discrete sound card vs onboard quality

[mammo1789]

Hi guys I have asus rampage formula with ad1988 supreme fx2 sound onboard ( asus uses propriety card that's sits on pci e card ) I use windows 7 64 bit I have this pc for a long time ( in terms of pc years ) and I'm happy with the setup. I don't listen too much music I game sometime ( only driving simulations). In my very old pc i had audigy 2 zs audio card and because I moved to newer motherboard and cpu and doesn't had too much space. I left it behind. Today i had little spare time and space (i changed the analog tv card and satelite card with one combined ). I put audigy in and I downloaded the software from int ( I was surprised because i thought audigy is not supported in windows 7 64).


Tested with cd audio, dvd audio, mp3, games ( this is where discrete is really brilliant). I must say that I'm hearing sounds that i didn't hear with the onboard ( although the sh and cs high tones look more pronounced in supreme) and the bass is super clean and deep. I used it on my Sennheiser 518 headphones and on Logitech z5500 5.1 surround sound on both cards output was 24/96. I also recorded from marantz cassette deck in audacity 32 bit/96 and the record on audigy is much cleaner no noise and no background buzz ( again onboard seems more pronounces the high tones maybe eq thing but i adjusted it and its still stronger than on audigy maybe audigy is doing some compression or normalization not sure ). Eax in games is just scary.


I usually am skeptic about old equipment but do you guys think that discrete sound is still better than onboard sound ( or what's your opinion concerning listening and recording ). Is it possible that I'm experiencing placebo effect ( the barmen poising me with some bad bear tonight ) I'm in the late 30s so I'm not super sound sensitive teenager, but I can definitely tell the difference.

[jagabo]

The main difference between onboard sound and a good sound card is the analog section. It's an afterthought with most onboard sound. And it's on a motherboard with a bunch of digital signals to interfere with it.