Hi,
I will be buying a new PC soon, and I was looking at the current state of on-board sound systems. I noticed that some of the so-called “gamer” motherboards have much better capabilities than the usual Realtek chips I always saw on older motherboards.
For example this: http://us.msi.com/product/mb/Z97-GAMING-9-AC.html#hero-overview
Or this: http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5125&from=eDM_20140919_X99_USA#ov
These seem pretty good. The whole audio section of the motheboard is physically separated, which should get rid of all of the interference from other components (if done correctly). I’m not quite sure about that replacable OP-AMP on the Gigabyte motherboard, though. Anything that “enhances” the sound is not really what I would like to use during mastering. But from what I read on their website this can be removed if you don’t want to have it.
That MSI card above seemed better (even includes ASIO2.2 driver by default), until I saw that Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 2 crap. I hope there is a way to turn this off while composing.
I have monitor speakers (KRK Rokit 6) and so I was thinking of buying a dedicated sound card. But looking at the progress recently in the on-board audio, I started thinking that I might as well just buy a motherboard with good on-board audio instead.
What do you guys think about it? Anyone has any first-hand experience with this kind of motheboards? Are dedocated sound cards still better than the current on-board audio?