On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 01:14, Michal<michal@sharescope.co.uk> wrote:
USB is for flash drives, printers, etc.
Nothing good ever comes of using USB for sound or LAN
OP, M-Audio makes good cards as does Asus (Xonar series). Just don't
get anything from Creative. You would have more choice if you went PCI
instead of PCIe, and PCIe doesn't really have any particular benefits
for sound cards (unless you are building a small form-factor computer
that only has PCIe slots or something).
Actually, unless you are doing something special with audio (producing
music or DJing or something), it really makes sense to go with the
onboard sound chip. Via Envy24 chips are good, as are most that
conform to the Intel HDA spec (including the very common Realtek
chips that implement that spec (ALC88x and ALC1200)) .
Cheers,
Kelly Clowers
Have external sound card moves the processing off the CPU, good if you
have a low powered computer or are trying to get the maximum out of it,
gaming for example (Though admittedly most hardcore gaming is done on
Windows). You do also get better quality from an external card, but
whether you would notice that is down to the person, and debatable
An onboard sound chip does the same processing as a PCI sound card -
they are not like winmodems. True, a card can get you better sound, but