Is onboard sound good enough to not bother getting a cheap

depends from mobo to mobo but generally yes

>>56545688
you do not need a sound card unless you have a hobby/occupation that deals with audio, or want perfect mic performance.

Yes it is.
If you really want a sound card though get an external one, the internal ones won't increase your sound quality no matter at which price point due to electromagnetic radiation

>>56545688
No.
It has insufficient power for most quality headphones and if going to be too quiet also randon noises and poor noise8/output ratios,

File: [Abesu] Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei - 10 (720p).mkv_snapshot_08.44_[2016.03.18_17.47.52].jpg (43KB, 1280x720px) Image search: [Google]

43KB, 1280x720px

>>56545724
>If you really want a sound card though get an external one, the internal ones won't increase your sound quality no matter at which price point due to electromagnetic radiation

Just look at this degree of stupidity.
He knows nothing on radiation and nothing about sound and had never have have a soundcard.

But he's giving opinions online.

>>56545688
You don't need dedicated sound hardware unless you have issues with your current one (e.g. if you hear noises or static in the background, distortion, or can't drive your headphones properly)

If you use $5 speakers then you will likely not hear the difference but if you have a proper sound system then you will need a good sound card too.

Onboard is great these days. Sound cards are literally placebo for most uses and honestly sometimes onboard sounds more pleasing than some sound cards

Do you do anything other than listen to shit and maybe use a mic to talk to people or some shit? Then you don't need a sound card. unless you've fucked up your onboard or you managed to get a mobo with genuinely bad onboard but they practically don't exist these days.

It generally comes down to this; if you're asking if you need a sound card you probably don't need a sound card

>>56545743
i have a pretty average motherboard, but it still has a 300ohm headphone amp built in. sound cards are obsolete

Well i suppose you're not going to see a single person who regrets getting a soundcard.

Only plebs screaming placebo because they cant afford a 30$ Xonar card and never heard one.

>>56545688
Just get a properly shielded / powered external DAC. Some have integrated amps, but if you plan to invest at all, it's better to have the units separate.

>>56545792
More like because only plebs buy soundcards purely for listening these days so they don't complain to hide their regret

You won't REGRET getting a soundcard anyway. Maybe you'll regret wasting the money but you're not going to regret buying something that works fine. At the very least you now have back up audio. It's not worth spending the money on for the average user though.

>>56545759
His explanation was wrong, but inside your case is the worst place for a DAC/ADC and preamps. NEVER buy internal sound cards, always buy external audio interfaces. Internal sound cards used to be a thing because there simply was no appropriate way to connect them, so they had to use PCI. Nowadays USB is more than sufficient.

>>56545839

I think he's a retard and meant to talk about EMI which is obviously a legit issue with internal sound cards.

soundcards use to be needed, before onboard sound
so the companies that made them had to stay relevant even though they have a dead technology to sell
and so they marketed them to audiophiles

>>56545782
But does it drive high-sensitivity low-impedance IEMs like the 120 dB SPL/mW 32 Ω Shure SE-535?

I have those IEMs and I hear static noise on every single audio device I have tried plugging it into *except* for my dedicated amplifier. The loudness of the noise depends on the source, but the onboard audio and the DAC in my phone were the worst by far.

>>56545911
It wasn't just that. It used to actually affect performance and shit in games but now it doesn't.

>>56545928
It still does. CPUs and OS scheduling are just good enough that it has little functional impact.

Offloading it to dedicated hardware will still be faster. It just doesn't really matter anymore.

>>56545947

That's what I meant by "now it doesn't" it's too negligible to matter

So is my soundblaster recon something I should throw out then?

>>56545963
Yep. Agreed.

Though it also relates with problems like syncing with the audio thread, etc. Relatively irrelevant when you consider modern multi-core processors, and the fact that dedicated audio cards are never going to take off.

>>56545991

Sound cards are fine you're not losing anything by using them unless they have god awful drivers that break everything

>>56545916
An inline attenuator would solve your problems, 300 ohm would bring it down 20dB in sensitivity, much more reasonable.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Etymotic-ER4P-to-ER4S-3-5MM-plug-resistor-adaptor-/272325647230?hash=item3f67df9b7e

>>56546177
Yeah, that's pretty much what I do for my phone (I use an in-line volume
control, which doubles as being a useful way to control the volume), which is
especially important for my phone because quality goes to shit unless you
drive its audio output at high volume (above 50%) for some reason. (It's a
jolla phone)

Anyway, my point is that there still is a non-negligible difference between
audio outputs which you can easily run into given the right circumstances.
Noise is always noise, even if you hide it by reducing the sensitivity.