Do we need sound cards any more?
I fired up TweetDeck this morning and found a tweet from Jobney asking if he should bother with a sound card for an upcoming gaming PC he’s building, particularly since he’s just using 2.1 audio.
It turns out not to be such a simple question.
The short answer is no. You really don’t need sound cards for gaming. But there may be reasons you’d still want one. To understand this, we need to look at why sound cards came to pass originally.
The first IBM PCs had no real audio capability, just a tiny speaker driven by a tone generator that could only generate one tone at a time. It was shrill and annoying. Other systems, like the Amiga and Atari computers, had much better (for the time) sound capabilities.
So the sound card was created. First, there was the Adlib Music Synthesizer. Later, Singapore-based Creative Technology shipped the Creative Music System, which begat the original Sound Blaster. The Adlib garnered some game support, but it was really just an FM synthesizer, which meant you couldn’t use digitized dialog. The Sound Blaster changed all that. Eventually, there were a slew of competing sound cards, some useful, some terrible. The Sound Blaster, though, became the de facto standard among DOS game developers.
As audio became more important in games, game developers began bumping up against the limits of the PC. Developers wanted more sophisticated effects in real time, but the Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16 and competitors were generally software based. CPUs at the time weren’t beefy enough to handle everything the game needed to do plus multiple, real-time generated sound streams. Sound cards began incorporating DSPs (digital signal processors) to offload audio processing from CPUs.
Through competition, really stupid business decisions by competitors and litigation, Creative eventually emerged as the last man standing in the sound card business. There were (and still are) lesser competitors, but they were dwarfed by the Creative juggernaut.
Then Windows gaming became important. DirectX (and hence, DirectSound) and hardware abstraction layers, coupled with increasingly sophisticated use of audio by developers, meant that drivers became important. Drivers – those bits of software that allow software to talk to hardware – were never Creative’s strong suit. The Audigy and Audigy 2 sound card products suffered from numerous driver issues.
When the Windows Vista development process got under way, Microsoft took a look at all the problem reports generated by customer calls, and discovered that a substantial plurality consisted of users running into issues with hardware accelerated audio. Every support call is money down the drain. They also took a look at Intel’s and AMD’s plans for CPU development. High clock rates and, eventually, multicore processors, would become commonplace. So Redmond made a business decision: support for hardware accelerated audio was removed from the OS.
Today, the only way games or other apps can take advantage of hardware accelerated audio is through external APIs, like OpenAL. Creative did clean up their act with the X-Fi line of sound cards. It’s been my experience that X-Fi drivers are notably more robust than Audigy drivers. But the effort was really too little, too late.
Quite a few game developers have taken advantage of OpenAL, but the era when a sound card was a must-have is now past. Creative Labs has adapted to the new era of multicore processing by developing software versions of the X-Fi, which you can find on a number of motherboards and some laptop PCs. If you desire some of the features of the X-Fi, such as EAX 4.0 support, then soft X-Fi is a good solution.
Soft X-Fi for Asus Motherboards on the left; X-Fi PCIe on the right.
So why buy a sound card today?
Ironically, the issue is drivers. Codecs – those bits of hardware that convert digital audio to analog and vice versa – are still essential, unless you attach to an external device (such as an AV receiver) via digital audio output. Even dumb codecs require drivers.
Like all commodity hardware, there’s been something of a shakeout in the audio codec market. These tiny chips are dirt cheap, so the profit margins are small. Major players, like Analog Devices, have bailed on an increasingly unprofitable business. This leaves companies like Realtek and C-Media to take up the slack. My own experience with Realtek and C-Media drivers on Vista is that they were actually worse than Creative Labs drivers.
Realtek is by far the most common purveyor of integrated audio condecs on motherboards, though you see Via and C-Media fairly often. Here in the basement lab, gaming systems running on integrated audio often generate noisy, crackly audio. We’ve also run into games crashing due to issues with drivers, particularly Realtek drivers.
The good news is that the Realtek drivers seem to have improved with the Windows 7 RC. We’ve seen far fewer problems since installing the Windows 7 RC on the gaming systems here.
So do you need a sound card today? With Windows 7, I’m cautiously optimistic that you don’t need a discrete sound card. But I haven’t really exercised multichannel real-time audio with Windows 7 and the various hardware codecs yet.
Then there’s the whole issue of motherboard design. Audio is often added as an afterthought, so lower cost motherboards often have noisy, distorted audio, so a discrete sound card often fixes those types of problems. So for now, I tend to prefer motherboards with soft X-Fi, or use a PCI Express X-Fi card from Creative or Auzentech. If a motherboard implements soft X-Fi, I assume some though has been put into the layout and design of the audio signal paths. But then, I’ve always been an optimist.
The tea leaves say, however, that the time of the sound card for consumer PCs is fading into history. It’s only a matter of time.
Wait, does that mean that come time to update to Win7, my friend’s $200 sound card (mine’s only a Audigy 2 zs, so it’s less of a loss) is going to become completely worthless? Man!
I mean, I’m sure his crazy-ass’s $1k amp’s gonna pick up some of the slack, but still…
Not at all. The Win 7 drivers for X-Fi, for example, are solid, and a lot of PC games do support OpenAL. And the issue of noise, particularly if your friend’s PC is attached to a $1K amp, is important. Sound cards are almost always lower distortion and quieter than the average integrated audio system.
I was told that a dedicated sound card was unnecessary for my gaming rig, and I find myself really regretting taking that advice. If you have any kind of decent audio equipment, the noise that comes through the integrated audio is unbearable. Better to be safe than sorry on this matter, because the humming, whistles, and clicks can kill the experience.
Here’s another question: was it just a changing hardware and software climate that doomed the sound card, or did mediocre sound design in gaming make it harder to justify purchasing and supporting dedicated audio hardware? It might just be me, but I’ve found that every upgrade I make to my headphones or my speaker system usually make me more aware of in-game audio’s shortcomings.
When I’ve helped build home theater setups, I’ve always put audio first. A big screen is a nice luxury, but it’s audio that really sells the illusion. In gaming, the emphasis has always been graphics, graphics, graphics, and I think it’s very easy to hear the side-effects of that. Our games look better than ever, but even on the best equipment, they sound second-rate.
I’ve been using motherboard-integrated surround sound audio on every PC that I’ve built for the past eight years. Some people insist on separate sound cards, but the reasons for doing that and the audience that insists on that has gradually dwindled.
You are a little late on this prediction.
I’ve always had poor luck with intergrated audio. Not just for games, but for voip software like ventrilo or skype. While I believe a good microphone can make a lot of difference. I also believe that the distorion and signal to noise ratio for integrated solutions is more noticable with voice apps.
I have a Logitech 5.1 speaker system and I use the optical audio out on my motherboard to connect the system to the volume/input control module. I believe the audio stays in digital form until the signals go out to the speakers, also there is less cable clutter because I can run one cable instead of 5. Is there a benefit with this type of setup with a dedicated card as opposed to using the onboard audio?
That’s a great way to handle PC audio, if you have the capability. Most PC speakers lack digital inputs, so not everyone can go that route.
In addition, the DAC (digital-to-analog converter) can be an issue. Not all DACs are created equal. So a good sound card, with a good DAC, can make up for the convenience of motherboard audio, if your speakers don’t have digital inputs.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience with X-Fi and RealTek. Creative was very late in getting out working drivers for Vista 64, and even then they would constantly cause problems on my system. By contrast, the RealTek drivers supplied by Intel for my DX58SO motherboard are rock solid and never had any issues. There’s noise or crackling over headphones, either — in fact, the sound is actually better than with the X-Fi due to the driver’s Dolby headphone stereo space expansion and bass boost.
I gotta disagree on the Dolby comment above. Their stereo space expansion really distorts the sounds and makes poinpointing sounds incredibly hard. It may sound “good” but if you’re using the sound as an edge, the X-Fi surround stuff beats dolby hands down.
As far as why you need a sound card. It boils down to one thing.
Quality. Period.
Take meters and measurements.
A discreet card will give you better VOIP quality and better sounding audio than motherboard every time. It’s a matter of physical engineering and getting off the noisy system bus.
These are the only reasons why I think investing $70 + on a sound card is well worth it.
I had a few problems with the Windows Vista drivers with my Sound Blaster stuff as well for a bit, but honestly I actually took time to investigate the reasons and from reading forums and talking around it seems to me that Microsoft is just as much if not more to blame for the drivers being wonky. There were signifant changes late in the game to Vistas audio engine. I’ve been running the Windows 7 betas for my X-Fi and they are solid. I’d say almost as solid as my Live! drivers were way back in the day.
So how do you find out if a game has OpenAL support, then? From my experience, OpenAL installation only shows up about once every 20 games I get, so I kind of just assumed that to be the support rate. Guess the sneaky bastards hid in the main installer, then.
Back in the old days, I loved to rip the soundtrack that I liked from a game. But now they sound so bad with some decent speakers, I can’t even stand it anymore. I want my ignorance back!
Yes, it’s impressive how becoming more finicky about sound quality makes you realize how poorly audio is recorded and produced in general.
There’s a list of OpenAL games that seems to be fairly up to date here:
http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/Lists/Games/AllItems.aspx
I’ve been playing PC games for years and I’ve always noticed a distinct downgrade in performance when using onboard sound vs. a dedicated soundcard. With online games (specifically CS and BF2) every frame counts, so having the best performance from your machine is very important. Are there any frame rate comparisons in games you can show us that compare onboard sound vs. a dedicated soundcard?
The Audigy was far from the first Creative product to have shoddy drivers. I remember having to wait for Creative to fix their Live! drivers when Windows XP came out.
Even then, Creative’s quality — a supposed benefit to a separate audio card — has never been wonderful. The only audio card I’ve owned that had proper isolation from the noise generated by a PC was my old Roland LAPC-I.
If you really want good audio, S/PDIF output (or even bluetooth) is the only way to avoid the noise. And the codec in a decent home system is going to beat the pants off of anything you put inside your PC. This is also why pro audio is almost all external as well, using USB or even Firewire (IEEE1394) to connect.
If you must convert your audio from inside your PC’s case, you’ll get what you pay for. Hey, another reason to pay a premium for Apple hardware!
Thanks a bunch! All I found was some other list on the same website and they’re either rather incomplete or it’s another reason to be cheap and stick with XP for now, just to squeeze out the last drop of value out of the poor thing.
LOL I remember years ago searching around trying to find an old Sound Blaster Live! to buy because I specifically didn’t want to buy one of those Audigy pieces of shit. And I remember years before that, when I had a 386 with a Sound Blaster 16 (Adlib compatible!)
I have decided to go the route of the X-Fi Pro (that’s pictured above).
I’ve been building my own systems since `95 and had them built for me before that. I liked Loyd’s quick walk down PC audio memory lane. I think people that buy pre-built miss out on a lot of computer history as they are not forced to research hardware in too much detail.
Regarding RealTek Dolby vs X-Fi Surround: I’ve never heard any surround effects out of my X-Fi on Windows Vista 64 on any game, ever, with Bioshock being the most notable disappointment. A technology that works beats a technology that doesn’t work, regardless of how good the latter theoretically might be.
Dolby Headphone is a good technology — it’s also used by my Philips headphone system that I used for movies and console games, and it’s of course widely used by amplifiers and receivers in general. The implementation on the DX58SO board sounds good to my ears, too, and that’s ultimately all that matters.
[...] Originally posted here: Do You Need a Sound Card? – Improbable Insights [...]
Yes, but if you have Alchemy installed, you do get surround effects out of an X-Fi card in Vista x64.
Nahr: Surround sounds are just fine on Windows Vista 64 and an X-Fi. I have the same combination, and it’s fine. You probably fail at having OpenAL installed. Please stop with the FUD.
Soundcards are not only about gaming features. It can also replace dedicated audio components for stereo appliance.
I own a marvelous Asus Essence STX, which have a dedicated headphone AMP output (6.5mm), and use high quality DAC (Burr-Brown PCM 1792A), the one that’s in the 1k$ benchmark DAC1… With a great stereo headphone, it’s wonderful ! Way better than my Yamaha RXV663 or my Marantz CD6002 (which is already better than the yammy). It just worth every penny !
Many people are not educated to sound quality, and just don’t feel the difference (or don’t care). I guess that’s the main thing that will “kill” soundcards market.
I highly recomend this little device that once was part of my digital studio and is now a not only a sort of patch bay form my digital studio but also my computer sound card!
Behringer src2496 Ultramatch Pro