USB Sound Cards Explained: Tech, Benefits, Do I Need One?

[Chomiq]

Cmon no discount for European or other markets that aren't the US !? This sucks!

In Europe you have B-stock which come at around 50% off and include 1 year warranty.

My B-stock G6 was €70 with free shipping.

 

[JonM78]

Been using the ALC1200 onboard audio on my MSI motherboard for a while. Finally decided to upgrade and got the Sound Blaster X4. Wow. What a difference. Definitely noticeable in games as well as movies and music. I like that it has a hybrid headphone jack that takes the 4 pole TRRS for mic and headphone on my headset. No splitter needed.

Definitely worth the upgrade. I almost replaced my headset for something that would have still been dependent upon crappy ALC1200 onboard audio.

 

[yetilord222]

a bit late but the biggest problem with creative are their drivers. still.

I have a g6 and I've had to default to the Microsoft Drivers given I've been getting daily/weekly bsods. for two years. Creative Support had no idea what was going on and said it was a motherboard incompatibility.

So either they are absolutely clueless or popular ASUS motherboards don't work with their drivers. The problem has existed for others as well but we're out of luck.

 

[chrcoluk]

Seems a common complaint for sound card vendors.

The weakness of my xonar card is that ASUS stopped developing drivers in the windows 8 era, and as a result the drivers dont support modern features such as MSI and security isolation.

On the custom driver maintainer's page has a list of known issues with the official drivers, half of them have BSOD bugs, a bunch more have issues when PC put to sleep, others with popping and so on.

 

[JonM78]

Seems a common complaint for sound card vendors.

The weakness of my xonar card is that ASUS stopped developing drivers in the windows 8 era, and as a result the drivers dont support modern features such as MSI and security isolation.

On the custom driver maintainer's page has a list of known issues with the official drivers, half of them have BSOD bugs, a bunch more have issues when PC put to sleep, others with popping and so on.

Definitely one thing is common: technology advances and older technology loses support. This is common with hardware as much as it is software. I held onto the Audigy 2 ZS that I had until motherboards no longer came with PCI slots. A lot of my favorite older multiplayer games can't be played because servers were shut down. It is what it is.

Sometimes it's best to get new products with new features.

 

[chrcoluk]

Definitely one thing is common: technology advances and older technology loses support. This is common with hardware as much as it is software. I held onto the Audigy 2 ZS that I had until motherboards no longer came with PCI slots. A lot of my favorite older multiplayer games can't be played because servers were shut down. It is what it is.

Sometimes it's best to get new products with new features.

My point was that the software side has less focus (even on new products) as we can see with the guys complaining about creative driver issues.

Sound card guys should support as long as Nvidia does circa 8 years.

 

[JonM78]

My point was that the software side has less focus (even on new products) as we can see with the guys complaining about creative driver issues.

Sound card guys should support as long as Nvidia does circa 8 years.

They typically support hardware through the duration of the Windows OS lifecycle, sometimes between OS versions if the product is released close to RTM date. The same goes for a lot of software. These days a lot of software companies actually indicate end of support for update releases even though the OS might be current (ie support Windows 10 but only up to Release 1903).

There's a push in general to keep everything modern, either due to security vulnerabilities, the cost of having to support older software/hardware and even the capitalist nature of ensuring constant revenue. Hence why many software companies have moved to subscription licenses that prevent piracy and also ensure that money will always be rolling in. It's genius.

 

[novanation]

I use the Creative AE5+ sound card to digitize albums and cassette tapes. I also use it when watching movies on one of my computer monitors it plays through my stereo while editing photos on the other monitor.
The dac on the AE5+ is very good and Audigy does a fine job at capturing all the detail I'm looking for. All 10k songs are kept on a 15tb raid system.
Would I use another setup? Maybe in a few years.

 

[Chomiq]

One thing I can add about G6 - SB's Crystal Voice make your mic input sound like sh*t. If you're a PC user turn all of it off. I don't know if it's enabled by default when you plug it into console.

 

[tec_smith]

Wow a lot of comments here! Specifically that sound cards to be nearly extinct compared to the 90's (remember how they were needed to help reduce load and increase fps!) Boy times have changed. Anyway what is considered minimum (audio)specs a mobo should have for say "very good" audio quality today?

 

[Mussels]

Wow a lot of comments here! Specifically that sound cards to be nearly extinct compared to the 90's (remember how they were needed to help reduce load and increase fps!) Boy times have changed. Anyway what is considered minimum (audio)specs a mobo should have for say "very good" audio quality today?

No such thing
Audio quality varies per board design, more than per choice of codec

the days of onboard audio having crackling and hissing issues due to poor ground are done, so are the days of hardware accelerated audio going bad (the vista-ish days)

Digital audio is digital, the source doesnt matter - so if you use HDMI, DP or USB audio the sound card is irrelevant