It's upgrade season for me and I've narrowed it down to two paths, keep with ATX and keep my current Soundblaster Z or downsize to M-ITX and get an external sound card or whatever they're called. I know absolutely nothing about sound cards, the only reason I have this one is that I managed to snipe it off eBay for £5 otherwise I'd never have put a second thought into it. My question is, should I go M-ITX, what would be my options for avoiding on-board audio? Or is on-board audio not that bad these days?
Onboard audio is usually fine if you are not into anything fancy, like head fi and so on. The only real issue I had with onboard (and I would imagine this could be worsened by being ITX and thus smaller) was that the amplification circuitry was pants. That meant I ended up buying a sound card to get a higher output volume. I've had an XFI USB (used it for my Hackintosh because the onboard was a sod to install) and it was brilliant. Lovely sound quality and a very good output too, more than enough to drive any headphones I tried on it.
You can get some pretty good onboard audio theses days, you will be hard pushed to notice a difference in the sound compared to a dedicated sound card. Just look in the specs and look what the audio section is. For example Asus's boards have SupremeFX and Crystal Sound 3 audio which come with decent headphone amps and good DAC's. external DAC's if you got the dolla for them are always the best option, but you really need a good set of can's for it to be worth it.
I was looking at the Maximus VIII Impact for my board if I go M-ITX and did notice that it had some extra sound stuff on a daughter board. Looking at Bit-Tech's own review of it, it was barely any better than the competition, normally only a couple of percent ahead at most. To be honest I've not used on board audio since about 2011, not even got the drivers installed for it on this board. Might give them an install and see what it sounds like when I connect my speakers to that instead. These external DAC's though, what are the good brands to look out for?
HyperX Cloud and a pair of Microlab Solo9C's. Though I might get some dedicated headphones and a mic.
A USB amp/DAC would be better yes, but at a price. I spent "only" £130 on mine (Aune TK1 MK2 valve pre based)
OK - if it was something with a balanced input, I'd have suggested a decent USB external converter, like a Saffire 2i2 or something. Something like that also has a decent audio in, too. However - as others have mentioned, I'd probably have a crack at the on-board audio as it's better these days. I don't use onboard as my active monitors sound arse when connected to it, hence my original question. Although - saying that - a Saffire 2i2 is fairly cheap, and the DACs in it are great.
Suppose there's no harm giving it a try. As long as I'd still have options if I don't like on-board I'm fine with downsizing. It'll make taking my PC home from uni for the holidays a much easier task.
