As a hobbyist musician, the more you externalise these sorts of things, the more latency you create. A discreet, internal, soundcard is probably going to trump external DACs for a long time to come.
External DACs totally have their place, music playback, movies/shows. But for doing audio work, internal is the way to go.
As a professional musician and someone who works for a prominent Japanese electronic musical instrument company, I’m going to have to disagree.
Thunderbolt provides all the low latency of a PCIe interface with none of the drawbacks. I use an Antelope Zen Tour in my home studio and it is just amazing.
The systems I designed for work though use RME PCIe cards, but those systems aren’t in the hobbyist space.
I absolutely notice when a game defaults to a resolution with 60hz refresh rate. It’s not even so much a stutter or stall as it just feels “off” and then feels “normal” if I adjust the settings to 144hz.
Though I don’t notice this when playing a game that has fps capped to 60, as long as the monitor is refreshing at 144hz still.
I’ve also had a few ms of latency adjustment make the difference between frequently missing notes and being able to sustain long combos in guitar hero or similar rhythm games.
It’s subtle to the point where it’s difficult to measure objectively (if it’s even possible to measure something where subjectivity is built in like sensory processing), but based on those I think our temporal resolution is higher than 60 fps in certain cases.
Edit: Though I’m not sure I agree that the latency difference between an internal and external sound card will be very noticeable. I used a USB dual pre for gaming for years and never noticed anything off with it. I might try breaking it out again to see if it makes a difference in rhythm games.
Some of them have poor stability. I gave up on a Sound Blaster Audigy RX after it caused random crashes on two different Socket AM4 mainboards. I just got a 10 metre optical cable and a cheap DAC next to my reciever.
I suspect the industry is in a tailspin; the last players standing really don’t have to give a **** because the alternatives are onboard sudio or $$$$ pro cards.
I would not buy PCI audio stuff. Lots of power goes through the motherboard, which makes these prone to RF interference, especially if you have a rig that has high power draw.
Best to buy a external USB dac/amp. Either make sure that your mobo has a separate USB hub from the main ones (which some mobos might label them DAC), or a USB cable that isn’t rated for high voltage.
I have a Fiio DAC and i have no complaints.
But i dont have golden ears that can hear the difference between good dacs, excellent dacs etc.
Above a certain level, its good enough for me
I got a EK10 bc my old MSI motherboard had noticeably worse audio quality than my android phone/MacBook. The EK10 is totally fine for my usage (mostly just driving ATH-M50X’s)
I have a K7.
My only con with it is that the headphone jack doesnt cut the line outputs. So, i had to make an inline switch to mute my speakers for headphones only.
I am now wishing it also had XLR outputs, but Im sure i can pick up a nice transformer balancing box from somewhere.
USB 5V power can be equally noisy, even from a powered hub, so that argument doesn’t make any sense. PCIe has a high current 12V rail available that has much more margin than USB for filtering with an LDO and run your signal chain well above the noise floor of the components.
Besides, Asus Xonar as in the picture can take 12V from a drive connector to bypass the motherboard PCIe 12V “just in case”.
Sidenote are sound cards making a comeback?
So much that we’re buying them by weight now
Just buy an external DAC
As a hobbyist musician, the more you externalise these sorts of things, the more latency you create. A discreet, internal, soundcard is probably going to trump external DACs for a long time to come.
External DACs totally have their place, music playback, movies/shows. But for doing audio work, internal is the way to go.
As a professional musician and someone who works for a prominent Japanese electronic musical instrument company, I’m going to have to disagree.
Thunderbolt provides all the low latency of a PCIe interface with none of the drawbacks. I use an Antelope Zen Tour in my home studio and it is just amazing.
The systems I designed for work though use RME PCIe cards, but those systems aren’t in the hobbyist space.
What card are you using? Does it have an external breakout box?
Last one I used was the delta 10/10 which I loved
It’s an older Creative card, still has plenty of oomph. It had a breakout box. Lord knows where it is.
👌👍 latency 🤣
You people just make shit up. The human eye can’t see above 60fps!
Imagine believing you are going to notice .001 poling rate. Maybe we can get a dac that fully saturates a pciex16 lane
I absolutely notice when a game defaults to a resolution with 60hz refresh rate. It’s not even so much a stutter or stall as it just feels “off” and then feels “normal” if I adjust the settings to 144hz.
Though I don’t notice this when playing a game that has fps capped to 60, as long as the monitor is refreshing at 144hz still.
I’ve also had a few ms of latency adjustment make the difference between frequently missing notes and being able to sustain long combos in guitar hero or similar rhythm games.
It’s subtle to the point where it’s difficult to measure objectively (if it’s even possible to measure something where subjectivity is built in like sensory processing), but based on those I think our temporal resolution is higher than 60 fps in certain cases.
Edit: Though I’m not sure I agree that the latency difference between an internal and external sound card will be very noticeable. I used a USB dual pre for gaming for years and never noticed anything off with it. I might try breaking it out again to see if it makes a difference in rhythm games.
What do eyes and frames per second have to do with audio latency?
That’s true until you get into VR. Then 90fps seems to be the threshold.
I’ll leave the rest to the audiophiles.
My motherboard has a shitty sound card so I need a replacement.
An external audio interface or DAC will be 100x better. That audio card won’t be any better than the on-board audio.
Some of them have poor stability. I gave up on a Sound Blaster Audigy RX after it caused random crashes on two different Socket AM4 mainboards. I just got a 10 metre optical cable and a cheap DAC next to my reciever.
I suspect the industry is in a tailspin; the last players standing really don’t have to give a **** because the alternatives are onboard sudio or $$$$ pro cards.
I have a DAC in my microphone that I can use if I need to watch movies (HDR to SDR causes popping for some reason. Bad capacitors? Bad GPU?)
Might be an audiophile thing? I’ve been debating getting one myself simply because the onboard one is really limited in its abilities
I would not buy PCI audio stuff. Lots of power goes through the motherboard, which makes these prone to RF interference, especially if you have a rig that has high power draw.
Best to buy a external USB dac/amp. Either make sure that your mobo has a separate USB hub from the main ones (which some mobos might label them DAC), or a USB cable that isn’t rated for high voltage.
this, as someone who had suffered and tried everything to fix it: nothing helps.
Go external.
What do you recommend that isn’t either bullshit or $1500
I have a Fiio DAC and i have no complaints.
But i dont have golden ears that can hear the difference between good dacs, excellent dacs etc.
Above a certain level, its good enough for me
I have a FiiO Q3, I recommend it too.
I’ve heard good things about the EK10/Olympus2, but haven’t tried it myself.
I got a EK10 bc my old MSI motherboard had noticeably worse audio quality than my android phone/MacBook. The EK10 is totally fine for my usage (mostly just driving ATH-M50X’s)
Does it have Aux output? What model?
I have a K7.
My only con with it is that the headphone jack doesnt cut the line outputs. So, i had to make an inline switch to mute my speakers for headphones only.
I am now wishing it also had XLR outputs, but Im sure i can pick up a nice transformer balancing box from somewhere.
Rme babyface is pretty neat. Though it doesn’t support linux very well.
That looks like a phone from 2004 and I need like, a headphone jack.
USB 5V power can be equally noisy, even from a powered hub, so that argument doesn’t make any sense. PCIe has a high current 12V rail available that has much more margin than USB for filtering with an LDO and run your signal chain well above the noise floor of the components.
Besides, Asus Xonar as in the picture can take 12V from a drive connector to bypass the motherboard PCIe 12V “just in case”.