2010-09-17, 01:18 AM
Skylit Wrote:Agreed. On board Realtek HD ALC 889 is pretty good, although an add on sound card would sound way less muffled with good monitors. If you plan on running cheap $10-20 USD 3w speakers then it simply isn't worth the extra cost because it's going sound like crap anyway.
I am not sure what kinda sound work you're doing, but on my home computer, I had no problem using the onboard sound card with a set of 10 years old speakers, the Creative cambride soundwork 4 points surround (WHICH I JUST BROKE THE CIRCUITRY BOARD AFTER MESSING AROUND - FML) for anything including gaming, watching movies, musics etc and I had no problem with any sorts of distortions or muffles.
Sometimes, I even hook my behringer mixer to try out some mixing etc on the onboard sound card, and still doing pretty well at getting clean sounds. As someone who spend quite a bit of free time on sound works, I still find that having an extra sound card (which I have 2, one my old computer, another in a box) is just for my luxury. The money you spent on the sound card could be used for a good set of headphone for gaming purposes and so that the neighbour dont try to snipe you at 3 am.
PS: I have been using Sennheiser headphones and they're somewhat above average for the prices. Still a proud owner of 2 pairs of HD202 which is quite awesome for gaming IMO.