(08-07-2015, 09:03 AM)NKF98 Wrote: i would get a dedicated sound card but my priorities are probably different
Onboard (Realtek) audio sounds amazing if the implementation by the motherboard manufacturer is decent, (e.g. no noise, distortion, crackle or pops when you move the mouse cursor, stress the CPU/RAM/IO, turn on the PC or plug your headphones into the hph / line-out jack). A good implementation with a crappy chip sounds much better than a poor implementation with the best/most expensive chip, premium audiophile-grade caps, tube amp and whatnot.
Most people don't need anything better than onboard audio for music/video playback, games and voice chat.
A dedicated soundcard is necessary if you want to do *more* than just basic playback or recording, such as:
* driving high-quality headphones with low sensitivity / high impedance that need a lot of "juice" to reach decent volume levels with minimal distortion / optimal frequency response.
* cool features like multiple *virtual* sound devices. You can have different apps play or record audio from different inputs/outputs at the same time. It's like having several soundcards installed in your PC.
* if you really find 'jack sense' annoying/unbearable (a feature that automatically disables audio devices when nothing is plugged into the analog outputs to save power). It breaks/crashes most apps that expect an audio device to be always present. To work around this, you must always have something plugged into one of the output jacks. Most dedicated soundcards don't have this annoying feature.
* using the card to actually *create*, not just consume music/audio. You need a decent native low-overhead, low-latency diver and multiple high-quality analog inputs.
You can use WASAPI or a WDM audio wrapper to reduce latency with the Realtek, but it's far from optimal. This is for Windows, of course. Linux audio is a totally different story.