Sound card and sound set up general advice.

nesf

Instead of constantly typing the same stuff I thought a few pointers might be a decent idea for a thread. That and I'm having trouble sleeping!

Is on-board sound good enough?

Modern on-board sound is a hell of a lot better than that 5 or 6 years ago but there are some caveats. First, with very sensitive equipment you'll pick up noise from the CPU etc. This is mostly for if you're using inner ear monitors (headphones you stick in your ears). This is especially true if you're using the headphone out ports on the front of your computer because of the unshielded cable running through your case to get there picking up interference on the way. Second, the headphone out is often designed for low impedance, easy to drive headphones. If you start getting headphones 50 Ohms and above or headphones that are hard to drive you mightn't get enough volume out of on-board sound. Thirdly, these cards are mostly aimed at driving active speakers, i.e. speakers that have their own in-built amp. If you want to use passive hi-fi speakers you'll need a separate amp for them. Finally, you only have software volume controls for headphones or keys on your keyboard. If you're like me you'll prefer a physical knob for controlling volume. Minor issue but important for some.

If any of these are an issue a cheap PCI soundcard or external USB soundcard does the trick. An external amp/DAC is the best option for headphones. Ideally one with low output impedance (try to have headphones 8 times the output impedance of the headphone out of your amp/DAC). Some higher end sound cards are excellent too at driving harder to drive headphones. For reference, most if not all gaming headsets will be low impedance, easy to drive headphones and won't be that sensitive. Exception: The Sennheiser PC 350 (I think) headset is designed to be used with a headphone amp. There's a matching Asus Xonar card to go with it and you can get them as a package deal. It's apparently a fairly decent headset too, I haven't heard it though.


Do I need Virtual Surround sound for gaming?

Some people swear by it for FPS games, some people hate it and prefer stereo (i.e. 2 channels). Personally I prefer stereo but your mileage will vary. Mostly this point is here to caution you against buying very expensive gaming headsets with 7.1 sound without knowing if it's something you like gaming with. Get a cheap external or internal sound card that can do Dolby Headphone or the Creative equivalent and test it on your current headphones first before you take the plunge. Also, many "audiophile" headphones are reputed at being better for gaming than gaming headsets made by gaming companies. Personally I've found this to be true. Open audiophile headphones in stereo is my preferred way of playing any game where positional accuracy is important at the moment (PvP in MMOs for me these days).



Why spend money on better sound gear, sure my stuff sounds great already!

Basically the ear will become accustomed to anything similar to the eye. Remember before 1080p Blu Ray that films and television looked perfectly fine? Now watching movies in 480p can be dissatisfying? It's similar with sound gear. I'd always encourage you to try before you buy but there is a measurable difference with more expensive sound gear (though not all expensive gear is worth the money!) so don't write it off. The gain per Euro becomes less and less as you're getting more expensive though! That said, I gamed and listened to music on cheapo headphones and speakers for years without complaint so eh, it's more of a thing of "if you don't know what you're missing you'll never miss it" than anything else. What I would say is if you're spending €1,000 on a gaming PC and using €30 speakers then you're doing yourself an injustice really. If you're on a tight budget though sound gear should probably be the last hardware bit to have money spent on it though if you're not an audio freak. The above applies to speakers and/or headphones not expensive amps and DACs! You'll get perfectly acceptable sound out of a cheap (in audio terms) DAC and amp unless you've got really hard to drive headphones*. For passive speakers it's a bit different as they need quite a bit of amping so really cheap amps can be a false economy. Most reasonably priced headphones don't need much amping though to get a decent volume out of them.


Why bother making this thread?

a) I'm bored. I can't sleep and it's 7am and I've no one to talk to and I don't feel like gaming at this point.

b) It's as much a part of gaming and the immersive aspect of gaming as the graphics are in my opinion. If you've ever played a game on really tinny ****e speakers you'll know what I'm talking about. Bad sound can ruin a game, good sound can enhance it in a similar way as playing on a high graphics setting can (i.e. not strictly necessary but nice to have). You definitely don't need to spend as much on sound gear as your PC cost you to get very good sound but it's worth considering when you're thinking of gaming hardware. If you play FPS games or games with good soundtracks etc then good sound can enhance things for you.


Anyway, I hope this is helpful to people and not too controversial.


*This is probably the most controversial statement in this post in audio terms.