. That cheapness ultimately was its undoing -- that and a marketing arm that bent the truth so far that it alienated them from the very publishers they were courting.

[@sky173]

@@RichHeimlich That's true. I almost forget about those. thx for the reminder.

[@RichHeimlich]

@@sky173 No problem. Neither was exactly inexpensive which is why they often go unmentioned. I'd just hate to see them disappear into oblivion entirely.

[@ultraindigo]

Oh man, I am not sure what soundcard my PC had back in the day but by damn was it hard to get old DOS game's sound to work on the Windows 98 rig. Often times it would sound underwater or would crash and make an absolutely awful, distorted, chugging noise; But when I did get the audio to work it was absolutely fantastic, often times much better than a lot of other sound card demos I can find here on youtube. I wish I knew what sound-card it was because I had never heard Doom music sound as good as it did. EDIT: I went searching around and found the Roland Sound Canvas SC-155 kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpionIGMppaWqpI It sounds exactly like how DOOM's music would when I would play it back in the day and would also make a lot of DOS games sound amazing but it was definitely not what was playing my music.

[@cruikshank]

GUS was popular with musicians for Midi and early digital multitrack recording. I used a Roland Sound Canvas Daughter board first on a SB 16+ card and then a Turtle Beach PCI card. The joystick ports connected to Midi boxes.

[@bluebirdsigma]

I remember when for every single game I had to check and set up the ADR 240 IRQ 5 DMA 1 values...

[@spork8655]

Welcome to Hell.

[@TheOriginalNCDV]

I remember when it was 220/7/1....depending on how you configured the jumpers on the card.

[@TheUtuber999]

Yep, almost universally Address 220, IRQ 5 or 7 and DMA 1.

[@nl817]

I have a soundblaster pci-e card, and I won't dare use my evga onboard audio ever again. phenomenal difference in quality.

[@jackburton6330]

Yes. This guy is smoking crack. A dedicated soundcard is better in more than 1 way almost always.

[@BigDish101]

Not to mention the ASIO support.

[@Blerpa]

I have the soundblaster Z, internal PCI-E one. Dear lord, this guy sounds like he knows nothing. I agree with you about the difference.

[@telengardforever7783]

After getting the Sound Blaster AE-5Plus, I could never go back to motherboard audio. Even in idle, the Sound Blaster is better: no hissing or random electrical noise. Now that I have seen the light, I sometimes wish I splurged and got the AE-7. Oh well. the AE-5 is just fine and will last me till the PCIe bus is obsolete.

[@stevenv2190]

You have a sound card. Still using a 2.x speaker system? not many 5.x/7.x COMPUTER speakers available.

[@Havlock]

One new area I could see sound cards slip into in is offloading 3D positional audio calculations from the CPU for VR games. Sound cards already did this for a number of games in the past, but for VR games it’d be even more beneficial.

[@billybobjoe198]

This would be good. A sound card using real time ray tracing to properly distort audio in 3d space. 3d audio has been around for ages but has basically be crap the entire time.

[@stefanl5183]

@@billybobjoe198 " A sound card using real time ray tracing to properly distort audio in 3d space. " That's basically what Aureal did with A3d 2.0 and their Vortex 2 chip. Unfortunately, Creative labs killed them with lawsuits and buried the technology.

[@AlexisyFR]

It's pretty much correct, but only the Realtek ALC 1050 chipsets and the latest 1220 are decent enough for 50$+ headphones and speakers, anything more ancient will noticeably degrade output and input audio quality.

[@MCOlangotang]

The 1220 on my Carbon B450 AC is amazing. NO interference whatsoever.

[@woooweee]

@@koenigsforst_ It is if you know what you are doing, I don't take porta pro types seriously.

[@Rentta]

That depends on load on your system. It was tested quite recently that relatively heavy loads still have big affect on onboard audio quality

[@ms3862]

I have 1220 and when I plug headphone into audio jack on PC it makes crackling noises

[@fanofCOH]

Audio is just as important as graphics imo, in a lot of games good sound gives you a serious edge! Also enjoying Freddie Mercury and Joplin as if in the room with you is an incredible experience.

[@spineshivers]

Freddie. Much Queen fan.

[@marisakirisame867]

I've ever played Mystic Square and it was better with FM than my homemade PCM

[@threeone6012]

I run 2 sound cards in SLI. System can play any game at max volume.

[@PinakKashyap42]

😂

[@lloydsab]

“Dont think their development is totally neglected, After all you can get them with RGB” HAHAHA

[@Scorpius165]

Where did sound cards go? - To the computers of people who actually care about high quality audio.

[@Someone7089]

Most people that want good audio use external DACs and amps not sound cards

[@BigDish101]

Yep. I require a ASIO compatible card to use in Adobe Audition for live effects.

[@Scorpius165]

@@vlc-cosplayer I see that there is a smug person who thinks s/he knows how sampling frequency works. Sampling frequency is NOT "hearing frequency". It is there to have a range within which we basically try to minimize errors and distortions. So, actually, yes, sampling frequency beyond 22 kHz DOES matter, in fact, do you think that the standard musical CDs would have sampling frequency of 44 kHz if it was as unnecessary as you suggest? If you can't hear a difference between 22 and 44 kHz sampling then I have bad news for you... (and yes, beyond 44 the difference is smaller but it's still there, if you actually bother to have good headphones).

[@BigDish101]

@@vlc-cosplayer Mathematically impossible for there to be a difference. FLAC is basically a WAV with live ZIP/RAR/7Z type compression.

[@dannyallround]

i use a soundcard for the RCA output (monitor speakers)

[@I86282]

I think Linus was mad that someone didn't mentally prepare him for that listening experience.

[@isaac6560]

Well they did tell him people cried while listening to these monsters.

[@fourdee4d]

:)

[@Deltaboi4ever]

Actually this was a script I sent in when I applied for a job

[@mal2ksc]

They became "audio interfaces" and moved upmarket, because what ships with most hardware really is good enough for most people.

[@Headcase0570]

Back abouit 10-15 years onboard sound had terrible grounding, producing a constant humming noise coming from the speakers. Glad that issue got resolved.

[@spork8655]

Aw, they're still around for people who actually care about sound. I had interference issues with my onboard audio I couldn't solve so I got an EVGA nu audio. It solved my problem and it sounds great! I have pretty good speakers on my desk along with a set of Shure SE846 IEMs, and they sound INCREDIBLE through my PC now. Absolutely silent sound floor, powerful bass, super clear highs, the works. External DAC/amps certainly can be good too, but I like EVGA's customer support and I'm trying to keep clutter down. If you don't have nice speakers or good headphones, you probably won't notice an upgrade, but if you do, or if you experience interference, you owe it to yourself to get an upgrade.

[@Houstonruss]

That dead soundfloor is super nice. I've had a xonar dx for a few years and it still sounds better than the rampage vi extremes onboard audio.

[@c0wg0d]

Too bad the Nu Audio doesn't support 5.1 analog. I would have bought one if it did.

[@benjaminhavens7266]

As an audio engineer, I'd recommend just getting an audio interface if you need better audio than your motherboard can provide you, especially if you plan on doing any sort of recording, because sound cards are not designed with professional audio applications in mind.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

It sucks that Firewire isn't really a thing anymore on computers... that was perfect for Audio interfaces. But then again since USB 3.0 connections now don't need to pass through the CPU anymore (unlike USB 1.1 and USB 2.0) and also allows higher transfer rates, it should be perfect for modern Audio interfaces. Especially since it can be powered through the same connection anyway.

[@H-77]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 The crappiest part is that there are still a lot of very good firewire interfaces around that are being made obsolete because of the decision that "firewire isn't necessary".

[@robertgisthebest]

​@@H-77 You can still use firewire in modern computers. I myself still run a bunch of M-Audio gear through a pcie firewire card. Edit: I paid £5 for a used M-Audio firewire solo, much cheaper than buying something like a scarlet 212, even if you factor in buying a firewire card.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@@H-77 true. That's why i make sure i still have firewire access on most of my computers. Especially my Thinkpads where a simple 6 pin firewire Cardbus addon helps, if there's only 4 pin firewire or no firewire at all.

[@WilliamWendland]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I still use firewire with a PCIe Firewire card. Works great. good Latency, and no shared bus with dedicated PCIe lanes.

[@RangKlos]

Need to start a trend of bringing back sound cards to PCs

[@lawnfascist4890]

I've thought about it, but I just don't know if I want to commit a slot to a sound card. However, I do have 2 machines, so I still am thinking about putting 1 in the 2nd machine and tinkering with it some.

[@AiRJacobs]

Part of the problem is that most people either aren't aware of sound cards or they are like James and think onboard is fantastic. If only they could hear audio from a sound card... Also, there are still many new sound cards releasing every other year and they're fantastic.

[@sacordovaplata]

I'd love to see a Focusrite Scarlett internal PCI sound card version with its accompanying 3.5" front I/O like those old Soundblaster X-FI Platinum. Pros: Cleaner look Uncluttered Desktop One less cable to worry about No USB overhead/latency Cons: No longer portable PC cases no longer host 3.5" front I/O

[@happysmash27]

​@@lawnfascist4890 For me, there was a free old-style PCI slot just sitting there on my motherboard that was perfect for an Asus Xonar DG (especially since my motherboard has no built-in audio), as few other cards of any kind seemed to support at all. It's too bad the card is no longer in stock, because I would definitely recommend it for budget builds using old Xeon processors on server motherboards.

[@bobbarker3248]

nah, my wallet doesn't want to pay for more things

[@samljer]

@0:01 there was a time if you wanted sound at all you needed a sound card.

[@Tryh4rd3rr]

Why do I get timed comments as top comments?

[@VelociJX]

@@Tryh4rd3rralgorithm checks every little thing you do, whenever you are scrolling through comments do you happen to click on comments that have timestamps on ? most likely reason, I did this on 4 new YT accounts, 2 without clicking on those comments and 2 were I did so, the 2 I did click on kept having top comments with timestamps, try it yourself if you wanna see what I’m talking about.

[@serjoka77]

You completely missed the most important point of having audio cards: multiple audio channels, low latency and high res audio rather than the standard 16bit 44khz.

[@smklvr69]

Not sure what you're running but I can run every format including 16 and 24-bit at full range from 32kHz all the way up to 176.4kHz from a non-seperate audio sound card through my motherboard and my graphics card HDMI interface including encoding for DTS-X(Atmos) DolbyDigital DolbyD plus DTS-HD Dolby TrueHD So the importance of having a sound card is null and void unless you're wanting to run separate audio outs when you can get the same effect by simply using either the 3.5mm audio Jack's per channel or simply run your HDMI through your entertainment system like I have myself in a 7.2.2 full cinema setup all the while using it as my workstation PC. 😁

[@kaldogorath]

My low-mid tier motherboard from 2013 can handle 24bit audio up to 192kHz and all of the Dolby and DTS suite of formats. It can support at minimum 8 channels, but perhaps more.

[@smklvr69]

@@kaldogorath you're getting the 192 and the 8 channel from your graphics card as well when previewing device properties. You'll have to go to your device itself the dac or chipset then look at the properties.

[@wolfhunter1232]

@@smklvr69 Well, you score a own goal with your comment. Your 7.2.2 cinema setup works as an external soundcard if it is connected via HDMI. The audio chip on the mainboard converts the digital signal into an analog signal. Since HDMI is still a digital signal. There is no need to convert the digital audio into analog audio. @Nick Miller Well, to be able to produce this sort of audio doesnt say that it will sound good. A normal production car wont perform good in racing aswell (argh, there may be better comparisons :)).

[@smklvr69]

@@wolfhunter1232 of course I have it hooked up through HDMI to my surround amplifier. But my board has 2 chips, on for digital audio through the onboard HDMI interface as well as a digital to analog convert chip for the 3.5 Jack's. But I run mine through my RTX graphics card for sound and not analog or HDMI on board. 👍

[@AgnostosGnostos]

During mid 90's and even late 90's nearly all motherboards didn't integrate a sound card. Good sound cards like those from Creative Soundblaster were expensive And their cost was 1/3 or half of an affordable motherboard. With Windows 95 many things with hardware were simplified but before many games or multimedia programs demanded specific sound cards. After 2000 many really good motherboards had integrated sound card, graphic card, network card or even a wifi card. During the era of windows 3.11 only the card for the floppy disk was intergraded. For using an IDE hard disk you needed an extra IDE card inside the computer. In the case of Linux during late 90's only very specific sound cards, printers, modems, network cards were compatible. With Windows XP everything was even more simple and with the advent of USB every internal card could be replace with an external USB device.

[@darkstorminc]

My sound blaster wasn't expensive.

[@norcicoso]

On board audio is like on board graphics, crap!

[@ChristopherCraven]

2001 rang, they want their tazo's back.

[@Pidalin]

On my old motherboard with P45 chipset audio was ok but then I switchet to haswell Z87 chipset and audio quality was so terrible that I had to immediately buy separated sound card. I want build new PC soo so I hope toady integrated sound cards are better, but I don't believe that, that's not ho physic works. :-D

[@SireDragonChester]

RealTek has held back sound imo. There been very little innovation for sound in games. RealTek has on almost all motherboard for last 10/15+ yrs. creative/sound blaster has been kinda dead for while. Hate RealTek so much. Yes also HDMI audio on graphic card has also kinda killed sound cards too. I hope with next gen consoles. Them having improved 3D audio. Maybe we’ll see devs and games start improve audio for games and for pc ports again. I kinda miss the old sound blaster 16/32 days haha.

[@Nord72]

Creative has its own karma, after killing E-mu and Ensoniq because the profit...

[@Jeff-xy7fv]

4:05 - Enthusiasts... and broadcasters. I'm an online radio broadcaster, and I still need a separate sound card (Creative Audigy Rx) for my broadcast setup to work properly.

[@NathanOakley1980]

I use a sound card.....just sounds better.

[@AbrasiveCarl]

Sounds like a sound solution.

[@HPijl666]

This... My Xonar DX is still way better than the onboard chip of my Z390 board. Not to mention the skips/pops with the onboard....

[@CheshireTomcat68]

Now with RGB :-))))))))))))

[@eirikheggelund]

@@HPijl666 WAY better? I doubt that. I am not able to hear much difference at least.

[@dst5850]

Why not use an external dac/amp?

[@cowboyhank456]

Still in love with my Xonar STX, no way in hell I'm ever going back to onboard

[@nicholaswoolsey1853]

My STX is the only component to survive through 4 PC iterations. Everything eventually gets replaced, and I have found that on-board audio has gotten noticeably better, but you couldn't pay me to go back to using it.

[@systemhalodark]

"Beep boop son, beeeep boop." -TF2 Soldier

[@cathat9622]

Rip Rick May

[@didibiwi6150]

When I first saw soundcard in my dad's old PC I was like "WTH is that?" And my dad explained that before integrated audio there was separate sound cards...

[@TheBigLevange]

Sound card definitely improved the audio quality in my headphones! AE-5 here, though RGBs are not plugged in haha. Onboard is good enough or if you are using cheapo sound or budget building, but anything good benefits greatly from a superior DAC (be it internal or external).

[@cxmusicofficial]

MMX 300 and Edifier S550 here. My AE-5 is also waaaay better.

[@TomeczekH]

When you DO music/sound, you care about ASIO support, SNR, minimal stable latency and sometimes about quality of inputs. Something that onboard audio still struggles at.

[@H-77]

If you want to use the audio input as a measurement tool, the onboard audio is even more useless.

[@alexojideagu]

Yes Realtek chips have horrific latency with Asio

[@cremetoertchen0815]

I tried once producing audio without my sound card, it was a hot mess.

[@chrisschembari2486]

4:35 "After all, some have RGB." 😆 Sounds like some sound development.

[@H-77]

Onboard audio is still, by enlarge, crap. The noise floor is unacceptably high, it doesn't support particularly high sample rates, connector reliability is average at best and they don't support balanced (differential) inputs and outputs. Additionally, the line output on many sound cards is not hot enough to drive some low-sensitivity power amplifiers to full power. PCIe based sound cards can be excellent. The cards made by Lynx and RME are SOTA and will sound excellent with nearly invisible noise floors. The reason external DACs are recommended is that most companies making PCIe sound cards for under $500 have succumbed to consumer demands and are largely producing crap. A lot of sound cards have royally botched the analog section, which is the section that actually makes an audible difference.

[@MLWJ1993]

Exactly how do you need more then 196kHz sampling rate (especially for audio playback)? Beyond 44.1kHz lossless audio human ears can't distinguish a difference at all, heck any blind test shows 320kbps MP3 (an ancient format I might add) to lossless is an almost impossible process for the average person without a considerable amount of guessing. For recording & processing audio an external solution is probably necessary yes, but audio playback. Nope, unless your motherboard equals about 1% of the total price on your whole build which in that case you bought garbage.

[@carlwilliams3488]

Mark Jacobs I can hear the difference in audio quality between my surface 4 pro and the ASU’s xonar u2 plugged into it which I use when docked. When I’m djing my denon mc7000 is like night and day in a track for track comparison at any bitrate. At the end of the day the dacs in both devices are far superior to the cheap and basic Realtek devices and are physically separate to the motherboard and not subjected to em interference which I saw when testing with a doctor of electronics on his scope.

[@jamegumb7298]

@@MLWJ1993 Right, because RME makes such crap that the onboard is better. RME, for better mp3 production.

[@rebel7254]

by enlarge lol

[@jamespilcher5287]

By *and* large

[@Lukas-gn5yf]

0:46 "this means that you would be limited to just beeps and boobs" *I see this as an absolute win*

[@MLWJ1993]

Beeps can go, but please don't make the boobs go!

[@edferd100]

On board audio sounds fine until you connect the Creative AE-9...OMG. 😊👍

[@arwlyx]

True, upgraded to a Sound Blaster Z from the on-board on my Rampage IV Extreme and it's great.

[@vermilion7777]

@@arwlyx Noobs, the 90s want their sound card company back... Only the C-Media CMI878X rocks. Asus Xonar Essence STX/STX II for the win!

[@Hirnlego999]

Even AE-5 is transparent, if use direct mode. Creative Labs were kings of EAX, but that ultimately helped kill the technology as others only got inferior emulated versions of it

[@comensee2461]

I used soundcards throughout the 90s and 00s. The early ones had very limited amount of channels and could only play a certain amount of sounds at a time before getting more advanced by the 00s. By the 2010s soundcards became obsolete due to motherboard integrations, better software, and usb plugin headsets/sound controllers.

[@yensteel]

The Creative Audigy Platinum was such a coveted card a long time ago, when 4.1 and 5.1 speakers were gaining traction. And audiophile/gaming features such as ASIO and EAX were hot topics at the time. ^ ^

[@Nord72]

With the KX drivers it was very flexible (10k1, 10k2)

[@deusexaethera]

Sound cards didn't go anywhere. Newegg has an entire section of their website dedicated to them. Those of us who enjoy music without the hiss of background noise still use them.

[@lifehacker123]

Shawn Elliott it’s not only about the hiss. My sound card that I’ve bought years ago just sound much much better than the onboard one, especially with higher impedance headphones. The difference as others have stated here is just like night and day. Onboard cards just don’t have enough power to drive those headphones properly. They will be “loud enough” with onboard cards but they will however NOT sound good. The headphones will sound super flat on an onboard card. Only on my soundblaster card those high impedance headphones sound nice.

[@mtpstv94]

Um, what hiss?

[@deusexaethera]

@@lifehacker123: I only use headphones when listening to my FiiO portable music player; fortunately a pair of Sony "studio quality" earbuds are good enough in that context. When I'm sitting at my desk I use speakers, partly because no headphones can produce a soundstage as large as an actual room, and partly so I can still hear things happening around me so I don't get surprised by someone walking into my study.

[@lifehacker123]

@@deusexaethera Try open back headphones. I got some AKG ones back before they were bought by Samsung and they are awesome. I think they are called K701 or so.

[@deusexaethera]

@@lifehacker123: What would be the point of wearing headphones that let sound escape into the room? I might as well use speakers and enjoy not having something strapped to my head.

[@duothink]

I'm still using a dedicated sound cards in my desktop

[@sgtjarhead99]

Prior to the mid-2000s I think I upgraded my soundcard just as much as my graphics card. Going from my ISA base SB AWE > SB Live series > Aureal Vortex series > Audigy series > X-Fi series > all of the Cirrus logic based CS4624/CS4626 cards (TB Santa Cruz being a personal favorite), and even the Asus Xonar. The only I didn't like was the Philips’ Ultimate Edge. Sounded great, but the CPU overhead was huge compared to the other cards. These days, I don't see a need. On-board, especially with the premium motherboards, are just fine for my music and gaming needs. In fact, these days I put more value in the quality of my headphones than my audio device.

[@askhowiknow5527]

One day someone asked me where they could get a sound card and it dawned on me - where the hell did sound cards go!? Last time I was paying attention, they were there. I had a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and it was the bomb.

[@ElZamo92]

Lewis Johnson the disappeared because nobody wanted them. Integrated solutions are good enough in most cases and REALLY good in some, and external audio devices sound better and are more convenient.

[@fafski1199]

@@ElZamo92 The truth is, even though they sounded better (and they still do, even some of the old ones), most people instead opted to save money and use the onboard sound instead, when it had reached a point, that was 'good enough', for most people. Also, around this time, a lot of external DAC/AMP combo units started emerging and most of the people who required better quality audio, switched over from using cards, to them instead. Which was kinda a double whammy, to any soundcard manufacturer.

[@aLmAnZio]

@@ElZamo92 No, they dissappeared because of fucking Windows Vista and the new way Microsoft treated sound. Hardware sound accelleration was no longer supported, thus they siezed to have a function. No more hardware access meant that development in that tech slowed down to a crawl. Pre Vista sound cards had way better positional audio tech than we have today. Hopefully, the rise of VR might make it worth reconsidering for Microsoft, as Rift and Vive have had to develop work arounds that are not even close to how elegant the older systems worked. That, at Atmos. Atmos is basically what we had in games around 2000, sound that was produced in 3d space, then bounced around in 3d before rendered pr. channel by calculating speaker number and positioning in relation to 3d space. In todays tech, sound cards can only be sent channel information, they can't calculate anything themselves, as they are not allowed to by DirectX. So yeah, if sound cards still had the same head room, sound would have been a lot more complex than it is today.

[@mycosys]

The kind of people who bought a Turtle Beach now buy external - i have a MOTU myself.

[@FancyGeeks]

I love my Sound Blaster. it's way better than my onboard audio and it came with a pod that can accept two mics and two headphones and sit anywhere on my desk. I would only build a computer without one if I was on a tight budget.

[@darrenhirst9900]

You had a decent graphics card and poor audio. I did the same and bought a sound blaster and some creative speakers. Motherboard get audio chips from these companies so you have the soundcards built in now.

[@z0mb1e564]

"Don't think sound card development has been neglected, they now have RGB" rofl! As if that's ever going to be enough to get me to go through the hell of dealing with Creative's software ever again.

[@derangel9143]

ASUS and EVGA have good options as well. Creative is not the only, or best, player in the sound card game these days.

[@Shinypally]

I used to buy Creative Sound Blaster from the 16 or Pro version (can't remember exactly). It's nice to see somebody actually remembering when how and why things happened. After the Vista phase I though I would never need a new card, my last was SB Live!, but the motherboard slots were a hassle so I threw it away. After a long time I bought Fostex T50RP headphones and found out that I couldn't run them with onboard Realtek. I bought Asus STRIX SOAR PCI Express 7.1 which saved me hundreds of dollars for external amp and as a bonus I no longer heard the annoying ever present noise. It also helped - A LOT - with my Tiamat 7.1 sound quality. Conclusion: I think sound cards are not needed for people that are happy with what they have, however, once you have a pair of better headphones, especially with higher impendence, or you are annoyed by ever present the static noise, I suggest you buy a well-shielded sound card. It does make a difference and in the overall cost of the computer you are running, it's probably a negligible expense.

[@BarrowX]

Still on a Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty since 2006. Like the virtualized headphone surround sound.

[@dimz796]

I have that one, the Fatal1ty Champion. The only downside is the front panel module doesn't fit my case properly and the occasional static. PS: X-Fi Titanium (PCIe) Fatal1ty Champion

[@b3at2]

Gwynbleidd If it aint broke dont fix it.

[@Ilmattosulcolle]

SAME!!! X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Edition since 2006. I bought a motherboard that still equips old PCI slots just to be able to keep using it. Still rocking hard since then. And that frontal I/O is still a blessing.

[@leexgx]

Yep the virtualized headphones and more importantly creative positioning sound control (elevation control) so it turns 5.1 audio into stereo pinpoint positioning audio so you can very accurately work out where noises come from from any direction as well as above and below ( if you think that Dead Silence Perk in Call of Duty works think again, well if your walking normally/running any way) I used to get banned quite often on call of duty 4 old modern Warfare (so I used to start recording /record my games when I seen someone going into spctacte so I can get unbanned from my own recording when I submit it)

[@bronney]

Same card, ditched the Champion front panels for new case. I need it for ASIO and the lovely soundfonts for playing MIDI controllers. Don't think onboard can come close to that yet.

[@JO11190]

'Dont think progress got neglected! After all you can get new sounds cards with..RGB.' 😂😂😂

[@solkvist8668]

I just use an audio interface, since I do recording for music anyway. Sound cards are just limited audio interfaces to me

[@markifi]

it does seem like a waste to have a nice ESS Sabre DAC sitting there only ever being an output and nothing else

[@bucknaked31]

I use an RME Hammerfall DSP... I ain’t fucking around... ;)

[@H-77]

Cheap ones, but one might argue that something like a Lynx E22 isn't a "limited" interface at all. Beyond that, the mic pres in most audio interfaces are average at best.

[@bucknaked31]

Oscar Anderson Spot on! They’re pretty below average if you include the very high end mic pres. That’s why I like the digital only cards because you can upgrade your preamps as your need grows.

[@H-77]

@@bucknaked31 My choice would be to get the best converters I can. Companies like Lynx and Apogee have some nice offerings. Then I'd buy (or more realistically I'd design my own) much better mic preamps.

[@EstorilEm]

Oh man, I'll never forget my last build before high school - finally saved up enough for a Voodoo 3 3500, that blue box.. ahh I miss it. I was kinda an audiophile too (well, still am) so I saved up again for an AWE 64 Gold. Now I have a bunch of Macs lmao.

[@TheGunguy461]

0:52 talks over sound byte. "As you can tell, the speaker didn't sound all that great." I can't actually, because you were talking over it...

[@DrummerJacob]

Wow life must be tough for you.

[@TheGunguy461]

@@DrummerJacob Yes, that was the point I was trying to make while posting a joke. I'm so glad you got that.

[@Bangie]

Ain't gone nowhere iv still got a sound blaster Z

[@fish_bacon]

A man of culture I see..

[@TheNiteNinja19]

I got the Zxr model with the extra add in card. Then I parted out my computer and sold it a few years back. Nobody wanted the soundcards, so I threw them in my server, which has no speakers. Figured better in something than being tossed around in a box or drawer somewhere.

[@fish_bacon]

I can't stand this misinformation that onboards are just as good. They're simply not. Inferior sound quality, crap bass and Dolby/DTS decoding on movies and games is pathetic at best

[@Bangie]

Sound blaster z + logitech z5500 :)

[@lashyndragon]

ZxR gang 🙌

[@theclubinspector4424]

RGB such a top reason to buy a soundcard lol

[@Dennzer1]

Be honest. People would complain if that card did NOT have RGB. Either way, people will bitch and moan and crack stupid jokes.

[@skoczeks]

@@Dennzer1 aah yes, better sound quality thanks to RGB. Now you can synchronize psychodelic music with epileptic RGB blinking!

[@ThunderbolttheFox]

It's part of the reason I bought a SoundblasterX Ae-5. The main reason was the sound, but I also needed an internal RGB controller to give the inside of my case some oomf, so the Ae-5 gives me both sound and RGB controller in one package

[@Ethefake]

@@Dennzer1 i dont know if youre trolling or not

[@Dennzer1]

​@@Ethefake Try to keep up. Nu Audio card has RGB lighting. Some people complain about this. If EVGA decided NOT to include RGB lighting on that product, then other people would complain about that. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU 2 PEOPLE NOT GETTING?

[@sebbbi2]

To the same place where wifi cards, ethernet cards, USB cards and RAID cards went. Integrated to the motherboard. Math coprosessors, memory controllers and graphics processors got integrated to the CPU die. Most gaming PCs still have discrete graphics processors, but those are the exception. Memory has also been integrated to the CPU package in recent laptops such as MacBooks and forthcoming Intel Lunar Lake.

[@OmerTheGreatOne]

Still rocking a sound blaster titanium HD. This thing sounds so much cleaner than my onboard Asus maximus sound. I don't think i will let go of it until they keep supporting the software. 🤘🤘

[@efrainl]

Same here. Years old XFi Titanium HD still bringing it. I was looking for a replacement a few days ago, but now I am not so sure there IS one that'd justify a $150-200 USD investment. So, external? Well, I really wanted to like the SoundblasterX G6 over the AE-5, but I hate that it only has a single output (I need analog out for music and toslink for multichannel games/movies! bah). Schiit stuff looks amazing but I'd be losing the EAX/gaming positioning (is that still relevant?). I guess I'll just keep this one until it dies too.

[@theEskalaator]

@@efrainl I had Titanium HD as well, but Creative support really suck. Anyway I got AE5 for $50, so I'm rolling with that now. Drivers are still crappy, but at least they somewhat works.

[@OmerTheGreatOne]

@@theEskalaator i had no issues with my drivers. They updated them last year. I was shocked to find an update. So iam happy for now. I use it with hyperx alpha now.

[@hughdahand5711]

I am also still rocking one, it's now in it's 3rd PC. It sounds fantastic and last year when windows broke the drivers I found out just how much of a step down my onboard audio really is. I'm glad Creative fixed them, even if it is EOL now and won't be getting any new drivers if windows breaks them again.

[@theEskalaator]

@@OmerTheGreatOne Sorry it was only "X-Fi Titanium", no HD. It kinda worked, but their software was acting up since it was made for W7

[@Fatty420]

I didn't cry.

[@chairwood]

u better cry

[@hunteralexander9791]

U better cry

[@mose4540]

Fatty u better cry

[@Flintsmooth]

I remember getting a Yamaha sound card because it had the Yamaha synth sounds inside.

[@DrummerJacob]

You must not know anyone who creates music using DAWs.

[@r5LgxTbQ]

ah you must mean the joystick port card

[@teardowndan5364]

In the days prior to ATAPI CD-ROM, sound cards were also the most common way of attaching a CD-ROM over the Panasonic / MKE / SLCD interface.

[@jercos]

Joystick port? I believe you mean MIDI port.

[@NuffMan_]

@@jercos It was game/midi port. I still use soundcard only for it's gameport for my old steering wheel&pedals, still works in w10 even tho the wheel is made in 1997

[@R3ddyyg]

@@NuffMan_ Wait, what? A wheel from 97'? Whats that i'm curios

[@NuffMan_]

@@R3ddyyg it's an old thrustmaster.. idk about the model number

[@Zetharion1]

Onboard sound audio is at best a good enough solution for most users. For headphone users with decent cans, a sound card or USB DAC is still a must.

[@TheJarJarKinks]

Your version of decent is probably very different of the average user's version of decent.

[@privettoli]

Elaborate

[@TheXlen]

1)a 30$ sound card will annihilate mobo audio 2)Digital audio has never gotten close to HAA cards such as Aureal Vortex 2, even nvidia hasn't gotten near to wave-tracing features that Aureal offered 3)DAC is a digital audio converter that does just that, a proper sound card must do a lot more

[@hydzior]

DAC and AMP are the only things that matter. The rest is just a software and can be done by CPU.

[@TheXlen]

@@hydzior no and no, please google what hardware accelerated audio is capable of, like the tech demos from aureal vortex 2

[@MLWJ1993]

@@TheXlen capable off, requires the right inputs that 99% of modern programs don't have or use since it's not a standard & probably never will be due to everyone doing their own shit instead of agreeing on a standard. A soundcard is more of a headache to be honest with way too much incompatibilities due to everyone doing their own implementation... Sometimes just getting the driver to actually work is a long and strenuous task of itself. Getting a USB headphone with it's own build in DAC is the far superior less headaches option. Of course getting someone that dropped money on a soundcard to admit anything close to this is impossible, we all have to justify our purchases by making ourselves believe the cost was worth it & the difference is huge and all that...

[@TheXlen]

@@MLWJ1993 you don't understand what you're talking about. ofc the issue for a long time was that users couldn't install drivers and would call microsoft about it, but a proper sound card is the far superior option for any audiophile than DAC which simply does that converts signal from digital to analog...

[@MLWJ1993]

@@TheXlen of course I *do* know what I'm talking about, how else do I fucking despise any and all soundcards for their atrocious drivers that mess up between different programs because they weren't made to support manufacturer x... Having a standard for such things would make a huge fucking difference. But at this point in time just an external DAC is fine without the friggin driver hassle and software incompatibilities. At least onboard is supported properly.

[@J.Wick.]

First PC I ever built (2001-2002) I put in a SB Audigy 1....Man I loved that sound card....Such a clean sound it put out.

[@ToxikDnB544]

4:25 Linus looks like a cyberman... XD

[@TheSast]

What? Can't hear you!

[@FBIagentObama]

Atomic Skull Atomic Skull you sure? I believe he did *turrned* on captions

[@Dennzer1]

I get it. Because sound.

[@TRLC]

Captions... I see what you say, literally!

[@JokoJMC]

2019 where did sound card go? 2039 where did graphic card go?

[@JUSTDREAMFREE]

2039: they are both installed on the back of your head provided by Nvidia Ai dual nano chips.

[@XenoTravis]

2070: where did earth go?

[@JUSTDREAMFREE]

@@XenoTravis The Democrats open all borders and the drug cartel and terrorist factions took over the United States and then Red China along with Russia fought for control of where the White House used to stand, until they used nuclear weapons on each other and destroy the Earth! Any more questions?

[@TheJadeFist]

@@JUSTDREAMFREE Russia won't bother, and China will simply buy the land, they basically own half of the western seaboard in the US/ CAN, and large parts of Africa. Why go to war when you can simply write a check?

[@JUSTDREAMFREE]

@@TheJadeFist Agree 10,000 per cent!!

[@abates3747]

"Countdown"... a game that ran even on 286's in 1990 that had full speech/audio from the internal speaker, no sound card needed. amazing.