Why Are Computer Soundcards So Crap?!?!?!?!

SVI2004A · 2004-05-22 3:30 pm

i find this the most stupid thing to exist......

computer frikkin soundcards................................................................................... why in hell do we put up w/ CRAP..... im absolutely SICK & FED UP with **** respnse... more annoying is i can burn an MP3 to CD and i like the result, yet play it through the soundcard i may as well have 1uF BP cap to block any decent bass coming through - I am disgusted and apalled at this crap computers, ive been informed have the best DAC stages in them yet a crap bummed discman outperforms... WHY?????????????? please HELP!!!!!!!!! i will go insane putting up w/ 100hz cutoff (or so it seems) please help me to find true HiFi response in the PC ************************************************************************** By The Way *******************

the Amp i have on it has a freq resp. of DC-300khz +0 -0.1db

PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP!

tucdual · 2004-05-22 9:09 pm

Sound cards aren't all crap !
Sound blasters and motherboards integrated AC97 chips are crap :xeye:

, that's right.

But try a good card like a Terratec or an Echo and you'll hear the difference ! (you'll see the difference when you'll have to pay too)

dwk123 · 2004-05-22 9:28 pm

ummm, maybe try buying a good soundcard rather than the $15 crap at the mass-marketers?

Emu 1212M - $200, available at almost any pro music store, including local Guitar Center stores.

http://www.emu.com

Shaun Perez · 2004-05-22 10:39 pm

try sound blaster audigy 2 zs

Also take a look at the sound blaster audigy 2 zs, close to the same price but also an excellent value and I am very satisfied with the sound quality obtainable and all of the extras included.
http://us.creative.com/
Currently I do not have any super hi-fi speakers on it but that is in the works as I write, I am building a 7.1 thx surround sound system using eton 5-880 woofer's and seas tweeters for the rear and sides. The front and center will be eton 4-300 and seas millennium tweeters. I am putting together a 7 channel gainclone chip amplifier to power it, as the audigy 2 zs has only a high output line level. And the subwoofer is 2 push/pull isobaric 8" scanspeaks 8555-01, and possibly 2 more 8555's to go with it, and an adire audio HS-200 audiophile sub amp.

Or if you want to keep it simple go with creatives new gigaworks s750 7.1 speaker system for about $450. Havent heard the $450 creatives yet but I have heard some cheaper (under $150) surround computer speakers and surprisingly the creatives sounded much better(JBL was one of em), I am sure the $450 ones sound very good.

jaycee · 2004-05-23 7:02 am

The other alternative is to connect the SPDIF output to an audiophile quality external DAC. This also gets you the advantage that the analogue output stage is not powered by a noisy switchmode supply, nor is it exposed to the relatively high levels of EMI inside a PC.

Hybrid fourdoor · 2004-05-23 8:01 am

jaycee said:
The other alternative is to connect the SPDIF output to an audiophile quality external DAC. This also gets you the advantage that the analogue output stage is not powered by a noisy switchmode supply, nor is it exposed to the relatively high levels of EMI inside a PC.

ALso has anyone tried enabling the "spread spectrum" option in BIOS? Does it have considerable effect on the sound...as far as getting rid of backgorund noise?

Bricolo · 2004-05-23 8:38 am

Hybrid fourdoor said:
ALso has anyone tried enabling the "spread spectrum" option in BIOS? Does it have considerable effect on the sound...as far as getting rid of backgorund noise?

What exactly does this option do?

annex666 · 2004-05-23 9:12 am

Why are soundcards so crap?

Imagine you are a soundcard manufacturer...

Take a board 4"x6"

Cram on anywhere between 2 and 8 DAC channels (stereo -> 7.1)

Add a few ADCs - 4 channels say for stereo mic and stereo line inputs

Add all the associated analogue stages to get a reasonable output current buffering

Then add a digital sound processing chip - for example surround decoding, etc

Shove the board you just made into a box that has clocks running at stupidly high frequencies - an ideal environment for EM radiation

Then power the whole thing by a switch mode power supply

How good can the design possibly be?

Even if you were to use the best opamps and DACs/ADCs you would still have a high noise floor due to the EM radiation inside your pc.

This is why external cards are popular - it's easier to create a clean digital feed which can then be passed to an external soundcard. This way you only have to worry about jitter (provided of course you create a high enough quality external soundcard).

Does this clear things up at all?

Shaun Perez · 2004-05-23 7:45 pm

the spread spectrum bios option enabled cuts down on this radiated emi and interference. I have tried this option disabled and enabled with my old analog cordless phone and it really does quiet down interference. I didn't notice any effect on the computer sound though, but I dont have the best sound system yet either. I am not exactly sure how it works either.

Although the computer is using a switching power supply and it is a crappy digital noise box, it is possible to get low noise and quality from inside sound cards it just takes a little more work than the $15 cards can give

Petter · 2004-05-23 9:41 pm

Shaun Perez said:
the spread spectrum bios option enabled cuts down on this radiated emi and interference.

This is quite a nice idea to try out, but it is not true that setting up a spread spectrum clock on the CPU + some associatet parts of the CPU reduces EMI and interference.

What it does is to cut down on correlated (i.e measurable) interference and also spreads it out over a wider bandwidth. It follows that the audio portion of the computer may benefit, not be affected, or be negatively affected by this.

I suspect one would be more likely to obtain benefit. I will certainly try it, but I am of course using the S/PDIF option ...

Another thing you may want to try is to severely underclock your system. I am fixing to try that as well.

Petter

dwk123 · 2004-05-23 9:55 pm

annex666 said:
Why are soundcards so crap?

How good can the design possibly be?

Even if you were to use the best opamps and DACs/ADCs you would still have a high noise floor due to the EM radiation inside your pc.

This is why external cards are popular - it's easier to create a clean digital feed which can then be passed to an external soundcard. This way you only have to worry about jitter (provided of course you create a high enough quality external soundcard).

Does this clear things up at all?

Well, no. You're simply parroting back the same kind of incorrect assumptions that 'audiophiles' have been spouting off for years.

Pro-grade sound cards such as the LynxTwo series and even the new affordable Emu 1212M exhibit noise floors that are -115 to -120 dB down from full-scale, despite housing the converters inside the PC. In other words noise/distortion that is 20dB lower than the inherent quantization distortion in CD quality audio. There is no need whatsoever to resort to an external solution simply to avoid EMI generated noise.

Additionally, these cards do tend to re-filter the power from the PC to generate their own supplies. They are still usually switch-mode supplies due to the need for DC-DC conversion, but they aren't naievely relying on 'clean' power from the PC supply.

Of course, there are ergonomic reasons to use an external break-out box when dealing with multi-channel cards to get decent connector spacing, but it's not necessary for performance reasons. (ie the Emu 1212M measures essentially identically to the 1820M, which uses the same converters housed in an external chassis)

gmarsh · 2004-05-24 5:00 pm

Don't knock AC'97... AC97 is a standardized serial interface for interfacing a multichannel audio codec with an audio controller, and nothing else. Saying "AC'97 sucks" is like saying I2S sucks.

I recently designed an AC97 part into something at work that wasn't a computer motherboard - the part had outstanding performance for our application (verified on the AP gear), it easily interfaced to a DSP, and it was dirt cheap. Can't complain there.

Shaun Perez 2 · 2004-12-09 1:40 pm

I have had my computer hooked up to hi end speakers for a while now and the sound blaster audigy 2 zs platinum is a very good sounding card. :bigeyes:

This card is THX certified! :bigeyes:

So much for noise huh! It also plays 192khz stereo dvd audio or 96khz dvd in all 7 channels. 24 bit audioand every digital in/out you could want. As of now there is a new audigy 4 that is supposed to sound even better with better d/a converters.
This card sounds very good to me using the analog outs with 20ft. Goertz Tourmaline interconnects and 6ft. MI 2 speaker cable connected to a two way 8"focal and Scanspeak 1.5" dome mid/tweeter with goertz inductors and solencaps with relcaps rtx bypasses (2nd order linkwitz-riley crossover 2000hz). Okay with all that said, I use my computer for almost all of my listening using the hard drive with the new windows player "lossless" Ripper. -------------NO COMPLAINTS HERE!

peranders · 2004-12-09 2:19 pm

There are many nice sound cards. Why don't you check http://audio.rightmark.org They have many reviews of sound cards.

http://audio.rightmark.org/test_results.shtml

SY · 2004-12-09 2:28 pm

Shaun, I bought the 2ZS soundcard on Ace_3000's recommendation and have been delighted with it. I'm using it for tube measurements and am getting reliable and repeatable performance to well below -100dB.

AGGEMAM · 2004-12-09 4:15 pm

There are other options than 'just another soundcard' and that is MB's. I have been using, and with total satisfaction I might add, an ASUS MB with an NVIDIA Nforce2 chipset with the MCP media chip the sound quality from that far exceeds anything I've heard from even professional soundcards, like EMU and Lynx.

Also when you say crappy switch mode supply it might be time you took a look at this vital component of your PC. It is actually possible to buy higher quality ones that aren't noisy, neither acoustically nor electrically.

Shaun Perez 2 · 2004-12-09 7:42 pm

"It is actually possible to buy higher quality ones that aren't noisy, neither acoustically nor electrically"

That is exactly what I have done, low noise, low ripple, and High power(530 watts). Although it is not a requirement to meet the specs, I think that it might help sqeeze that last bit of sound quality out.................but I could be wrong it might not do anything.

gmarsh · 2004-12-09 7:59 pm

AGGEMAM said:
There are other options than 'just another soundcard' and that is MB's. I have been using, and with total satisfaction I might add, an ASUS MB with an NVIDIA Nforce2 chipset with the MCP media chip the sound quality from that far exceeds anything I've heard from even professional soundcards, like EMU and Lynx.

Also when you say crappy switch mode supply it might be time you took a look at this vital component of your PC. It is actually possible to buy higher quality ones that aren't noisy, neither acoustically nor electrically.

The Soundstorm is a wonderful audio processor, but that's all it is - it still needs a codec attached to it. Chances are there's a generic, 80dB-A-weighted-SNR, blasphemous-THD, Realtek ALC650 or C-Media 9738 codec attached to your MCP which performs the A/D and D/A duties.

Using an external DAC with a Soundstorm motherboard makes for a much more fair comparison to a Lynx or EMU card.

demogorgon · 2004-12-09 8:58 pm

i'l have to get in line and say that an external dac is the way to go if you want quality. soundcards just dont cut it in the preiverange most normal people have to spend, and a god dac can be fairly cheap too..

AGGEMAM · 2004-12-09 8:59 pm

gmarsh said:
Using an external DAC with a Soundstorm motherboard makes for a much more fair comparison to a Lynx or EMU card.

Actually that is my setup. I use an old Cambridge Audio DAC-6 with a LC-Clock installed.

Why Are Computer Soundcards So Crap?!?!?!?!

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