Dedicated soundcard vs onboard sound for music

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Thread: Dedicated soundcard vs onboard sound for music

  1. #1
    Mako Shark Boneycat's Avatar
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    Dedicated soundcard vs onboard sound for music

    Ok, I have some really good Corsair SP2500 speakers that right now I'm using to listen to music in my room using just the onboard sound card of an ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 mobo. While the mobo has an optical cable out port, my speakers only use coaxil (technically coaxil to the sub which then merge into a single input to the mobo). Basically my question is this: Will a dedicated soundcard make a difference for listening to music (specifically Spotify premium account) or just a waste of money?

  2. #2
    Great White Shark
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boneycat View Post
    Ok, I have some really good Corsair SP2500 speakers that right now I'm using to listen to music in my room using just the onboard sound card of an ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 mobo. While the mobo has an optical cable out port, my speakers only use coaxil (technically coaxil to the sub which then merge into a single input to the mobo). Basically my question is this: Will a dedicated soundcard make a difference for listening to music (specifically Spotify premium account) or just a waste of money?
    I personally would say waste of money, but then again I'm not sure if the onboard VIA VT1818 is decent quality or not. Realistically Spotify isn't putting out CD quality audio. So I'm not sure if it's worth getting a higher quality sound solution.

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  3. #3
    Catfish df's Avatar
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    if you want good sound, get an external DAC like schiit bifrost that can take usb or optical, since the mobo can do optical out, you bypass the crappy mobo chipset and feed bitstream to the DAC directly, if you couple it with a nice little t-amp, you can make the speakers really sing. I feed optical to my schiit bifrost to a smsl sa-s3 amp. very sweet sound.

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