Ask HN: Is onboard audio still good enough compared to dedicated Sound Cards?

66 points · monkburger · 17 days ago

Recently, I upgraded my outdated PC to a Z890 motherboard, primarily because it was significantly discounted compared to AMD alternatives. After the upgrade, I noticed that the Realtek onboard audio doesn't sound as good as my previous configuration, which used a Recon3D sound card. Although I haven't conducted any scientific tests, the difference in sound quality is quite apparent to me.

I'm reaching out to understand the technical reasons behind this perception. Do dedicated sound cards offer tangible audio quality improvements over modern onboard solutions like Realtek? Specifically, I'm interested in aspects such as DAC quality, component shielding, and feature sets that might contribute to a superior listening experience.

Additionally, how much of this difference is rooted in theoretical hardware advantages versus user experience factors? Any insights or experiences from device engineers and audio enthusiasts would be greatly appreciated!


74 comments
AngryData · 16 days ago
Theoretically your onboard sound could be just as good as anything you get off a card. In practice, it comes down to the physical implementation on your motherboard, like are the amplifying components well specced for their use, are they well separated spatially/electromagnetically from other potential sources of electrical noise on your motherboard, what are the power traces potentially shared with or near, is your power supply giving it clean power.

Now those aren't things you can casually observe all that useful information from, so it doesn't really help that much other than to try and buy quality components and hope for the best, often if you want good onboard sound you can find it if you are spending a reasonable amount on the board to start with though and not using and underspecced or dirt cheap PSU. A sound card could alleviate some potential issues though either because you bought a cheap board or just from being lied to by marketing that you were getting better onboard sound than they actually built. But it is still located on your motherboard and near a bunch of other things running at their own frequencies which may or may not be a problem depending on location and shielding and components.

And for all those reasons, a lot of people have skipped the sound card route and got a USB DAC, which gives a lot of physical space between all those other components and eliminates some restrictions in form factor for being inside a computer.

One thing to look at before you do anything else, look at where your analog speaker line is running. Is it now crossing near your PSU or power cords? Is it a different cheaper cord? The lowest hanging fruit for sound quality is the longest and final analog run and it is always good to try moving it around if you suspect a problem.

Show replies

ribadeo · 16 days ago
Balanced differential inputs and outputs reject common mode noise, which is why they are essential for long cable runs and microphone leads, among other things that benefit from such an interface.

The actual ADC and DAC chips, or codecs, are usually specced just fine in even consumer on-board audio devices.

Hifi audiophiles are notoriously superstitious, and as long as RCA coax is the connection standard, my eyes continue to roll about their DAC nonsense, but you should pay attention to professional audio as this is where you can hear audible differences. Preamplifier stages and voltage amplification in general have a lot of nuance and analog circuit know-how inside. Removing the codecs from the inside of an electrically noisy computer is the beginning of starting to care about audio signal quality. Power filtration is another major concern for noise. Latency is a factor of buffer size which is both necessarily low when overdubbing recording while monitoring, and yet paradoxically allows for smoother glitch free audio as the buffer size is increased, largely a function that is CPU bound. No one talks about DMA controllers or the data bus employed, often USB, another factor that can affect audio independent of which audio interface or soundcard is employed. Some play nicely, some don't.

My advice is to delve into the world of professional audio, as this is real. Hi-fi often entails gullibility and snake oil in the sales chain.

Show replies

brudgers · 17 days ago
Good enough for what?

Mastering a recording for money?

Listening to MP3’s through headphones?

Or something in between?

Consumer audio devices do all kinds of psycho-acoustic adjustment based on the likely limitations of playback systems, likely music genres, and consumer expectations.

Headphones and small speakers are going to sound thin without them…i.e. a transparent system is going to try to reproduce sounds that most speakers can’t output.

None of which is to say your new system sounds good or bad. Just that what sounds good is subjective and context dependent.

Show replies

Kirby64 · 17 days ago
The chips used themselves for sound are perfectly fine. It’s pretty much all Realtek codecs on any motherboard. And even on the sound blaster cards. The only difference between onboard and dedicated cards is a bit more thought and care is put into shielding and external component selection, which can have a pretty big effect on performance. That tends to be the big difference between onboard and dedicated cards. Nobody hears the difference between 16 bit 48khz and 24 bit 96/192khz anyways. But bad component placement or selection can add noise, THD+N, and other problems.
tensility · 17 days ago
Mixed signal components are hard to do well and have significant impact on the quality of final analog audio I/O. So, it matters which components have been used regardless of whether it's on on-motherboard solution or an external add-on solution (whether internal over PCIe or external over another appropriate bus, such as USB); however, the economics of onboard solutions make it quite likely that this is where quality will be skimped since many consumers won't care much about quality differences in this area, whereas the focused external solution will live or die in part based upon the quality of such components.

Note, however, that this concern really only applies to whatever in your system is performing the final digital to analog or initial analog to digital conversions since that interface with the "real world" is where the quality matters. In a world with bluetooth speaker systems, where that mixed signal phase actually happens in the speaker hardware, it is relevant to consider where this kind of quality even matters in the full audio system you're deploying.