now there are plenty of topics that elicit strong reactions from PC and
audio enthusiasts but few come close to
is it worth it to Shell out the cash on a sound card or external audio interface
so why does this debate stir up such passion and emotion on both sides who
are sound cards for and what advantages do they really provide let's start this
with an analogy think of the electrical signals traveling through the inside of
your PC like cars on a highway if you're out there driving around all by yourself
it's going to be pretty peaceful and quiet unless you've souped up your
engine to make some sort of statement about the size of your junk but as more
and more cars get on that Highway the ambient noise level is going to go up
well the situation inside your computer is much more similar to The Busy Highway
than the lonely one your CPU is processing millions of instructions per
second and all that data flowing around on the motherboard makes it a very noisy
place and if you turn on your speakers you might actually even be able to hear
it all that extra electrical noise from inside the computer can manifest itself
as hissing cracking and other distortions over your speakers or
headphones when you're trying to listen to music watch Netflix or blow away that
freaking annoying kid that keeps headshotting you through the wall somehow motherboard manufacturers have a
few different ways of addressing this problem the most elegant of which is to
place the audio circuitry on a dedicated area of the PCB away from the other
components how however this solution is quite expensive to implement so it's
mostly only straight Ballin boards that have this feature discrete sound cards
are basically a more robust version of this and can be added to any motherboard
they put all the audio signaling on a completely separate PCB that attaches
via PCI or PCI Express and it comes with
some additional advantages as well such as the capability for more inputs and
outputs more powerful application to drive those fancy pant headphones of
yours clean cleaner digital to analog conversion for more detailed sound and
of course the ability to carry it forward to your next system when you
upgrade the rest of your Hardware but sound cards are hardly a perfect
solution they're still near the Emi noise inside your PC Tower their
software drivers can be problematic and due to their nature as all-in-one
Solutions their DAC or amp or both are
not always the best enter external dacks
these usually require no drivers and take the audio processing out of the
noisy environment of your PC case all together allowing a cleaner analog
signal to be sent to an amplifier that is either built into your speakers or
bought separately even though Dax built into even onboard integrated sound cards
are better than ever having a dedicated one that sits outside the case safe from
Emi is something that many folks who are passionate about audio absolutely swear
by but limus you still haven't actually answered the $644,000 question who are
these products actually for well for one sound producers if you make music
instead of just listening to it you might need more inputs and outputs than
your onboard sound solution can give you which is usually just a complement of 3
and 12 mm Jacks and an optical tossing port for two if you're super serial
about getting the absolute most out of your fancy speakers or headphones
especially High impedance or low sensitivity ones that are difficult to
drive an onboard audio upgrade with particular attention to the amplifier
might be necessary for hearing the finest details of whatever you're
listening to too and finally and perhaps most obviously if you keep hearing
noticeable hissing Distortion or just plain muddy audio quality then you'll
definitely want to look into moving away from your onboard sound unless of course
you enjoy listening to everything as if it was recorded on a cassette tape
that's been traveling around the cosmos for the last 20-some years speaking of
carrying around audio recordings with you and audible.com membership is the
perfect thing for you if you want to have access to literally hundreds of
thousands of highquality Audi books like Gone Girl by Jillian Flynn which I
absolutely kicks butt by the way I love this book and I'm planning to go see the
movie as soon as I possibly can but I have a baby but I'll I'll I'll get to it
at some point because I can't get enough of it an audible membership gets you one
Audi book of your choice to listen to in the car or at work or wherever it is you
do that every month and gets you discounts on additional audiobooks if
you crave more and the best part is that the first one is absolutely free so head
over to audible.com to sign up and get started
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