"With the excellent embedded audio solution housed in motherboards I figured that soundcards would have been a thing of the past..." Wouldn't agree more... On paper motherboards audio are fine. In ads, they are brilliant. In reality - I can clearly hear difference on speakers setup 2.0 or more/headphones and any decent sound card, starting from old xonar dx. And my mb sound card is decent. z97 pro gamer motherboard. SupremeFX...! Second thing - if there is situation, like mine, where I have coil whine from my gfx, then...well, I hear coil whine on headphones/speakers using motherboards sound... Third- creatives drivers my sometimes suck, but with my current zx I haven't one single problem, and it give me enormous advantage in FPS gaming, online, just because I can hear near to perfect in 3d environment where my foes are. And react fast accordingly.

I agree. I have Soundblaster z and while it might not be the greatest card, it beats integrated audio and i had no problems with it. Might not be the best card for music, but for gaming needs it beats the integrated. 5.1 on the integrated does not come close to soundblaster z. I prefer playing without headphones. Did not see any reason to buy zx or better, because i did not saw the difference between them. The gadgets ? Sound wise it should not be that much different ?

I don't know about sound quality, but I'd agree with sound "importance" started to take a back seat. But recently with VR becoming more mainstream, a lot of studios are going back and developing some pretty cool 3D sound processing stuff. Steam Audio is starting to get integrated in to the major engines: https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/ It's in both UE4 and Unity now. Also UE4 with 4.16 completely revamped it's audio system: https://youtu.be/ErejaBCicds?t=2416 This video shows some of the new stuff including a completely modular synthesizer.

Wasn't Aureal doing something similar before Creative delivered a death blow to them? I'd like to see audio getting an important place in games again but I fear that it won't happen unless it's extremely easy to implement (or automatically done). Edit: AMD apparently released a new version of TrueAudio (TrueAudio Next but it's aimed at VR like Nvidia did with their VRworks stuff. I'd guess that any improvements to audio in VR games will only be latency related :bang:.

Wasn't Aureal doing something similar before Creative delivered a death blow to them? I'd like to see audio getting an important place in games again but I fear that it won't happen unless it's extremely easy to implement (or automatically done). Edit: AMD apparently released a new version of TrueAudio (TrueAudio Next but it's aimed at VR like Nvidia did with their VRworks stuff. I'd guess that any improvements to audio in VR games will only be latency related :bang:.

Yes if ref to A3D and OpenAL Also look up DirectSound3D (DS3D) No the Aureal's investors had cease funding operations, forcing Aureal into bankruptcy so if the investors has stay on board then there would have been diff out come. So Creative save it own bacon by acquired Aureal's assets from bankruptcy court with the specific for provision that Creative Labs would be released from all claims of past infringement by Creative Labs upon Aureal's A3D technology so another word they got luck. Creative could have easy keep A3D a live but chose not to just like with Alchemy (DirectSound 3D wrapper).

$150-$180 to try and make headphones sound better with audio resolution far beyond the human ear can even hear. 5.1 speakers only (instead of 7.1 speaker support). And a color light show! ROFL. I guess there will be suckers who'll fall for this. But, eesh. What a joke.

Your the joke! Its all opinion based. I'll buy this and it will look sweet in my system, not to mention, why do you need 7.1 on a computer again? Isn't that what home theater is for? I've never had an issue with any sound blaster I've had. Who wants to buy my ZXR? Plus, the white card will look good when I build a white themed Gaming PC.. Haters are going to hate.

I'm still rocking my X-FI which I still enjoy to use today for my audiophile needs. This sound card looks interesting but I'm not sure how much of an upgrade it is over my X-Fi Fatality.

Mixing is not affected by sample rate. Only by bit-depth. Also, mixing is done by windows (mixing multiple applications) or by each app/game (mixing multiple sounds in-game.) The sound card has got nothing to do with it. 24-bit mixing of 16-bit sources can improve mixing marginally. But that's about it. It looks more like an audio production sound card that's got nothing to do with gaming.

That's interesting idea. But if mixing was done by windows (CPU), then sound cards would need only DACs and AMPs. When sound card presents itself as 7+1 to system, but has Stereo output. Is that mixed by CPU or sound chip on board of sound card? Why different sound cards provide different number of voice mixing channels to software/games? Yes, there can be sound cards which are almost fully software solutions ($3 USB) and stuff which GraphEdit does in DirectShow filters is handled by CPU. But then it has to come to sound card and it does its own things. Just because great many of HW features were turned into SW ones does not mean that everything is software only. When you think about what sample rate is and how you mix together 44kHz with 48kHz sound, you realize that you need higher sample rate to place each impulse into correct time slot.

I use the Soundblaster Z soundcard which has excellent sound quality although the mic is terrible. It used to install as Recon 3D but Microsoft fixed that a couple months ago. The offical drivers are terrible though I only had problems when it was installed so I tend to just use the microsoft ones instead.

The greatest issue with sound cards is DPC latency.

My old X-Fi Gamer Fatality PCI card has been great, sadly obviously I won't be able to use it once I upgrade as no more PCI slots. I'd actually just a few days ago been looking at SB cards like the Z(x) for my next system as every time I check, a discrete good quality sound card leave onboard MB sound in the dust... I'd only been put off Creative's terrible driver support, while I had the verry occasional issue on Win 7, the change to Win 10 (after the change how the sound stack is accessed during Beta) was handled so poorly: Initially Creative declared they would drop support for X-Fi cards in Win 10 declaring it an eol product, later reversing and offering a driver which through many versions simply did not work at all !!! In the end I found a 3rd party fella who saved the day and released a working driver himself for the X-Fi cards which works fine to this day 🙂 I could not believe at the time that Creative could be so Poor at getting a working driver out I'd rely on some guy to do their work for them :bang: (100's of miles from my main rig atm so cannot say for right now who wrote that driver) Despite that, due to feeling lack of options (+ Asus' own worse reputation for support of their hardware), I am tempted for a new SB card. Might be nice if there is later a USB version of this card so I can use it on laptops too when I want. other question: On a home theatre projector based gaming PC using HDMI out to a Really good quality 7.1 (9.2) surround sound amp, there is no point using a discrete sound card is there? I've not started gaming on it yet and not really looked into game sound through HDMI so am rather light on my knowledge in this area. - Just bought a few days ago a full racing FFB sim rig for it 🙂 oh and How much is AMD's TrueAudio (Next) actually used these days?

Audio card looks cool but would need some hardcore gamers to review it games and movie first in that order. I loved Aureal when A3D was still around. Total advantage in Half Life and Counter Strike games back in the days. I am also waiting on AMD TrueAudio to see if that will be the next standard. I think it is in the PS4 and Xbox One so hope the consoles, AR and VR industries will push that standard.

That's interesting idea. But if mixing was done by windows (CPU), then sound cards would need only DACs and AMPs. When sound card presents itself as 7+1 to system, but has Stereo output. Is that mixed by CPU or sound chip on board of sound card?

I'm not sure I understand. With a 7.1 card with stereo output, you'd select "Stereo" in the Windows audio properties. This produces a stereo signal. No mixing. If you really need surround to stereo downmixing, then that's easy to do on the CPU. All 8 channels are guaranteed to use the same sample rate, so no resampling is needed. (The resampling part of mixing is the complicated part. The mixing itself is straightforward and very low-overhead.)

Why different sound cards provide different number of voice mixing channels to software/games?

Different drivers do things... differently, I guess. Nowadays, OpenAL seems to be the only remaining API that even supports this. (DirectSound is dead now and only used in very old games.) Is hardware mixing even possible nowadays? Do games use OpenAL? And even if some do, are they even utilizing hardware mixing if present? The last OpenAL game I remember that had a setting for it was Mass Effect 2, I think. I don't think hardware mixing is a thing anymore.

Yes, there can be sound cards which are almost fully software solutions ($3 USB) and stuff which GraphEdit does in DirectShow filters is handled by CPU. But then it has to come to sound card and it does its own things. Just because great many of HW features were turned into SW ones does not mean that everything is software only.

Oh yes, absolutely. Not arguing with that. My only point here is about hardware mixing of game voices. That doesn't seem to be a thing anymore.

When you think about what sample rate is and how you mix together 44kHz with 48kHz sound, you realize that you need higher sample rate to place each impulse into correct time slot.

Can the sound card even do that anymore on modern Windows versions? I think the Windows mixer does that in software. MS seems to have killed hardware mixing in Vista and later.

My old X-Fi Gamer Fatality PCI card has been great, sadly obviously I won't be able to use it once I upgrade as no more PCI slots. I'd actually just a few days ago been looking at SB cards like the Z(x) for my next system as every time I check, a discrete good quality sound card leave onboard MB sound in the dust... I'd only been put off Creative's terrible driver support, while I had the verry occasional issue on Win 7, the change to Win 10 (after the change how the sound stack is accessed during Beta) was handled so poorly: Initially Creative declared they would drop support for X-Fi cards in Win 10 declaring it an eol product, later reversing and offering a driver which through many versions simply did not work at all !!! In the end I found a 3rd party fella who saved the day and released a working driver himself for the X-Fi cards which works fine to this day 🙂 I could not believe at the time that Creative could be so Poor at getting a working driver out I'd rely on some guy to do their work for them :bang: (100's of miles from my main rig atm so cannot say for right now who wrote that driver) Despite that, due to feeling lack of options (+ Asus' own worse reputation for support of their hardware), I am tempted for a new SB card. Might be nice if there is later a USB version of this card so I can use it on laptops too when I want. other question: On a home theatre projector based gaming PC using HDMI out to a Really good quality 7.1 (9.2) surround sound amp, there is no point using a discrete sound card is there? I've not started gaming on it yet and not really looked into game sound through HDMI so am rather light on my knowledge in this area. - Just bought a few days ago a full racing FFB sim rig for it 🙂 oh and How much is AMD's TrueAudio (Next) actually used these days?

3rd party fella your ref may have been PAX or Daniel_K's Drivers or which goes by name Kawakami just so you know they doesn't do any real driver development them self all they are mostly doing is tweak hardware inf it self or installer and tab bit of hex editing in right dll and driver stat. It all start with me min years ago as I modify the 3Dfx Voodoo 1 and 2, SB Live! for Windows NT5 which later end up as Windows 2000 and lot other device to you can still find my name shs-3dfx and shs-sblive but today I main go by shspvr. TrueAudio is integrated into some of the AMD GPUs and 400 series GPUs on up it is now called TrueAudio Next and only work over HDMI

I have Creative Sound Blaster ZxR which was supposed to be their BIG thing for Sound Blaster series and I must say driver support for it is absolute ****.

You must be new to creative. This is their calling card. :P In all honesty, i have never seen creative give good driver support. They generally release a new driver every 1-2 years, and many times no one even knows what was changed in the drivers, the bugs that were there before are generally still there, and there is generally at least one new bug that was added.

Now, with Ryzen boards not having PCI slots, my only option is to get PCIe to PCI bridge card. Unfortunately there were not many great external soundcards back then, and I did not find any with 6,3mm jacks for headphones.

Ryzen boards have PCI Slots, mainly the B350 and whatnot, but at least one x370 has PCI slots (sadly its bioware). So if you absolutely need PCI slots, you have options

3rd party fella your ref may have been PAX or Daniel_K's Drivers or which goes by name Kawakami just so you know they doesn't do any real driver development them self all they are mostly doing is tweak hardware inf it self or installer and tab bit of hex editing in right dll and driver stat. It all start with me min years ago as I modify the 3Dfx Voodoo 1 and 2, SB Live! for Windows NT5 which later end up as Windows 2000 and lot other device to you can still find my name shs-3dfx and shs-sblive but today I main go by shspvr. TrueAudio is integrated into some of the AMD GPUs and 400 series GPUs on up it is now called TrueAudio Next and only work over HDMI

Very Cool, that is what I love about the PC community, some dedicated folks out there like yourself and others, they sounded familiar for my driver too, sharing their efforts. It really means a lot and saves so much frustration many of us experience with poor support from some companies over the years. Much appreciated all round 🙂 I've been buying AMD GFx cards & CPUs for years where possible to help support the underdog and help keep competition alive and well. The initial TrueAudio demos were very promising, looking forward to making proper use of it soon! Things are starting to feel really interesting in PCs again this last few years ^_^

Do we really even need soundcards anymore?

Do we really even need soundcards anymore?

Yes. And i know, i know, you're probably looking for more of an explanation then that, but the reality is, if you actually have this question, nothing i, or anyone else will tell you, will likely change your mind. And that isn't intended to be insulting, rather, if you are happy with onboard, that's great. That's by far though, not everyone.

Do we really even need soundcards anymore?

Sure, I still use because for instance the equalizer and other functions can be vastly better on separate cards rather than those on the mobos.

You must be new to creative. This is their calling card.

I've been using their cards all the way back to Sound Blaster Pro (approx 1990) and the only problems i've ever encountered with user error or caused by windows itself after an update. The problem with so many PC "enthusiasts" is they tend to blame everyone but themselves when something goes wrong and even after they realize it was user error, they simply can't admit it and keep blaming, like in this thread... Creative drivers.

Myself I could never get rid of crackling and popping with my soundblaster when gaming, days of headaches and troubleshooting on win98, se and 2000. Cheapo 10 buck sound card replacement worked perfectly right away and all the way from win98 to windows 8... so yeah, I have every right to blame creative. As for sound quality with onboard, since the alc1XXX technically they got plenty for every human ear, another thing is to shop for apocryphal "boosted" audio and features.

Sound cards are not really replaceable if there is even a small interest about sound quality and positional audio.