I bought a soundcard for $65 and its arriving tomorrow - Asus Xonar AE. My motherboard that i was using before for sound is a p6x58d-e from 2010 and my headphones are porta pros which are eq'd to neutral with sonarworks reference 4 then eqd to harman curve Over Ear with APO.
What am i in for with this soundcard? Should i expect nothing?
Are you actually doing anything related to sound?
listening to music, watching videos, gaming, FL studio
Congrats on blowing $65 and wasting a PCI slot for nothing.
reviews that i read online say it has a good DAC, far better than the one from my 2010 motherboard, a high SNR, and a 150 ohm headphone amp if i get other headphones
>I bought a soundcard for $65
now there's a complete waste of money for an old outdated Soundcard. The card is fine, I don't have anything against it. If you're willing to plug your headphones into the back of your case, which is hugely inconvenient, then it's probably fine. However, the price is just laughable. At $65 you could have gotten some used surround receiver with a HDMI input. Those have a much better headphone jack and it's not far away in the back of a computer case.
Anyway, it's a fine soundcard but above $20 for it is overpaying compared to what you could get in terms of actual audio equipment for $50+,
Oh, btw, I have a pair of Koss Porta Pro's. They are fine but not great. What soundcard you're using to power those doesn't make much of a difference.
Motherboard audio is trash and if you can't hear the difference, your ears are trash, too.
>Motherboard audio is trash
20 years ago
Should have gotten a DAC
the dac on the card is better than the dac on the mobo
DAC's short for Digital to Analog Converter. There's not a sound card, surround receiver, cellphone or $5 mp3 player without one. As for those small dedicated headphone dac/amp's: They are never worth it, ever. See
a used surround receiver will have a headphone output and sound better.
The best way to go is to just use an external USB audio device and plug all your shit into that. Outputting audio over USB is a perfect digital signal, it'll get converted by the DAC of whatever the fuck you're plugging it into. They have cheap shit ranging from $15 all the way up to stupid expensive $300 devices. If you're only using headphones, there's some $75 Fiio DAC you could use.
If you feel like making extra work for yourself and spending lots of money, buy a receiver on Amazon and just plug your motherboard's S/PDIF output into it. Then you can plug all your HDMI devices into it too. But then you also need to buy some real speakers to match.
External DACs are a big meme, just like sound cards, but at least sound cards can do shit like 3D audio emulation. External DACs like Schiit's 2nd gen stuff loses to a $10 Apple USB-C audio adapter in measurements, total snake oil
>External DACs like Schiit's 2nd gen stuff loses to a $10 Apple USB-C audio adapter in measurements
Then maybe get something that actually measures well, there's plenty to choose from.
>pays for an audio card
>Buys internal piece of shit
Why?
But why would you when everyone says they love schiit? If it sounds good enough that people think it's actually good then what are you spending more money?
Unless it's on a seperate daughterboards that shielded and with its own op amp and DAC, it's shit. Sorry.
Cheap USB DACs are shit too, sound awful and just add latency.
Autistic tier is PCIe/Thunderbolt external enclosure sound card with it's own power supply.
Good tier is HDMI receiver/DAC or high end (daughter board) motherboard audio or internal PCIe sound card.
Decent tier are higher end USB DACs.
Poorfag/normie tier are all the cheap USB DACs or low end motherboard audio.
>What soundcard you're using to power those doesn't make much of a difference.
>just ignore the huge HISS sound on your shit motherboard audio bro
I use an old X-Fi Titanium, from back when they first started doing PCI-E cards. You need to hunt around a bit for the right drivers, but once you get it set up right, you can use ASIO output for shit like Foobar2000 and MPC-HC. I have some old Logitech speakers that come with a volume controller that plugs into the subwoofer, that volume controller has a headphone jack in it that'll mute the speakers when you plug in, so it's convenient.
>everyone
Yeah, in the same way "everyone" loves apple.
You literally have no idea what you are talking about.
This
>Unless it's on a seperate daughterboards that shielded and with its own op amp and DAC, it's shit. Sorry.
Based.
Nice "argument" friend
latency
It's aldio.
You wouldn't even perceive it compared to the interference from other components.
Yet the sole reason why nobody in audio production uses USB (they use Thunderbolt)
>nobody in audio production
We are talking about audio consumption, aren't we?
For production they also use real-time kernels and other retarded shit.
If your motherboard audio sounds hissy, it'll be quieter. If your motherboard audio didn't have any obvious issues, you won't notice a difference. You likely wasted your money, any little optical or USB desktop DAC thingy would perform better.
My experience with Xonars is that their performance on paper is quite good, but they still pick up some computer noise that doesn't show up on measurements. A lot of really specific frequencies present in the output like in pic related is not going to matter much when you measure THD or THD+N, but you might still hear them.
>FL studio
DAWs are the only reason to have a dedicated soundcard.
I like porta pros but shouldn't you have prioritized buying better headphones? Hope you did a kramer mod at least.
>using two EQs
Why not just add more parametric bands to APO? Seems two separate EQs would reduce quality more.
don't listen to Jow Forums. Sound cards are fine if your motherboard audio is lack luster. I bought pic related because I wanted a decent DAC and ability to have a volume knob on my desk. I added this to an old PC whose onboard sound was mediocre at best.
sound cards are a meme. i use the built in spdif optical, all the work is done in the hi-fi. what a waste of money this card is lol
hi-fi is a meme and the ops mobo doesnt have optical
lol headphone outputs on receivers are an afterthought and usually have a 200ohm resistor on them from the speaker amp circuit
a hi-fi is a receiver aka an amplifier with speakers you tremendous faggot
>a hi-fi is a receiver aka an amplifier with speakers
wtf is this boomer talk
porta pros are good tier.
I'm looking to have separate mixer/sampler/midi controller but still record directly to my PC. is this a fairy tale and I have to record to an external device and import it, or is there some way to record direct to PC without compromising the signal? after research, the main issue seems to be throughput (especially if you're recording multiple channels/mics simultaneously & want to keep them separate for the mix).
something like in your pic seems like what I might be looking for, but back when I was doing this stuff analog was dominant and digital was just starting to take over, so I'm not as familiar with the I/O límits.
>p6x58d-e
patrician taste. the on-board does have noticeable hiss though
It's frustrating to discuss audio on Jow Forums because you either have ears or don't. If you don't, Realtek motherboard sound sounds fine and anything better seems like wasted money. If you do have ears, cheap DAC's and bad amps are painful to listen to.
That Xonar will probably sound a lot better than onboard sound. If you just want stereo, a dedicated stereo DAC+headphone amp might be better, but those get expensive fast.
Pretty much all the prosumer recording adapters/DAC's (which is what it sounds like you want) use USB2 now. With multi-core systems, modern memory sizes and SSD's, USB works perfectly well for recording multitrack audio. The higher end ones will use thunderbolt or USB3, but it isn't necessary for most stuff.
At the very least, I can guarantee and personally tell you the Xonar definitely sounds worlds better than what is onboard my Asus B450 board.
this card not have external power connector
it not gonna sound clean
the reason people buy external USB cards is external power supply.
You don't need an external PSU to get good sound. PC power is pretty clean, and passing it through an onboard linear power supply will give results at least as good as the typical wall-wart.
Anything better is going to have a full linear PSU with a big, toasty line transformer.
why not just get an external dac/amp? soundcards are such a meme
no people buy external dacs because there's much less interference than inside a pc case
I have a Sound Blaster X which the SPDIF In port has come in very handy for routing sound through my computer from devices that have SPDIF Out. Albeit that wasn't the original reason I purchased the card, possibly like OP I bought it because my first motherboard (2012~ model) had a garbage onboard sound chip that couldn't even power ATH-M50X's properly without sounding flat and lifeless. My new motherboard has a better sound chip and I probably wouldn't have bought the sound card in this position, but the extra functions were too nice so I left it in my new build as well.
You should expect MUCH better sound.
It would be easier and better to just get a DAC, but you're good with that card.
Don't worry about it.
Confirmed trash ears.
tfw i bought an ASUS Xonar D2X because my motherboard doesn't have on-board audio and the sound card that came with it died.
>portapro
Nothing.
/thread
reviews that you read online are retarded just as you are.
soundcards are a meme. external DAC or don't bother, frankly.
If you really wanted, you could have just bought a cheap USB dac for $10.
>thinks motherboard audio quality is relevant
>still uses analogue outputs in 2019
>Autistic tier is PCIe/Thunderbolt external enclosure sound card with it's own power supply.
No, autistic tier is getting decent audio gear and letting it handle the DAC. All you need is a digital output, which many motherboards provide these days.
All your retarded "still putting the DAC in the PC" solutions are retarded. Putting it in an external thunderbolt enclosure is even more retarded, when you could just pipe it to directly to an amp in digital form.
It should be nice.
>Koss Porta Pro's. They are fine but not great.
Christ.
>>Analogue ports bad
Yeah bud let's get wireless Bluetooth earbuds instead of zero latency excellent sounding analogue ones too!